The Icarian

This is how I wound up reading 50 books about the American Revolution in seven months. Yes, I am insane.

In November 2025, after viewing Ken Burns & Co.’s six-episode, 12-hour documentary, The American Revolution, I realized I didn’t know as much as I would like about the violent conflict and the preceding events that gave birth to the United States.

I decided to take the list of historians interviewed in the documentary and find as many of their books as a I could at my local libraries. The intent was to use those books as a starting point for an autodidactic adventure to learn more about the birth 250 years ago of the now ailing nation known as the United States of America.

In no way did I limit myself to reading the works of people who appeared in the documentary. There was no real plan other than to learn more about The Glorious Cause, or more simply, The Cause, and discover more about the flaws in the nation’s founding that are the direct roots of what now ails our sputtering democracy.

Starting out, my main consideration in choosing books was ”is it available to check out right now?” Some authors had more books available in audio, electronic and paper formats than others and their books were available when I wanted to read them.

I read a few works about the significant individual personalities, but I also read overviews of the entire conflict, and books that covered specific events and certain time periods.

Then, in military/political/marketing parlance, there was mission creep. There was a rabbit hole. I kind of chain-smoked books about the Revolutionary War for a few months. As soon as one was done, I used that one to light another.

This soon became some sort of crazy personal project. And no, I didn’t read 50 books, one for each state. When I realized I had already read 45 books and had fie more on the list, 50 seemed like a good place to stop.

Pretty soon, I realized I’d read a bunch of books. But I didn’t want to count them. Yet. Not only wouldn’t that spoil the history nerd fun I was having, information does not equal knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t automatically lead to enlightenment.

Some of the books on my reading list do not directly relate to what is now called the American revolution. This is on purpose. It’s context I sought.

I sought out books about slavery and the slave trade as well as about North America’s indigenous peoples – books such as Native Nations, Black Elk Speaks, Tacky’s Revolt, American Inheritance and The Age of Wood, to gain sufficient additional background for a more comprehensive understanding of the birth of a nation. Books not directly about the revolution informed the events and conditions leading to the formation of the United States and its political system.

I decided to read a few books about the events before and after the revolution and about things like wood and forests, which played a role in a world where war ships made of wooden planks where powered by sails and wind that required masts made from tall, strong trees. England had the most powerful navy in the word at the time. That navy’s ships were made of wood. A lot of wood. It needed big trees for masts for its sail-powered fleet. A lot of big, straight trees.

England had precious few straight big trees for masts. America had plenty of trees, a seemingly uncountable number of trees, perfect for masts and deck planks. England desperately needed North America’s trees.

Some of what I learned from my reading many people already know. Other things I read clarified various facts and events, others cleared up myths and misconceptions I had. As one would hope when trying to learn something, there were a great many facts and insights new to me.

Ten Things I Learned Form 50 Books About The American Revolutionary War

One and Two: There are two conjoined and consistent truths. Number one is the twin original sins of not abolishing slavery and the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples. These two factors are at the core social and political sicknesses that are now destroying the nation. These two are essentially inseparable as founding sins since it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to say which one was worse than the other.

Three: The third truism is the Founding Fathers (no women were directly involved in any of this) is that they did not want America to be a Christian nation. Separating church from state was foundational.

Four: The concept of giving women the vote was only thought about from the perspective of it would be a bad thing to do.

Five: A LOT of people were not on board with The Cause. Many residents of “the colonies” thought of themselves as English and wanted to remain so. Benjamin Franklin started out as very much a loyalist, for example. He lived in London for nearly 17 years as a representative of American colonies’ interests. Only though various humiliations and threats to his livelihood did he undergo a process to become a “patriot.”

Six: It was called The Cause, not a revolution. Those loyal to The Crown were called “loyalists.” Those in favor of independence were “patriots” or “rebels.”

Seven: Directly related to Five and Six. The Cause was as much a civil war as a war of independence. Loyalist militias fought alongside the British army. Both side victimized the civilian populations

Eight: If it were not for France, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Spain, The United States would not exist.

Nine: The Cause was about commerce. Money. Business. All of the individual freedom stuff flows from the commercial aspect.

