Podcast appearances and mentions of Gordon S Wood

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, a couple interviews from the vault in honor of Independence Day. First up, historian Gordon S. Wood explains why the friendship between founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams should give us hope. Then Mike talks about founding fathers' thighs with Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.    Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara  Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com  To advertise on the show: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist  Subscribe to our ad-free and/or PescaPlus versions of The Gist: https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/  Follow Mike's Substack: Pesca Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy July Fourth, Americans, and happy Tuesday to the rest of planet Earth. Today, the production staff of The Gist is off for the holiday, but we threw together a couple “independence” themed archival segments, so you'd have something to listen to at the beach once the couple sitting next to you stops arguing about their failed "open relationship." First up is Mike's 2014 interview with Craig McAllister about the failed Scottish independence referendum of that year. Then we listen back to our 2017 interview with historian Gordon S. Wood about his book Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara  Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com  To advertise on the show: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist  Subscribe to our ad-free and/or PescaPlus versions of The Gist: https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/  Follow Mike's Substack: Pesca Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2021) 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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew. AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Gordon S. Wood joins Brian A. Smith to discuss his most recent book, Power and Liberty, as well as trends in the study of history.

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American of his day.  But he became famous as a subject of the British Empire, and he believed in the Empire.  How did he become an American?  For our 100th episode, we talk with Gordon Wood, author of The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin,,  and many other books on the Revolutionary era, about this most fascinating and most elusive of the founders.  It is always a pleasure to talk with Gordon Wood,  the Alva Way University Professor and Professor of History emeritus at Brown,   who joined us for our first episode in 2020.

Photo:  Here: Black Loyalist fighting against the Americans One of George Washington's slaves was Harry Washington. Harry was born on the Gambia River in West Africa around 1740, and was sold into slavery sometime before 1763. George Washington purchased him in 1763 to originally work at the Great Dismal Swamp (located in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina), where he had set up a company to drain 40,000 acres of the swamp and start logging trees to build homes and businesses. However, three years later, he transferred Harry to his massive plantation estate, Mt. Vernon, in Virginia, to be a ‘house slave' serving the role of horse groom. At the American Revolution, Harry Washington joined England to fight against his American slaveholder.  At the end oof the wear, he emigrated to Canada, Henry Washington took a British ship to Nova Scotia (as did two other former Mount Vernon slaves, a man and a woman).[4][5] He then spent several years, in Birchtown, Canada, (the largest free African-American city in North America), where he married Jenny, and began to plan for their future. He and his wife joined the 1,192 black colonists who migrated to Sierra Leone, West Africa (see Nova Scotian Settlers), where he planned to begin a farm making use of the scientific farming techniques he had learned at Mount Vernon.  In 1800 Washington was among several hundred settlers who rose up in a brief rebellion against British rule there. The precipitating issue was one familiar from the American Revolution: taxes. The settlers were required by the Sierra Leone Company, which ran the colony for the British government, to pay taxes, or quitrents, for the use of their land; the land itself remained the property of the company. The settlers formed a provisional government and wrote up a set of laws, which they nailed to the office door of a company administrator. The Sierra Leone Company responded by sending a corps of recently arrived black Jamaicans against the rebels. In the trials that followed the defeat of the rebellion, Henry Washington was among the rebels sentenced to banishment to Bullom Shore another location in Sierra Leone,  where he became one of the two leaders of a new settlement, and where he subsequently died. His descendants and those of other African Americans make up a portion of the Sierra Leone Creole people. ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  . .  5/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  James Wolfe's victory at the Battle of Quebec in 1759 3/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  The Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House served as the meeting place of the Pennsylvania Assembly for over sixty years until the State Capital moved away from Philadelphia in 1799. In 1776, the Continental Congress declared Independence in this room and in 1787 the U.S. Constitution was debated and signed. Most historians consider this room one of the most historic rooms in the United States. 4/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Catharine Littlefield Greene Miller (1755-1814), wife of Nathanael Greene and Phineas Miller, and supporter of Eli Whitney. 2/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Declaration of Independence (1819), by John Trumbull.jpg More details John Trumbull's painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. The painting can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill. The original hangs in the US Capitol rotunda. 8/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. 22:00

