Story

Some of the Best Books on the American Revolution

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Authors: Richard M. Ketchum

Historic Era: Era 3: Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)

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November/December 2004 | Volume 55, Issue 6

I’ve been fighting the war of the American Revolution (on paper, that is) off and on since 1962, and my research has included journals, diaries, letters, newspapers, and books on nearly all the campaigns. For the list that follows, I have assumed that a reader is interested in the overall story of the Revolutionary War. (Books about specific campaigns or battles are far too numerous to include.) These are books I have found informative, enjoyable, and, in some cases, worth reading again and again. They are old friends, and, though a number of them were published some time ago, they are reliable.

One work that I am almost reluctant to mention because of its size and limited availability is nonetheless worth pursuing in a good library. This is American Archives…A Documentary History of…the North American Colonies, edited by the archivist-politician-printer Peter Force and published between 1837 and 1853. Its coverage of the Revolution is in the fourth (six volumes) and fifth (three volumes) series—nine books, each with a 9-by-13¾-inch page size, and 2½ or more inches thick. A lot of words, and absolutely fascinating day-by-day documentary accounts of events in the form of letters, debates in state legislatures, and proceedings of the Continental Congress. The fourth series contains documents from the King’s message of March 7, 1774, to the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the fifth series picks up there and includes material to the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain in 1783.

Now, for the more accessible titles:

Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 by Fred Anderson (2000; Knopf), is a superb account of the period. The seeds of the American Revolution lay in the Seven Years’ War (or, as the colonists called it, the French and Indian War), and the road to revolution was opened by removal of the French threat from Canada, while the French and Indian War gave the British a rationale for taxing their colonists.

The War of the Revolution by Christopher Ward (1952; Macmillan; out of print) is a solid, eminently readable narrative of the entire war, in two volumes. If you wish to limit your reading to a single source, this would be it, in my opinion.

A splendid account of how the rebellion began is Allen French’s The First Year of the American Revolution (1934; Octagon; out of print). This is, like the two books mentioned above, a thoroughly readable work.

The story of the Revolution is the story of individuals who were caught up in it, and, in two important and similar works (which I’m counting as one entry), the authors have introduced and connected excerpts from contemporary sources: Rebels and Redcoats, by George Scheer and Hugh Rankin (1957; Da Capo), and The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six, edited by Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris (1958; Da Capo).

More than any other man, George