Notes

5 Books to Read about the American Revolution
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One of the greatest problems with wanting to casually study any historical subject today is that the historiography of any subject today, by design, is a black hole of specializations from which one cannot escape. That also applies to the whole of academia, but I’m here to give you some recommendations to help you get the right books.
We’ll start off here with Gordon Wood, since he’s the most eminent Americanist today. His The American Revolution: A History is delightfully concise at a time when most academics write more and more while saying less and less. It also has some great maps in the front of the book, though he doesn’t particularly refer to them in the text. It’s a great starting point to both the Revolution’s historiography, but also one of its most famous historians.
Next I’ll bring up Robert Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause, part of the Oxford History of the United States. Like Wood above, the book begins in the 1760’s in the aftermath of the French and Indian War (The Seven Years’ War), and is notable for being well-written. It also serves as a good companion to Wood here because it also gives a good amount of information about the military side of the conflict.
It would be silly to write this short list without David McCullough’s 1776, a detailed and eloquent account of that pivotal year, when the Americans continued to do decently before the British took Philadelphia in ’77, which is why he camped at Valley Forge.
This next text is one that should be required in every course on the Revolution, but I think that it gets ignored because it requires both the teacher and the students to become acquainted with a body of works far outside their department, but which were nonetheless critical to the ideology and spurs to revolution. This book is Carl J. Richard’s The Founders and the Classics, a rather concise look at how the leaders of the Revolution shared not only the same education, but also the same reverence for such ideas as mixed government and a hatred of tyranny, which is in part symbolized by the struggle between Julius Caesar and Pompey, Cicero, and Cato. This is why, for instance, we have “Sic Semper Tyrannis” as the state motto of Virginia- a statement supposedly given at the assassination of Caesar in the Senate. Of all the books on this list, this one will lead you to further books, and a better understanding not only of the rallying cries of the Revolution, but also their ideas on education, personal conduct, and the nature of government.
Lastly is McCullough’s John Adams, a book so well-written I have read it aloud in class to demonstrate the best kind of writing that a historian can achieve, wherein facts are interwoven and layered to give the feeling of almost fiction. I also bring this up because of the poor reputation of Adams, which he foresaw, and which I hope has been helped by the HBO miniseries. It has done him no favors, however, to be the greatest villain in “Hamilton,” because the musical makes both Burr and Jefferson sympathetic, even at the end. I’ve written already on this topic, but let me reiterate a couple of his accomplishments: nominating Washington to lead the Continental Army, being the only man determined to break with Britain at the onset of the Second Continental Congress, and also securing millions of dollars in needed loans from the Dutch.
With the holidays around the corner, I would suggest you take some time to read these books, given their importance as not only pieces of our own history, but also because they will in some manner shield you from any nonsense people claim about the Revolution as well.

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