Peter Caldwell
American Revolution history told clearly in one volume: why loyal British subjects turned on their king, how an outmatched army outlasted a global empire, and who paid the price on every side. In 1763, colonists toasted George III after Britain beat France. By July 1776, a New York crowd pulled down his gilded statue and melted it into 42,088 musket cartridges. This book traces the chain of decisions that links those two moments, chapter by chapter, in plain language that assumes no background knowledge and defines every term it uses. Famous names share the page with farm boys, enslaved runaways, Mohawk leaders, and Loyalist exiles. Ten chapters cover: - How charter, proprietary, and royal colonies ran their own affairs, and why London looked the other way when merchants broke the Navigation Acts - The French and Indian War, a 22-year-old George Washington surrendering Fort Necessity, the £130 million debt, and the Proclamation of 1763 - The Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act, plus the boycotts, pamphlets, and mobs that answered each one - Locke, Cato’s Letters, the Great Awakening, and Common Sense - Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, the Olive Branch Petition, and Henry Knox hauling 59 cannon over frozen rivers to drive the British from Boston - Trenton and Princeton, Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, and Valley Forge, where Baron von Steuben drilled a hungry army into shape - French money and ships, Spain and the Dutch Republic joining the fight, Nathanael Greene’s southern campaign at Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse, and the trap that closed at Yorktown - Loyalists, Dunmore’s Proclamation, the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, the split Iroquois Confederacy, and Abigail Adams asking Congress to 'remember the ladies' - The Treaty of Paris, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Articles of Confederation Each chapter ends with questions that ask you to explain causes and connections instead of memorizing dates, such as why colonists accepted British trade laws for decades but rioted over the Stamp Act. Example responses at the back let you check your reasoning. You also get: - A timeline of major events, 1754 through 1783 - A glossary of terms such as virtual representation, the Declaratory Act, and the Suffolk Resolves - Recommended readings, including Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir of life as a teenage Continental soldier Written for high school and college students, AP US History learners, homeschool families, teachers planning a unit, and adults who want to know how the United States actually began. The book doesn’t skip the hard parts either: one in five people in the colonies was enslaved when the Declaration called all men equal. You read each chapter the way people lived it, without knowing the ending. Once you reach the last page, you can explain the arguments, the campaigns, and the contradictions of 1776 to someone else, and that is the real test of understanding.
