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Eric A. Shelman was born in Fort Worth, Texas, so he's not sure how much more American someone can be. He grew up in the '60s, with memories of community parades, men and women on horseback carrying flags of his home state of Texas and the United States, and all the riders proudly wearing red, white, and blue. Patriotic music played in the background while onlookers ate hot dogs and cotton candy cheering on the participants.

Debates over paper money and banking are older than the United States of America itself. Eighteenth and 19th century Americans were deeply ambivalent about paper money and central banks, and political fights over these issues were among the bitterest in American history. In fact, controversies over the country’s central bank birthed both the first (1792-1824) and second (1828-1852) party systems. Frequently, policymakers crafted responses to the crisis at hand, and as a result, they implemented policies that were inadequate to the challenges the country faced in the future.

The Revolutionary War broke out during a smallpox epidemic, and in response, General George Washington ordered the inoculation of the Continental Army. But Washington did not have to convince fearful colonists to protect themselves against smallpox. In The Contagion of Liberty, Andrew M. Wehrman describes a revolution within a revolution, where the violent insistence for freedom from disease ultimately helped American colonists achieve independence from Great Britain.

Although the separate history of the commonwealths is, for the most part, merged into that of the nation, the national history grows steadily more complex … The special function of this volume in the American Nation series is to describe the foundations of the present American party system and its application to the extremely difficult problems of that time …

That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there, is a rapid increase of published sources and of serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused.

The American Revolution was not only a political contest for liberty, equality, and independence (for white men, at least); it was also a contest to define certain accounts of reality to be truthful while defining others as false and dangerous. Misinformation Nation argues that we must also conceive of the American Revolution as a series of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and uninformed overreactions.

A centuries-old secret document unravels the origin story of America and reveals the intellectual crime of the millennia in this "hugely entertaining" dive into our country’s history to discover the first, true Declaration of Independence (Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and Churchill. In...

Award-winning historian Cassandra A. Good shows how the outspoken stepgrandchildren of George Washington played an overlooked but important role in the development of American society and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War. While it’s widely known in America that George and...

George Washington—hero of the French and Indian War, commander in chief of the Continental Army, and first president of the United States—died on December 14, 1799. But what do we really know about Washington as an upper-class man?

In this provocative biography, Mary Sarah Bilder looks to the Age of the Constitution to investigate the rise of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world: female genius. Bilder finds the perfect exemplar of this phenomenon in Eliza Harriot Barons O'Connor. Female Genius reconstructs Eliza Harriot's transatlantic life, paying particular attention to her lectures and the academies she founded, inspiring countless young American women to consider a college education and a role in the political forum.

John Hancock's overnight transformation from British loyalist to fiery rebel and first governor of the independent state of Massachusetts is one of the least known stories of the American Revolution. Acclaimed author Harlow Giles Unger introduces us to the Founding Father whose name is as recognizable as George Washington's, but whose thrilling life story is all but untold. Applying his historical expertise and storytelling gift, Unger details the fascinating life of one of our most extraordinary business and political leaders—the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

No more difficult task can be found in the twenty-six volumes of The American Nation than to write a fresh and original account of the Revolution...

Few periods of American history have been more written upon than the decade preceding the Revolution. Nevertheless, there is still room for a brief volume on the subject; all the world knows that the Revolution really began almost fifteen years before its beginning, because of the efforts of the British government to give greater unity and stiffness to its colonial system, both as to government and as to trade with other nations; but the real motives underlying the uneasiness of the colonies still need enlightenment.

The first in a series of plays featuring stories of the American Revolution, The Gathering Storm in America tells the remarkable story of an all-but-forgotten forefather whose actions initiated the tumultuous pre-Revolutionary period in America. It presents both the British and American points of view on issues that led to the Declaration of Independence and the building of a new nation based on democratic principles.

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.

On January 25, 1787, in Springfield, Massachusetts, militia Major General William Shepard ordered his cannon to fire grapeshot at a peaceful demonstration of 1,200 farmers approaching the federal arsenal. The shots killed four and wounded 20, marking the climax of five months of civil disobedience in Massachusetts, where farmers challenged the state’s authority to seize their farms for flagrantly unjust taxes. But this widely accepted narrative is just a legend: the “rebellion” was almost entirely nonviolent, and retired war hero Daniel Shays was only one of many leaders.

By “assembling” some of the most fascinating figures in world history, Meeting of Minds provided a groundbreaking opportunity for audiences to be exposed to ideas by way of a medium not normally known for its intellectual vigor. From activists and artists to international leaders—both famous and infamous—these conversations are unfailingly witty, thought-provoking, and genuinely entertaining. The panelists featured in this volume are President Theodore Roosevelt, Queen Cleopatra, theologian Thomas Aquinas, and American revolutionary Thomas Paine.

By “assembling” some of the most fascinating figures in world history, Meeting of Minds provided a groundbreaking opportunity for audiences to be exposed to ideas by way of a medium not normally known for its intellectual vigor. The innovative series remains one of the most delightful ways of gaining historical perspective ever devised. The panelists featured in this volume are theologian St. Augustine of Hippo, Byzantine Empress Theodora, American President Thomas Jefferson, and British philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell.

In Washington's Heir, Gerard N. Magliocca gives us the first published biography of Bushrod Washington, one of the most underrated Founding Fathers. Born in 1762, Justice Washington fought in the Revolutionary War, served in Virginia's ratifying convention for the Constitution, and was Chief Justice John Marshall's partner in establishing the authority of the Supreme Court.

His name is carved in granite, his likeness cast in bronze, his legend as large as the role he played as America's first president. But before he was a commander-in-chief, George Washington was a general in a revolution that would decide the future of the people and land he called his own. If...