Photo:  Thomas Jefferson, June 23, 1775, Continental Congress Declaration of Causes of Taking Up Arms; Notes and Chronology 7/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Publish tonight     22:00

Photo:  Notice of the Stamp Act 1765 in a colonial newspaper 6/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; the great captain of the six nations.  1/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:   Battle of Zorndorf (25 August 1758), Seven Years' War 1/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Major General Nathaniel and Catharine Littlefield Greene 3/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  "Joseph Thayendaneken the Mohawk chief" 4/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Harry Washington was originally from the Gambia, a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War, enslaved by the Virginia planter George Washington, later the first President of the United States. When the war was lost the British then evacuated him to Nova Scotia.  Here: "The inspection and sale of a slave." 5/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Squanto, known for having been an early liaison between the native populations in Southern New England and the Mayflower settlers, who made their settlement at the site of Squanto's former summer village. 6/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Notice of the Stamp Act. 7/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:   Mrs. James Smith and Grandson, 1776, by Charles Willson Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum 8/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo: British raid on French settlement of Miramichi (later called Burnt Church, New Brunswick), 1758. Seven Years' War 2/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Captain Joseph Brant,  from Historical Sketch of the County of Wentworth and the head of the lake The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Catharine Littlefield Greene Miller (1755-1814), wife of Nathanael Greene and Phineas Miller, and supporter of Eli Whitney. 2/8  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring & Feathering.  The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Concerning Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master; here A slave gang. The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Washington's Life Guard The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  George Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge. The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo:  Surrender of General Burgoyne (Trumbull) The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

Photo: Parlour The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783, by  Joseph J. Ellis, Ph.D.    Hardcover – September 21, 2021  https://www.amazon.com/Cause-American-Revolution-Discontents-1773-1783/dp/1631498983 • New York Times Book Review ― Editors' Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any other in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance and, above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.

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. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes.Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America's unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics.Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.HOST:  Rob MellonFEATURED BREW:  Sweet Liberty Imperial Stout, The Bruery, Placentia, CaliforniaBOOK:  Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolutionhttps://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Sweet-History-American-Revolution/dp/1476750378/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1644815180&sr=8-1MUSIC:  Bones Forkhttps://bonesfork.com/

For six decades, Dr. Gordon S. Wood's scholarship has advanced the understanding of the formative years of our nation. His work on the American Revolution and the creation of the American Republic is not only renowned for its meticulous accuracy and groundbreaking insight but also for its elegant and effective presentation, which has made it resonate among professional historians and a much wider public. Dr. Wood has served on the faculty of Brown University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, William & Mary, and Cambridge University. In addition to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History, he has held a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 2010, Dr. Wood was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. Speaking of awards, Dr. Wood was recently presented with the Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education at ACTA's 25th plus one Anniversary Celebration at the U.S. Library of Congress. This episode features his award acceptance speech at that event, in which he discusses America's founding and the various inaccuracies of the 1619 Project.

Applicability The Fourth Amendment, and the personal rights which it secures, have a long history. The Bill of Rights originally restricted only the federal government, and went through a long initial phase of "judicial dormancy;" in the words of historian Gordon S Wood, "After ratification, most Americans promptly forgot about the first ten amendments to the Constitution." Federal jurisdiction regarding criminal law was narrow until the late 19th century when the Interstate Commerce Act and Sherman Antitrust Act were passed. As federal criminal jurisdiction expanded to include other areas such as narcotics, more questions about the Fourth Amendment came to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court responded to these questions by stating on the one hand that the government powers to search and seizure are limited by the Fourth Amendment so that arbitrary and oppressive interference by enforcement officials with the privacy and personal security of individuals are prevented and by outlining on the other hand the fundamental purpose of the amendment as guaranteeing "the privacy, dignity and security of persons against certain arbitrary and invasive acts by officers of the Government, without regard to whether the government actor is investigating crime or performing another function". To protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State is the overriding function of the Fourth Amendment according to the Court in Schmerber v California (1966), because "he security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police" is "at the core of the Fourth Amendment" and "basic to a free society." Pointing to historic precedents like Entick v Carrington (1765) and Boyd v United States (1886), the Supreme Court held in Silverman v United States (1961) that the Fourth Amendments core is the right to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. With a view to Camara v Municipal Court (1967) the Supreme Court observed in Torres v Madrid (2021) that the focus of the Fourth Amendment is the privacy and security of individuals, not the particular manner of arbitrary invasion by governmental officials. In Mapp v Ohio (1961), the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies to the states by way of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The effect of the Fourth Amendment is to put the courts of the United States and Federal officials, in the exercise of their power and authority, under limitations and restraints as to the exercise of such power and authority, and to forever secure the people, their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law. This protection reaches all alike, whether accused of crime or not, and the duty of giving to it force and effect is obligatory upon all intrusted under our Federal system with the enforcement of the laws. The tendency of those who execute the criminal laws of the country to obtain conviction by means of unlawful seizures and enforced confessions, the latter often obtained after subjecting accused persons to unwarranted practices destructive of rights secured by the Federal Constitution, should find no sanction in the judgments of the courts, which are charged at all times with the support of the Constitution, and to which people of all conditions have a right to appeal for the maintenance of such fundamental rights. --Justice William R Day in the Opinion of the Court in Weeks v United States (1914).

