Here are 100 books that Forgotten Allies fans have personally recommended if you like
Forgotten Allies.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As a child and then as a secondary school history teacher, I wanted to help people understand each other. I always told my students that it was less important to memorize dates and facts than it was to explore history to help them understand what it is to be a human being. They should know that humans have always faced challenges and found good or bad ways of dealing with them–it is not just in their time. The books I have listed here on the Revolutionary history of the New York area created an even greater passion for understanding the human condition.
This book opened a new world to me. I had long heard about the Saratoga campaign and the Mohawk River Valley and had always wanted to know more about it.
In any historical study, I like to focus on people's experiences, and this book helped me get to know the people involved as well as the main events and organizations. It did not just provide information but also raised questions for further research and information on books and sites where those inquiries would prove productive.
In the summer of 1777, while the British and the Americans were engaged in the bitter American Revolution, a massive campaign was launched from Canada into New York State.
Brigadier Barry St. Leger led a crucial expedition from Lake Ontario into the Mohawk Valley. The goal was to travel by waterways to join Lieutenant General John Burgoyne in the siege of Albany. But Leger encountered obstacles along the way. While laying siege to Fort Stanwix, Leger received word that Benedict Arnold was leading a massive relief column that was headed their way. Leger and his men retreated, and despite a…
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…
As a child and then as a secondary school history teacher, I wanted to help people understand each other. I always told my students that it was less important to memorize dates and facts than it was to explore history to help them understand what it is to be a human being. They should know that humans have always faced challenges and found good or bad ways of dealing with them–it is not just in their time. The books I have listed here on the Revolutionary history of the New York area created an even greater passion for understanding the human condition.
This book helped me see the Saratoga campaign in new and deeper ways than other books I had read. The focus on accurately interpreting the battle through artifacts and then creating accurate illustrations and narratives really emphasized how history is more than just words put together to make an argument that some event was highly important or that an individual was responsible for the victory or defeat.
“Doing” history is not just digging for facts to relate but striving to understand events and the people involved with an open mind to additional evidence or suggested interpretations.
The Battles of Saratoga are cited as the turning point in the Revolutionary War. Beginning when the armies prepared to face off in June 1777 through the surrender of the British Army in October, the battles of the Northern Campaign were significant to the outcome of the War and the fight for independence. As a result of the Saratoga battles, the patriots gained confidence, the French entered the war, and the British plan to win the war quickly was put to an end.
Master historical painter Don Troiani and historian Eric Schnitzer combine their talents in this new book on…
As a child and then as a secondary school history teacher, I wanted to help people understand each other. I always told my students that it was less important to memorize dates and facts than it was to explore history to help them understand what it is to be a human being. They should know that humans have always faced challenges and found good or bad ways of dealing with them–it is not just in their time. The books I have listed here on the Revolutionary history of the New York area created an even greater passion for understanding the human condition.
This is a highly readable story of the frequently tense and tragic interactions between indigenous people and those of European descent who settled on their land. It gets down to a personal level, focusing on the intertwined lives of white missionary Samuel Kirkland and strong, complex, and important Mohawk leader Joseph Brant.
It is as much about changes in people over time as about economic, political, cultural, and other evolving elements in colonial New York.
In 1761, at a boarding school in New England, a young Mohawk Indian named Joseph Brant first met Samuel Kirkland, the son of a colonial clergyman. They began a long and intense relationship that would redefine North America. For nearly fifty years, their lives intertwined, at first as close friends but later as bitter foes. Kirkland served American expansion as a missionary and agent, promoting Indian conversion and dispossession. Brant pursued an alternative future for the continent by defending an Indian borderland nestled between the British in Canada and the Americans, rather than divided by them.
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
As a child and then as a secondary school history teacher, I wanted to help people understand each other. I always told my students that it was less important to memorize dates and facts than it was to explore history to help them understand what it is to be a human being. They should know that humans have always faced challenges and found good or bad ways of dealing with them–it is not just in their time. The books I have listed here on the Revolutionary history of the New York area created an even greater passion for understanding the human condition.
This book helped me understand an element in my family history, as well as promoting my understanding of the American Revolution in New York and other states. Aside from my personal interest in my family, this book provided many stories of the diverse experiences of women who followed the American Army and their valuable contributions to it.
As Mayer so eloquently reveals, the Continental Army, like other armies of the time, was a traveling community that included soldiers’ families, merchants, and various other people who helped the soldiers. Mayer’s work clearly shows that one cannot understand the experience of the American Revolution without understanding the varied people who traveled with the army.
Belonging to the Army reveals the identity and importance of the civilians now referred to as camp followers, whom Holly A. Mayer calls the forgotten revolutionaries of the War of American Independence. These merchants, contractors, family members, servants, government officers, and military employees, provided necessary supplies, services and emotional support to the troops of the Continental army. Mayer describes their activities and demonstrates how they made encampments livable communities and played a fundamental role in the survival and ultimate success of the Continental Army. She also considers how the army wanted to be rid of the followers but were unsuccessful,…
Maybe I have a passion for this era because I live outside of Philadelphia, or maybe because so many of my ancestors served in Washington’s militia while others refused to serve. Either way, the connection to the times are personal. Having researched the tensions of my Mennonite past during the Revolution, I found myself intrigued by broader challenges of conscience for the Pennsylvania colonists more generally. Discovering the role it played in British occupied Philadelphia was particularly fascinating. My interest is in the untold story, and what I stumbled upon for this book was downright exciting!