Ten: Nearly all of the FF’s were slave owners at one time or another, even Dr. Benjamin Rush, who openly opposed the “peculiar institution,” wound up owning a single slave. See the original twin sins above.

Of course, I learned a lot more than just these 10 things. There are just the top takeaways of this journey.

Writers with multiple books on this list:

Rick Atkinson – 2

Ron Chernow – 2

Joseph J. Ellis – 8

Nathaniel Philbrick – 3

H.W. Brands – 3

These five authors are responsible for 17 books, 32% of the total list.

The American Revolution TV series interviewees with works included in this list:

1. Rick Atkinson
2. Ned Blackhawk
3. Erica Dunbar
4. Kathleen DuVal
5. Joseph Ellis
6. Annette Gordon-Reed
7. William Hogeland
8. Nathaniel Philbrick
9. Alan Taylor
10. Gordon S. Wood

Reading list (In alphabetical order by title):

1. 1774: The Long Year of Revolution – Mary Beth Norton**

Norton’s four decades of research looks at the sixteen months leading to the battles at Lexington and Concord in mid-April 1775. This book thoroughly documents the tension between loyalist, the British government and the rising tide of independence relying heavily on primary sources.

2. 1776 – David McCullough

McCullough’s popular history published in 2005, of the year that was turning point for The Cause. A companion to his biography of John Adams.

3. Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow**

The heavy weight book (literary at 818 pages) that inspired the musical.

4. American Creation – Joseph J. Ellis**

This is an excellent overview of events and personalities of the formation of the nation. Ellis has both incisive and critical views of the founders’ achievements and failures. He shows how the inability to abolish slavery and establish real agreements with Native Americans are at heart of the founding of the nation while he dispels myths surrounding the development of the nation.

5. American Dialogue: The Founders and Us – Joseph J. Ellis**

This is probably one of the most insightful of all of the books I read. Ellis uses the framework laid out in his American Creation that many of our current ills are the result decisions made at the founding of the nation. He asserts that historical context is critically important to understanding today. He essentially asks “what would the founders think/do?” in a living dialog with the present and future of the nation.

6. American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765-1795 – Edward J. Larson**

Published in 2023, this is one of the more recent books examine the issue of slavery and topic that cannot be examined enough in terms of understanding why America is the way it is. The primary questions examined in the work are was the American revolution fought to preserve slavery and was the Constitution written to protest slavery or advance the cause of ending it?

7. American Rebels : How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution — Nina Sankovitch

Connections between individuals and families is a popular theme for Revolutionary War histories. This extensively researched book shows why this approach is both popular and insightful. Sankovitch examines the lives of John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Jr, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock and how their interconnections played a role in the revolution.

8. American Revolutions A Continental History, 1750-1804 – Alan Taylor

Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, details the complex nature of how the revolution emerged from a complex and chaotic combination of local issues and resistance the English parliament’s attempts and control and goes on to show how the issues surrounding fragile post-war government led to the establishment of the constitution and prompted the spread of white settlement slavery to the west, which would eventually result in the Civil War.

9. American Slavery, American Freedom : The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia –Edmund S. Morgan**

In this landmark work published in 1975, Morgan describes “racism as a political strategy” as Virginia emerges first as the largest slave-owning colony and then state. He traces how the small group 17th century Virginia oligarchs came into conflict with land-owning freemen, poor freemen, white indentured servants, black slaves and Native Americans. He highlights the role of the 1675 to 1677 Bacon’s Rebellion when English businessman Nathaniel Bacon managed to organize thousands of Virginians from all classes, including slaves and indentured servants, to take up arms against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon’s demand to violently drive all Native Americans out of Virginia. By the early 1700s, Virginia’s oligarchs creating American racism by enacting strict slave laws deliberately heightening the divide between enslaved blacks and poor whites.

9. American Spring, Lexinton, Concord and the Road to Revolution – Walter R. Borneman

A chronicle of the tentative and tenuous first weeks of the war as a disorganized militias and patriots first took on the most powerful Army on the planet from the first shots at Lexington to the battle of Bunker Hill to George Washington taking command on 3 July 1775 of what became the Continental Army.