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In one of the most “exciting and engaging” (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis―one of our most celebrated scholars of American history―throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with “surprising relevance” (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783 (Liveright, 2021) returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the “band of brothers”; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of '76,” Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding―slavery and the Native American dilemma―problematic at best. Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House's International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

https://www.alainguillot.com/gordon-s-wood/ Gordon S. Wood is a historian and professor at Brown University. His latest book is Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. Get the book here: https://amzn.to/3wb5bBY

The post A New Order of the Ages Indeed: A Conversation With Historian Gordon S. Wood About the U.S. Constitution and the American Revolution appeared first on AlbertMohler.com.

It's fitting that our recent discussion of how authors and their books are realized is followed this week by a discussion with the finest example of a historian, Gordon Wood.  We explore his new book, “Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution;” locate it in the amazing arc of Gordon's peerless career, and then conduct a lively discussion of what at first glance seems a clear disagreement between Akhil and Gordon:  who was the “father of the Constitution?”  The conclusion may surprise you.  Finally, our historical and constitutional titans address an area of ongoing controversy surrounding the American Founding.

The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and perhaps in the world. During these decades, Americans explored and debated all aspects of politics and constitutionalism--the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government, sovereignty, judicial authority, and written constitutions. The results of these issues produced institutions that have lasted for over two centuries.In this new book, eminent historian Gordon S. Wood distills a lifetime of work on constitutional innovations during the Revolutionary era. In concise form, he illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787. Among other topics, he discusses slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary as one of the major tripartite institutions of government, the demarcation between public and private, and the formation of states' rights.Here is an immensely readable synthesis of the key era in the making of the history of the United States, presenting timely insights on the Constitution and the nation's foundational legal and political documents.-Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. He is the author of many books, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association; The Radicalism of the American Revolution, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize; The American Revolution: A History; The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin; Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, which was a New York Times bestseller; Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (OUP, 2009), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the American History Book Prize from the New-York Historical Society; and Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He is a regular reviewer for the New York Review of Books.

In this Quiktake episode, Ethan discusses an important concept behind the MHDA podcast; deconstructing American Exceptionalism. Listen as Ethan breaks down what the term means, and how it has been communicated through the traditional narrative of the American Revolution. Significant historians like Gordon S. Wood, Rosemarie Zagarri, and Alan Taylor are referenced to helping deconstruct this concept of American Exceptionalism. Check it out, and thank you for helping make history dope again!