The author meticulously follows the globalist movement from its ideological beginnings around the same time as the American Revolution until today. Contrasting the intentions of the founders with the schemes of today’s elites serves to sharpen the reader’s appreciation of why America could be special. If half of this book is correct, we’ve lots to be concerned about.
Maybe I have a passion for this era because I live outside of Philadelphia, or maybe because so many of my ancestors served in Washington’s militia while others refused to serve. Either way, the connection to the times are personal. Having researched the tensions of my Mennonite past during the Revolution, I found myself intrigued by broader challenges of conscience for the Pennsylvania colonists more generally. Discovering the role it played in British occupied Philadelphia was particularly fascinating. My interest is in the untold story, and what I stumbled upon for this book was downright exciting!
So much of history happens undercover. Few realize that the American Revolution would have failed were it not for the courage of forgotten spies, as well as mysterious, inexplicable behind-the-scenes surprises. In this book, we find specific ‘secrets’ unveiled that made a difference in the fight for independence. Well-researched, it’s an entertaining and informative read. Expect to blink your eyes and smile, and discover the soul of the patriots.
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
In college, I studied under the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Sam Wilson, who laid the foundation for my understanding of geopolitics and the intelligence world. Post 9/11, I began reading every book on terrorism that I could find, and my vision for conspiracies was broadened by both what I read and what I experienced in the daily news cycle. Steadily, the combination of my creative juices and research led me to write my trilogy of political spy thrillers, the Surviving the Lion’s Den series, which explores the Iranian threat to the West via a mirage of conspiratorial plots.
This may be the only nonfiction book on my list, but it reads like fiction. Meltzer has a fantastic mind for exploring aspects of history that have either been forgotten or have gone unexplored, and this book is no exception. I was immensely taken aback by the hardships that Washington encountered daily in confronting the British threat and keeping America together during the Revolutionary War.
At the same time, I was amazed at the man’s courage and willpower to endure the challenges he faced. By the end of the book, you will undoubtedly ask yourself, “What would America look like without George Washington?”
Taking place during the most critical period of our nation’s birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington’s character, but also illuminates the origins of America’s counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA.
In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington’s bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them. But unbeknownst to Washington, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York,…
I am a descendant of William Bradford and Myles Standish, of Pilgrim fame. I was raised in a Massachusetts farmhouse where the commission of James Churchill as a Captain in the militia still hangs, signed by John Hancock. I have lived and breathed this stuff since first opening my eyes. My wife, MaryLu, is a retired elementary teacher who helps bring life to the young characters. Together, through the medium of novels they would actually enjoy reading, we seek to inspire American youth with the principles of our founding, so that they may be more effective in preserving and defending them.
This book created much controversy when read or assigned in 5th-grade classrooms, for the very reasons I loved it.
As even the title indicates, the story is gritty, in language and violence, as it should be on the subject of families torn apart between loyalists and rebels in the American Revolution.
I’ve studied enough American history, especially the Revolution, to know it was not the glossy fairy tales we tend to tell ourselves. Causes are not simplistic, nor morally black & white. Young people need to follow the first principle of the Stoics – accept reality for what it is. Only then can you make a difference.
When Sam Meeker leaves his home in Redding, Connecticut, a town loyal to the king, to fight with the rebel army, he places his family in a very difficult position.
I've been writing about and teaching military history for many years (I'm a professor at the University of North Carolina), mostly focused on the pre-industrial world, and mostly about the maelstrom of the North Atlantic colonial experience (including warfare in Ireland, England, and in North America). I quickly decided that I needed to do more to understand the Native American perspective, and that also meant understanding the very nature of their societies: Not just how they fought, but how they imagined the function of war. This book is the product of constantly returning to that problem, while also putting it into a world comparative context of other non-state experiences of war.
Of all the books on my list, this is the one closest in subject to mine.
Calloway tells the story of the first war fought by the United States after the American Revolution, but he tells it from the perspective of the Native coalition that fought it. It is a powerfully told story about how Native Americans understood the international politics in which they lived and then how they mustered the force to try to change those politics.
Unlike most writers on Native American warfare, Calloway understands logistics and how they shaped that war from both sides. This issue is also central to my book.
I’ve been a fan of military history since I was an army officer in the 1970s. Military history is fascinating, dynamic, exciting—it deals with people on the edge of real-world circumstances making life-or-death decisions. Of all military history, the Revolutionary War in the South is my favorite. It has been blessed with the richest trove of intriguing stories. Southerners love a great tale, and the southern war has provided volumes of them. The Southern Campaign teemed with such larger-than-life characters as Banastre Tarleton, the British officer everyone loved to hate, as well as Francis Marion, the beloved Swamp Fox of legend. Anyone who enjoys a great story will love the lore of the southern war.
My favorite part of writing the history of the Southern Campaign is cutting through the legends to find out what really happened. Southerners love stories, and the stories from the southern war have been told and retold, and in the process, legends have blossomed.
A great example is James Williams, a Whig militia leader from the backcountry who acquired the fervor of rebellion early in the war. He led his men heroically through many battles; nevertheless, he has gone down in history as the worst scoundrel of his time.
He was killed leading his regiment at the Battle of Kings Mountain, normally a hero’s death, but his chronicler hinted he was killed by Americans holding grudges. How much of this dishonor did he earn?
Graves delved deeply into the legends of this fascinating and complicated man to determine, once and for all, the real story of Williams.
Biography of Col. James Williams, highest ranking Patriot officer to die from wounds suffered at the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780. The book is fully indexed with maps and source documents relating to one of the Revolutionary War's forgotten heroes.