11. 

    Benjamin Franklin, Portrait by Joseph Duplessis, 1785. Public Domain

    : An American Life – Walter Isaacson

This popular biography, published in 2003, is a good all-purpose overview of Franklin’s life.

12. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, as told through John G. Neihardt (1988 edition)*

Originally published in 1932 as Black Elk Speaks, American poet and writer, John G. Neihardt relates the story Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk, as translated into English by Black Elk’s son, Ben Black Elk. I read this because I felt there wasn’t enough of the Native American perspective in the other books I was reading and wanted some context. I’ve already read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Custer Died for Your Sins, multiple times. I’m aware the book has been criticized as an inaccurate account of Lakota culture and beliefs. Black Elk reportedly took part of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and he survived the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

13. Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution (The American Revolution Series Book 1 of 3) – Nathaniel Philbrick

Volume 1 of Philbrick’s American Revolution Series, covers the events from pre-Revolutionary Boston to the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the violence at Lexington and Concord, and skirmishes that led to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill, the revolutionary war’s bloodiest battle.

14. Common Sense – Thomas Paine***

To be honest, I’d never read all of Common Sense before now. I had read excerpts, of course, but not the whole thing. The audio book version I tried was one of the worst audio books I’ve ever encountered. Just get print version if you want to read it.

15. First Family: Abigail and John Adams – Joseph J. Ellis

Described as “both intimate and panoramic; part biography, part political history, and part love story,” Ellis assembled this double biography primarily from the more than 1,200 letters Abigail and John exchanged during their 54-year marriage. During the decades, the couple were apart as much as they were together. The gaps in our direct knowledge of couple come during the times they were together and had no need of letter writing. Was Abigail smarter than her husband? Yeah.

16. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country – Thomas E. Ricks**

Ricks takes a unique a perceptive approach to the intellectual underpinnings of the founding fathers by looking at the educations of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and the influence of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome as seen in their speeches and writings. As a history nerd, I found this a good read.

17. Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership – Edward J. Larson

Another dual biography that more of a parallel American Revolution biography. Franking and Washington were indeed friends, but how much time they spent in each other’s presence seems limited.

18. Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation – Andrea Wulf**

Probably the most unique book among all 50. Who knew that Benjamin Franklin obtained the recipe to tofu, tried to introduce it to America, but mixed up chickpeas and soy beans when he sent the recipe and seeds to his representative in Boston? The chickpeas grew great, but the tofu recipe using them didn’t work out. With British warships gathering off Staten Island, George Washington wrote his estate manager about the garden at Mount Vernon. A tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in establishing the fledgling United States. James Madison is the forgotten father of American environmentalism. And much, much more.

19. Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics – H.W. Brands**

Brands details how America’s partisan two-party politics began before the Constitution was ratified and intensified during in the following decade as the nation’s most famous founders battled over competing visions. If you think our two parties are ugly now, they just as ugly when they were born. FF and second President John Adams was not a big believer in democracy. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans duked it out over a strong central government versus states’ rights.

20. In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (Book 3 of 3) – Nathaniel Philbrick

France ends the Revolutionary War, winning the battle of Yorktown, but gives the credit to George Washington. If you only read three books about The Cause, Nathaniel Philbrick’s three-book American Revolution series would be a good choice.

21. Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America – Catherine Kerrison.**

Thomas Jefferson was one of most contradictory of FFs. On one hand he was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. One the other he was Virginia gentry who couldn’t give up on slavery, and fathered an entire family with one of his slaves who lived and grew up alongside his white family. There was a Grand Canyon-size gap between his word and his deeds. Kerrison’s book tells story of Jefferson’s three daughters—two white and free, one black and enslaved. The perfect companion to – Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello.

21. 

    A 1916 photomechanical print of a portrait of Mary Ball Washington  (attributed to Robert Edge Pine)

    Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother – Craig Shirley**

Thanks to Craig Shirley, the untold story of George Washington’s mom has now been told. She was… kind of not nice. The mother of the Father of our Country did not approve of the whole revolution thing her son was involved with. In many ways she was a loyalist’s loyalist, described as aristocratic, stubborn, and stuck in Old World ways. This is sort of the Mommy Dearest of Revolutionary War histories.