President of the Ocean Park Association Interview starts at 2:41 and ends at 47:17 Note: I will be discussing my Rob Drake interview Tuesday July 20th, 2021, at 1 pm EDT on Clubhouse. (Please note change from usual scheduling on Mondays) Whether you are a current member of Clubhouse or want to join in order to participate in the discussion, click here. I've also created a club named The Reading Edge. Use this link to join! Links Amazon Launches Kindle Vella - press release July 13, 2021 Ocean Park Association - Ocean Park, Maine Ocean Park Vision Survey Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre Mrs. Osmond: A Novel by John Banville Portrait of a Lady by Henry James Commisario Brunettti (30-book series) by Donna Leon The Maisie Dobbs series (16 books) by Jacqueline Winspear Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood Next Week's Guest Virginia Milner, principal product manager for Kindle Vella.  If you'd like brief daily updates on technology, books, marriage, and puppies, you can follow along with my Morning Journal flash briefing. From your Echo device, just say, “Alexa, enable Morning Journal.” Then each morning say, “Alexa, what's my flash briefing?” I post a five-minute audio journal each weekday except usually by 8 a.m. Eastern Time.  The Kindle Chronicles is now available at Audible Podcasts. The only thing missing are ratings! If you have time, please consider leaving one in order to help others learn about the show.  Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

In this first part of this two-part episode focused on the expansion of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, we consider both the Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, as well as the various perspectives surrounding those two precedents of our country. We also consider the insights brought by historians Allen Greer, and Gordon S. Wood, as well as contemplate some thoughts from the famous work by Max Weber, "The Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of Capitalism". I hope that you enjoy it and that it gives you much to ponder! Some authors and works highlighted in this episode: 1. Allen Greer, & Livia Gershon - https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before.../ 2. The Radicalism of the American Revolution, by Gordon S. Wood https://amzn.to/3x5Ei1f 3. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics), by Max Weber https://amzn.to/3rFHW0q *This podcast receives a small commission for any purchases made from some of these links. Thank you for supporting this podcast and the work of these authors! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/support

In this second part of this two-part episode focused on the expansion of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, we continue to consider both the Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, as well as the various perspectives surrounding those two precedents of our country. We also consider the insights brought by historians Allen Greer, and Gordon S. Wood, as well as contemplate some thoughts from the famous work by Stephen Covey, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", and a poignant thought from Rick Steves regarding a mindset of abundance. I hope that you enjoy it and that it gives you much to ponder! Some authors and works highlighted in this episode: 1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (30th Anniversary Edition), by Stephen Covey https://amzn.to/3xc3aV4 2. Rick Steves - ​www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdlho9wpG200 *This podcast receives a small commission for any purchases made from one of these links. Thank you for supporting this podcast and the work of these authors! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/historyrevisitedwr/support

We've got an appointment with the doctor - Dr. Moreau, that is! We're discussing the H.G. Wells novella The Island of Dr. Moreau, the 1932 adaptation Island of Lost Souls, and the disaster-plagued 1996 remake! Sources: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (pub. 1896) "The Many Futuristic Predictions of H.G. Wells That Came True" by Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine "H.G. Wells: A Visionary Who Should Be Remembered for His Social Predictions Not Just His Scientific Ones" by Simon John James, The Independent "In the Name of Darwin" by Daniel Kevles, PBS "America's First Climate Debate" by Gordon S. Wood, HistoryNet   Island of Lost Souls (1932) Film historian commentary with Gregory Mank, Criterion "A Conversation with John Landis, Rick Baker, and Bob Burns", Criterion featurette "David J. Skal Interview", Criterion featurette "Richard Stanley Interview", Criterion featurette "Island of Lost Souls: The Beast Flesh Creeping Back" by Christine Smallwood, Criterion "Charlie Gemora: Hollywood's Famous Gorilla Man" by Nick Thomas, The Spectrum "Island of Lost Souls" by Jeff Stafford, TCM Censoring Science in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood Cinema by David Kirby, et al. (pgs 235-236) "Charles Laughton in the 1932 Horror Classic, Island of Lost Souls" by Glenn Erickson, TCM   The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley, documentary

We have a chance to talk with Gordon S. Wood, one of the leading historians of the American Revolution and the founding of the Republic. He has a new book he is working on, "Constitutionalism in the American Revolution," and we also discuss his Pulitzer-Prize winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, and his work on Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. He discusses slavery, the Bill of Rights, the role of the judiciary, and other issues and events surrounding the "most extraordinary development of the last 400 years," the American Revolution.

America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought―what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America's Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”-C. Bradley Thompson is a Professor of Political Philosophy at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London. He is the author of the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty as well as Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. His most recent work is America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It.

