United States Revolution

During the bitter winter of 1786-87, Daniel Shays, a modest farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, and his compatriot Luke Day led an unsuccessful armed rebellion against the state of Massachusetts. Their desperate struggle was fueled by the injustice of a regressive tax system and a conservative state government that seemed no better than British colonial rule.

In the eighth book in the Treegate Series on American History, the author takes readers back to the beginning—to the Revolutionary War—with another epic adventure with a new young hero. In this classic coming-of-age story set during the Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Matt Tyler (a naïve cobbler’s apprentice) unwittingly aids a rebel spy and is forced to slip behind British enemy lines to survive—only to be captured by the Continental Army. His only hope to make it home alive is to find a strength he never knew he had. Along the way, Matt finds himself caught up in major events of ...

In 1776, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers concluded America’s most consequential document with a curious note, pledging “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”. Lives and honor did indeed hang in the balance, yet just what were their fortunes? How much did the Founders stand to gain or lose through independence? In this landmark account, historian Willard Sterne Randall investigates the private financial affairs of the Founders, illuminating like never before how and why the Revolution came about.

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” So said Abraham Lincoln as he contemplated the great issues of containing slavery and preserving the Union. Now, after another era of turbulent political chaos, including repudiation of traditional American values by many elites in politics and academia, we are embarked on a GREAT RESTORATION of respect for our Founding principles. This book is written to show where we are, and whither we are tending, by explaining our current political controversies in context of where...

One of the nation’s most respected historians and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, H.W. Brands has the rare gift of investing historical narrative with unmatched verve and insight. The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr sheds light on the life of the third vice president of the United States, a man who is perhaps best known for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

In Washington, award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom deal making and shifting alliances among our Founding Fathers and in so doing pulls back the curtain on the lives of the slaves who actually built the city.

James Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two other large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. The survival of these shipments shaped the politics of the years ahead and hint at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics. Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but, Fichter argues, so were tea advertisements and tea sales. Such protests were noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that tea consumption was unpopular.

All nations, including the United States, face systemic crises that are reinforcing each other at an explosive point in history. The status quo is now the problem rather than the solution. These novel crises demand an entirely new grand strategy. The global crisis offers an opportunity to redraw America’s grand strategy from the ground up. Should we fail to make full use of this opportunity, the United States will fail, along with all the other nation-states that are incapable of redefining the problems so that new solutions become possible.

By 1787, it became evident that the Articles of Confederation were inadequate for the new nation. With these problems hampering the national government under the Articles of Confederation and the threat of default on the nation's massive war debt looming, plans began being made to fix the problems of the Articles of Confederation. Thus, that summer, a Constitutional convention was called, and each state sent delegates to Philadelphia. Among the delegates were prominent patriots and former members of the Continental Congress, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

In Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd offers the first comprehensive analysis of how American revolutionaries defended their patriotic convictions through scripture. Byrd shows that the Bible was a key text of the American Revolution. Indeed, many colonists saw the Bible as primarily a book about war. They viewed God as not merely sanctioning violence but actively participating in combat, playing a decisive role on the battlefield.

Soon after the new Constitution took effect and George Washington became president, the United States was in serious danger. A bitter political rivalry between two men who had once been allies, and two surging issues that inflamed the nation, led to grim talk of breaking up the Republic. Then, a single great evening, arguably the most important dinner party in American history, achieved the compromises that led to America's mighty expansion.

Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten their opponents. As Elizabeth R. Varon shows, "disunion" connoted the dissolution of the republic - the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world.

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism.

*** A William Allen White Children’s Book Award Nominee *** Peter Treegate has never been stronger, braver, or better with a knife—but he still has to learn humility if he’s going to save himself from the hangman’s noose… The fourth book in the Treegate Series follows Peter Treegate and the sea captain Peace of God Manly through the final years of the Revolutionary War as Peter—now a grown man—leads a band of Carolina mountain men though a series brutal engagements fought in the southern colonies from 1780 to the final surrender of the British at Yorktown in August 1781. ...

On a December night in 1773, in an iconic act of civil disobedience, American colonists dressed as Native Americans boarded a merchant ship laden with tea. They tossed the tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of taxation without representation. Their motivation at the time was not one of a battle for independence; rather, they sought what they viewed as their constitutional right to representation in the British Parliament.

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution - so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty - so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America".

Messages written in secret codes or invisible ink, agents operating behind enemy lines and known only by code names, the provision of vital secret intelligence used to direct military operations—these are staple elements of modern spy fiction. Still, all were used more than 200 years ago by one of the first professional spy networks ever created: the Culper Spy Ring. This is the story of a network of courageous patriot spies operating for several years in British-occupied New York during the American Revolutionary War.

In this comprehensive, inspiring, and all-too-relevant history of the Black Panther Party, Kekla Magoon introduces listeners to the Panthers’ community activism, grounded in the concept of self-defense, which taught Black Americans how to protect and support themselves in a country that treated them like second-class citizens. For too long the Panthers’ story has been a footnote to the civil rights movement rather than what it was.

Introducing "Transitions in Time," an engaging exploration that takes you back to the vivid transformations that shaped America during the Antebellum Era. This eBook is your passport to the past, allowing you to immerse yourself in some of the most significant periods in American history. Find yourself at the crossroads of change with Chapter 1, an insightful introduction to America at the Dawn of the 19th Century. Witness the burgeoning market economy, grapple with the implications of the Industrial Revolution, and get on board the transportation revolution that reshaped the nation. ...

On December 26, 1941, Secret Service Agent Harry E. Neal stood on a platform at Washington's Union Station, watching a train chug off into the dark and feeling at once relieved and inexorably anxious. These were dire times: As Hitler's armies plowed across Europe, seizing or destroying the continent's historic artifacts at will, Japan bristled to the East. The Axis was rapidly closing in. So FDR set about hiding the country's valuables.