I was too young for the actual Bicentennial, but it still was the reason why I'm a historian of the American Revolution. With all the excitement about early American history in the years after 1976, at age 5, it was my job to convince my mother to take me to Lexington Green as often as I could. The problems of why a people who were the most socially mobile, comfortable, with the greatest access to representative government would start a revolution have fascinated me since then. Tyrants and Rogues is my fourth book that focuses on the 1770s, and especially the consequences of how the contingencies and choices made in 1776 shape our lives today.
I wrote...
Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence
This is the classic text on the Declaration, the best starting point to begin a study of the Declaration in 2026.
Becker’s analysis may be a bit dated, but I find it essential to understanding the Enlightenment principles that underpinned the document. When I need to remember which parts were inspired by John Locke, this is the book I reach for.
The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas
‘Carl Becker explains the Declaration as a classic document of the Age of Enlightenment, a conscious product of the natural rights philosophy of John Locke and other British thinkers, and a text that spoke powerfully to an international audience.’ The New York Times
This important study of the Declaration of Independence compares early drafts of the Declaration with the final version to discuss what influenced its conception; why it came about; and how it was interpreted by successive generations.
Drawing on key philosophers of the Enlightenment period, such as Descartes, Rousseau, and John Locke, Becker explores the revolutionary tradition in…
This book is the essential next stop for a reading study on the Declaration.
Her 1997 study is like a 5-course meal, treating you to a sumptuous tour through the English precedents that were very much on the delegates' minds in 1776, how Jefferson wrote the text, how Congress edited it, and how it turned into a sacred relic in the years after 1776.
My underlining and margin writing are all over this book. I learned so much from it. Wonderfully written, too.
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified.
Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Sarson’s book is sort of a return to Becker’s analysis of the ideas in the Declaration.
I learned a ton from this book’s analysis of how Jefferson and Congress thought about history and time when they composed the Declaration.
What does “the course of human events” mean? How did Americans think they were making history? Reacting to it? What kind of history consciousness did they have in 1776? These are very interesting questions that Sarson treats very smartly.
The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States
How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning
Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have been more deliberate than 'When in the Course of human events,' the phrase with which he opened the Declaration of Independence. As Steven Sarson shows, the original Declaration moved through the ages of human history from Creation to American independence, assessing it according to 'the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.'
The Declaration's history and historical consciousness therefore help answer one of American history's great questions: How did the founders reconcile their lofty views on…
What was going on in Philadelphia during what would be the last nine weeks of colonial America? William Hogeland tells us: a lot!
Declaration is a careful walk through the plotting and strategizing of Sam Adams, Tom Paine, Thomas McKean, and others inside and outside Congress trying to get Pennsylvania to overturn an election (sound familiar?) and get them (and other colonies) to support independence.
We’re pretty far from Enlightenment principles here, with “Founding Fathers” scheming to achieve American independence.
This is the rambunctious story of how America came to declare independence in Philadelphia in 1776. As late as that May, the Continental Congress had no plans to break away from England. Troops under General George Washington had been fighting the British for nearly a year—yet in Philadelphia a mighty bloc known as "reconciliationists," led by the influential Pennsylvanian John Dickinson, strove to keep America part of the British Empire.
But a cadre of activists—led by the mysterious Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and assisted by his nervous cousin John—plotted to bring about American independence. Their audacious secret plan proposed overturning…
Malcolm Before X is about finding a way to continue moving forward after everything has been taken from you. While in prison, Malcolm Little discovered the power of reading and found a way to transform his character and become a better man. This half-biography focuses on that transformation, especially his…
So what happened to the Declaration after July 4, 1776? Sneff’s new book is a lively exploration of the six months after July, as the Declaration made its way to New York, Boston, the American backcountry, London, and e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y to Paris.
Sneff shows us how people changed the text and engaged with the decision this news forced upon them. We often forget how the Declaration was a war document, but what I found fascinating in this book – which I inhaled in a few hours – was how the war matters a great deal in shaping how people received the news.
Tracing the moments after its creation, this groundbreaking book follows how news of the Declaration of Independence spread to people throughout the thirteen United States and the Atlantic world.
In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats,…
How many Americans even know there is more to the Declaration of Independence than the bits about men being created equal, inalienable rights, and pursuing happiness? That there is a list of 27 specific grievances accusing King George of destroying American liberty? Tyrants & Rogues is the first book in more than a century to explore the Declaration’s grievances.
It does so by presenting a “rogues gallery” of the Revolution. When Americans in 1776 read the Declaration, they associated those 27 charges with specific villains. It is important for us to get reacquainted with these “rogues” and with the reasons why Americans believed they could not remain in the British Empire. These were their dealbreakers, actions they could not tolerate. They are vital warnings to us 250 years later.
The Model Spy is based on the true story of Toto Koopman, who spied for the Allies and Italian Resistance during World War II.
Largely unknown today, Toto was arguably the first woman to spy for the British Intelligence Service. Operating in the hotbed of Mussolini's Italy, she courted danger…
Getting Dressed in the Dark
by
Gabriella D'Italia,
How do you know the truth after the story you most trust disappears?
Self-betrayal, polyamory, adultery, and an unconventional life in a one-room, rural Maine schoolhouse ends in a crisis mirroring the larger, societal polarization and collapse of meaning. Compass shattered, an artist's wisdom guides a course home, revealing a…
