• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Fischer, David Hackett. Paul Revere’s Ride. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Sparkling narrative of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

Goldwin, Robert A. From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution. Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1997. Traces Madison’s role in making sure the Constitution was amended to satisfy Anti-Federalist arguments about a bill of rights.

Jensen, Merrill. The New Nation: A History of the United States duïing the Confederation, 1781-1789. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950. Standard account of the 1780s, written from the perspective of the Progressive historians.

Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Close study of the drafting of the Declaration in its immediate political context.

McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. Examines the impact of eighteenth-century ideas on the framing of the Constitution.

Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Revised and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Balanced interpretive survey of the Revolution, giving due attention to both its political and military aspects.

Morgan, Edmund Sears, and Helen M. Morgan. The Stamp Act Crisis : Prologue to Revolution. Revised edition. New York: Collier, 1963. A work that launched the modern reinterpretation of the Revolution, emphasizing the depth of the colonists’ commitment to their political ideas.

Morris, Richard Brandon. The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. Part of the famous New American Nation series.

Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800. Second edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. The most illuminating study of the impact of the Revolution on women’s lives and place within society.

Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the adoption of the Constitution, framed to address the modern debate over interpreting it according to its “original intent.”

Royster, Charles A. A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1979. Provocative interpretation of the meaning of the war to soldiers and civilians.

Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Best short survey of the Revolution.

————. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1969. Brilliant path-breaking study of the constitutional innovations that began with independence and culminated in the federal Constitution.

List of Sources

Note: In compiling this volume, the editors have altered or removed many of the editorial interventions made in the sources listed below.

THE IMPERIAL DISPUTE

Page 5-Hutchinson, The Address of the Governor. Reprinted from: Reid, John P., ed. The briefs of the American Revolution: constitutional arguments between Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and James Bowdoin for the Council and John Adams for the House of Representatives. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Page 12-Franklin, Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One. Reprinted from: Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin, Writings. Edited by J.A. Leo Lemay. New York: Library of America, 1987. Page 20-Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Reprinted from: Jefferson, Thomas. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1. Edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.

FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS

Page 39-Declaration and Resolves. Reprinted from: Ford, Worthington