23. Native America: The Story of the First Peoples – Kenneth L. Feder*

A story 20,000 years in the making, Feder, an expert in Native American history and archaeology, details ice age hunters gave rise to what would become dozens of different indigenous tribes and multiple civilizations. This is another book not directly related to the American Revolution, but providing more perspective on the genocide that would result when white people decided this land was their land, no matter who was here first. An excellent companion to book #24, Native Nations.

24. Native Nations: A Millennium in North America – Kathleen DuVal*

Kathleen DuVal, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this book covers the history of North American tribes from settling in North America to the present day. Published in 2024, Native Nations won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2025 Bancroft Prize, the 2025 Mark Lynton History Prize, and the 2024 Cundill History Prize.

25. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge – Erica Armstrong Dunbar**

OK, so what kind of people where the Washingtons, really? Erica Armstrong Dunbar, professor of African  American studies at Emory University, chronicles the life of Ona Judge (first name alternately spelled Oney), an enslaved woman owned by George and Martha Washington, and her escape from the President’s household in Philadelphia in 1796. Judge lived the rest of her life in New Hampshire as a fugitive, but she married and had children. The Washingtons never stopped trying capture Judge. George and Martha went to great lengths to try and recover their “property,” using the federal and state governments, their extensive network of contacts, newspaper advertisements, and threats of legal action.

26. Our First Civil War, Patriots and Loyalists In the American Revolution – H.W. Brands**

This book has been criticized for not really delivering on what the title promises and not getting to the point quickly enough. However, the book does manage to put the schism between loyalists and patriots into context and does tell the story of how the revolution tore Benjamin Franklin’s family apart. It also successfully illustrates how not everyone in the 13 colonies was on the side of The Cause.

27. Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations – Tom Chaffin

Another parallel biography. Yes, Jefferson and Lafayette were friends and corresponded with one another. But how much time they actually spent hanging out together seems a little murky.

28. Revolutionary: George Washington at War – Robert L. O’Connell**

There are a lot of books about Washington and his leadership both at war and in politics. After a less than successful career in the British army during the Seven Years’ War, Washington emerged as the person to lead America’s beleaguered Continental Army through the nearly disastrous revolution. This is a good, readable account of how George Washington, wealthy Virginia plantation owner became General George Washington, THE hero of the American Revolution.

29. Revolutionary Summer, The Birth of American Independence – Joseph J. Ellis

At just less than 300 pages, this is a concise and compelling account of the difficult summer of 1996, a time when American almost did become a nation. Ellis reveals how luck and the irresolution of the British commanders allowed the Continental Army, “a motley crew of marginal men and misfits,” and one that was “neither continental in character nor an army in anything like the professional sense of the term” to escape a disastrous defeat by a far larger and superior British army.

30. Rush: Revolution, Madness, and
    

    Portrait of Founding Father and physician Benjamin Rush, 1783. Public Domain.

    , the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father – by Stephen Fried**

Prior to reading Fried’s book, I knew next to nothing about Dr. Benjamin Rush. He should be much better known. Rush was a medical pioneer, one of the youngest signers of the Declaration of Independence. He talked Thomas Paine into writing Common Sense and then edited it. He was Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, Washington’s surgeon general, and tried to heal a political rift between Adams and Jefferson. He was a great writer, a progressive in the young, but stogy American political establishment, an outspoken opponent of slavery, capital punishment, racial, religious and gender prejudice. And that was just in the realm of politics. As a physician he advocated for national healthcare and revolutionized treatment of mental illness and addiction. Fried drew from a trove of previously unpublished letters and images, voluminous correspondence between Rush and his better-known FF counterparts, as well as his unpublished personal writing. You should read this book.

