Revolution 250 Podcast

Revolution 250 is a consortium of organizations in New England planning commemorations of the American Revolution’s 250th anniversary. https://revolution250.org/Through this podcast you will meet many of the people involved in these commemorations, and learn about the people who brought about the Revolution–which began here. To support Revolution 250, visit https://www.masshist.org/rev250Theme Music: “Road to Boston” fifes: Doug Quigley, Peter Emerick; Drums: Dave Emerick

Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World

The first biography of Charles Cornwallis in forty years—the soldier, governor, and statesman whose career covered America, India, Britain, and Ireland

Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis (1738–1805), was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the building of the Second British Empire in India—and he has long been associated with the unacceptable face of Britain’s colonial past. […Learn More]

Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution

The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. […Learn More]

Betsy Ross and the Making of America

A richly woven biography of the beloved patriot Betsy Ross, and an enthralling portrait of everyday life in Revolutionary War-era Philadelphia

Betsy Ross and the Making of America is the first comprehensively researched and elegantly written biography of one of America’s most captivating figures of the Revolutionary War. […Learn More]

The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain’s Wars for America

Finally revealing the family’s indefatigable women among its legendary military figures, The Howe Dynasty recasts the British side of the American Revolution.

In December 1774, Benjamin Franklin met Caroline Howe, the sister of British General Sir William Howe and Richard Admiral Lord Howe, in a London drawing room for “half a dozen Games of Chess.” But as historian Julie Flavell reveals, these meetings were about much more than board games: they were cover for a last-ditch attempt to forestall the outbreak of the American War of Independence. […Learn More]

Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution

A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.

Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet is a “spirited account” (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. […Learn More]

A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley

“A stunning biography…[A] truly singular account of the American Revolution.” —Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire

Through an intimate narrative of the life of painter John Singleton Copley, award-winning historian Jane Kamensky reveals the world of the American Revolution, rife with divided loyalties and tangled sympathies. […Learn More]

The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America

In this boldly innovative work, T. H. Breen spotlights a crucial missing piece in the stories we tell about the American Revolution. From New Hampshire to Georgia, it was ordinary people who became the face of resistance. Without them the Revolution would have failed. They sustained the commitment to independence when victory seemed in doubt and chose law over vengeance when their communities teetered on the brink of anarchy. […Learn More]

The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777

Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America’s violent war for independence. […Learn More]

1774: The Long Year of Revolution

From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book tracing the critical “long year” of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. […Learn More]