31. Scars of Independence, America’s Violent Birth – Holger Hoock**

The Cause was a messy and brutish business, marked by suffering and death. Holger Hoock strips the whitewash off history and puts the violence back into the narrative surrounding the American Revolution. Patriots persecuted and tortured Loyalists. British soldiers routinely massacred enemy soldiers and raped women. British prisoners were starved on disease-ridden prison ships and in lightless underground cells. African-Americans who fought both for and against independence suffered disproportionately. Washington’s army conducted genocidal against the Iroquois. This book reveals the harsh reality of the war.

32. Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War – Vincent Brown*

Slavery in the American colonies under British rule was entangled with slavery the British-controlled West Indies islands in the Caribbean. Tacky’s Revolt (also known as Tacky’s Rebellion and Tacky’s War) was a slave rebellion in the British colony of Jamaica that took place from 7 April 1760 to late in 1761. Prior to the American Revolution, Tacky’s Revolt (named for the leader of the rebellion) was the biggest threat to the British plantation economy. The colonial planter class in America did not want a repeat of Tacky’s Rebellion and helped lead to the fierce rsistance to ending slavery when America was born. Draconian slaves laws enacted in Jamaica became the pattern for similar laws later enacted in Virginian.

33. The 1619 Project*

Essential background reading for understanding how slavery became one of two key flaws in the founding of America.

34. The Age of Wood – Roland Ennos*

Why is a book about wood on this list? During the 1700s, ships were made of wood and powered by the wind caught in massive sails mounted on wooden masts. England had the world’s most powerful navy. England lack forests to provide wood for ships and masts. Wood was one big reason England needed the then-forested American colonies.

35. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin – Gordon S. Wood**

Benjamin Franklin very much thought of himself as English. For most of his life he wanted to stay that way and for the American colonies to remain part of the British Empire. He lived in London for nearly 17 years representing the interest of colonies to the crown and parliament. Wood, who died 7 June 2026 at age 92, was one of the most respected scholars of the early years of America. He documents how Franklin lost faith in England, became one of our nation foremost founding fathers, saw his career and contributions denigrated in his own lifetime, only to become a beloved icon after his death.

36. The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Vol. 1) – Rick Atkinson

I generally avoided books by authors who are primarily journalists in favor of seeking writers steeped in history for a living, But Atkinson has won three Pulitzers and won praise from historian Joseph Eliis. This is book one of an a yet to be completed trilogy.

37. The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 – Joseph J. Ellis**

Ellis breaks down the evolving meaning of The Cause through profiles of individuals as varied as George Washington, a loyalist, Joshua Loring, two slaves, Harry Washington and Billy Lee, and Catharine Littlefield Greene, General Nathanael Greene’s, wife who helped support the Continental Army during its darkest days. Other figures include Mercy Otis Warren, Joseph Brant, and Joseph Plumb Martin and John Jay. Ellis shows story of The Cause did not involve just white men, but also loyalists, women, soldiers, Native Americans, and slaves. This discussion is set against the facts that the problem of slavery was ignored to keep the states united, and that Native Americans were viewed as an obstacle to be eliminated.

38. The Fate Of The Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 (The Revolution Trilogy Vol. 2) – Rick Atkinson

See book #36. This is book two of an a yet-to-be-completed trilogy.

39. The Federalist Papers – Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison***

A collection of 85 articles and essays, 77 of which appeared in three New York newspaper between October 1787 and April 1788. Written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the pseudonym Publius to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. Along with Common Sense, The Federalist, as it was originally known, are the only two works written and published during the war and the later formation of the Constitution.

40. The Great Contradiction, The Tragic Side of the American Founding – Joseph J. Ellis**

Published in 2025, Ellis delivers a searing examination of glaring failures of The Cause, which espoused the ideals of freedom and equality for all but delivered something else entirely. Ellis writes: “Our tour will focus on the downside of the American founding. While we will notice the triumphs in passing, our tour will focus on two unquestionable horrific tragedies the founders oversaw: the failure to end slavery, and the failure to avoid Indian removal.” He writes of the inevitability of the Civil War and discusses failed efforts that Henry Knox and Philip Schuyler made on behalf of Native Americans. This book provides the background setting of our current fetid political climate.

41. The Hamilton Scheme An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding – William Hogeland

A writer who insists he’s not a historian, Hogeland tries to position this book as presenting Hamilton as a “forgotten founder.” Except this book was published in 2024, and Ron Chrebow’s 2009 massive Hamilton biography had already inspired one of the most innovative and popular musicals of the past 50 years making Hamilton as star in the 21^st century. Ok. Hogeland delves into the minute of Hamilton’s creation of the modern American financial system that he contends led to the modern American oligarchy.

42. The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr – H. W. Brands

Aaron Burr was an unmitigated jerk.

43. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family – Annette Gordon-Reed**

Gordon-Reed’s research of legal records, diaries, farm books, letters, wills, newspapers, archives, and oral history this amazing book reveals the history of four generations of the African-American Hemings family, from their African and Virginia origins until the 1826 death of Thomas Jefferson, their master and the father of Sally Hemings’ children. Published in 2008, this book won sixteen awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in History. Revolutionary War and Jefferson expert Joseph Ellis said the book is “the best study of a slave family ever written”. If you only read one book about the birth of our nation, this would be an excellent choice.

44. The Indian World of George Washington – Colin G. Calloway**

George Washington hated Native Americans. He wanted them dead. All of them. Of course, Washington was an investor in a land scheme that would require removing indigenous people from a huge swath of land between the existing colonies and the Ohio river, so he had a financial motivation aside from hate.

45. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 -Joseph J. Ellis

A sort of quintuple biography that’s really a biography detailing the creation of the Constitution to replace the faulty Articles of Confederation in the chaotic years the years between the end of the American Revolution and the formation of the federal government as we know it today.

46. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity) – Ned Blackhawk*

A work tracing Native American history stretching from the first arrival of European settlers to North America to the present day. Blackhawk is a member of the Te-Moak tribe of the Western Shoshone and a Yale professor in History and American Studies departments. Among the book’s subjects, Blackhawk discusses how White settlers during the colonial era took Native American lands, driving many tribes to side with England, and notes the  Declaration of Independence is critical of Native Americans for their perceived collusion with George III, rebuking the king for supporting of “merciless Indian savages”, stating: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

47. The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President – Noah Feldman

At more than 800 pages and weighing in at 1.5 pounds, this is an illuminating work if you have the stamina. This probably should have been three separate books, but I have the feeling the publisher wouldn’t go for that or the editor didn’t have the guts to challenge the books intellectual superstar author. There’s no doubting that James Madison deserves some extensive biographization (a new word?). Feldman, the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University, is himself a controversial figure who seems to bounce between liberal/progressive positions and things like denying genocide in Gaza. But I digress. Madison did indeed help designed the Constitution, led the effort for ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As a politician he co-founded the original Republican party, essentially creating American political partisanship. As president he formulated foreign policy based on economic sanctions, and he took the United States into the War of 1812, becoming the first wartime president.

48. The War Before Independence: 1775-1776 – Derek W. Beck

One of several works that concentrated on the violent years of 1775 and 1776, with the Battle of Bunker Hill, the ill-advised winter Battle of Quebec, concluding ending with the Boston Campaign. This work includes some interesting insights in to the American Revolution’s military leaders.

49. Valiant Ambition, George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (Book 2 of 3) – Nathaniel Philbrick**

The middle book of Philbrick’s Revolutionary War trilogy, this books turns on the tragic relationship between George Washington, the Father of our Country, and Benedict Arnold, who, until recently, America’s most famous traitor. It had been a long time since I read about exactly what Arnold did and my memory of the details of his treachery were incorrect.

50. Washington: A Life – Ron Chernow**

Despite being 904 pages, “self-made historian” Chernow, probably best-known for his equally expansive biography of Alexander Hamilton, pulls off a compelling and very comprehensive portrait of Washington, revealing the FF’s temperamental side and how he evolved as a person. For example, in the end Washington DID free his slaves, but waited until the last minutes of his life to make that decision. Washington had two wills. In one he free his slaves. In the other he didn’t. He burned the will where he didn’t. There’s a reason this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, as well as the New-York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize.

* Books not directly related to the American Revolution and the founding of the nation, but provide background and/or context.

** Books providing little-known or significant insights.