Jake and Phil are joined by Thomas Chatterton Williams to discuss Albert Murray’s The Omni-Americans and Thomas’ new memoir, Self-Portrait in Black and White Manifesto: Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/543160/the-omni-americans-by-albert-murray--with-a-foreword-by-henry-louis-gates-jr/ Art: Thomas Chatterton Williams, Self-Portrait in Black and White https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/617884/self-portrait-in-black-and-white-by-thomas-chatterton-williams/9780393608861 References: Stanley Crouch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Crouch Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, Trading Twelves https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46140/trading-twelves-by-edited-by-albert-murray-and-john-f-callahan-preface-by-albert-murray-introduction-by-john-f-callahan/ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man http://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/46131/ J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4666 James Baldwin, Everybody’s Protest Novel http://faculty.gordonstate.edu/lsanders-senu/Everybody's%20Protest%20Novel%20by%20James%20Baldwin.pdf Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/stomping-the-blues Thomas Chatterton Williams, A Blues for Albert Murray https://www.thenation.com/article/blues-for-murray/ Reverend Eugene Rivers, On the Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack http://bostonreview.net/reverend-eugene-rivers-on-the-responsiblity-of-intellectuals-in-the-age-of-crack Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/193550/the-radicalism-of-the-american-revolution-by-gordon-s-wood/ The William and Mary Quarterly, Forum: How Revolutionary Was the Revolution? A Discussion of Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution https://www.jstor.org/stable/i348499 Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black mericans have fought to make them true.” https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46135/shadow-and-act-by-ralph-ellison/ Coleman Hughes, The Case for Black Optimism https://quillette.com/2019/09/28/the-case-for-black-optimism/ Coleman Hughes, Kanye West and the Future of Black Conservatism https://quillette.com/2018/04/24/kanye-west-future-black-conservatism/ Zadie Smith, Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/24/zadie-smith-in-defense-of-fiction/ The Glenn Show, Black American Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap with Glenn Loury and Coleman Hughes https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/black-american-culture-racial-wealth-gap-glenn-loury/id505824976?i=1000444070055 The Fifth Column Podcast, On Anti-Racism with Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and Kmele Foster http://wethefifth.com/episodes/121 Tobi Haslett, Irrational Man https://www.bookforum.com/print/2603/thomas-chatterton-williams-s-confused-argument-for-a-post-racial-society-23610 Ralph Ellison, “The Novel as a Function of American Democracy” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46137/the-collected-essays-of-ralph-ellison-by-ralph-ellison/ Zadie Smith, Getting In and Getting Out https://harpers.org/archive/2017/07/getting-in-and-out/ Corey D. Fields, Black Elephants in the Room https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520291904/black-elephants-in-the-room Ralph Ellison, “Brave Words for A Startling Occasion” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46137/the-collected-essays-of-ralph-ellison-by-ralph-ellison/

After being lost in the woods (actual and metaphorical), we have returned to the parasocial experiment that is Red Taped. Representative democracy, separation of church and state, a system of checks and balances, and national independence form a very small sample of our forefathers’ legacy.  However, the greatest gift they bestowed upon the American people is a national, common weird-uncle— Ben Franklin.  When dealing with a weird-uncle, you must only call upon him when you are in desperate need.  Red Taped was dying without a roar and only the faintest impression of a whimper.  For better or worse, Uncle Benjamin saved us.  His “feel-good juice" restored our vigor and his 13 virtues fortified our minds, bodies, and spirits.  Today we explore the question: “Who has a better story than Ben Franklin, the tamer of lightning, the First American, and O.G. bad-boy MPA?” Three of the authors we previously discussed on Red Taped – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People; Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck— all reference and praise Franklin.  These episodes are among our favorites, and it would be a truly virtuous act to check them out. Did you miss us?  Want us to go back to the woods?  Please let us know: redtaped@outlook.com , or leave a review on iTunes. Book: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin Drink: Ben Franklin’s Shrub: https://www.thenest.com/content/go-back-in-time-with-these-historical-shrub-cocktails    References: Drunk History vol 2.5: Ben Franklin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABFQ-T3uAVI Shrubs: An Old Fashioned Drink for Modern Times by Michael Dietsch (Additional Shrub Recipes and history/ great summer drinks): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18430105-shrubs The 13 Virtues (America’s first excel table?): http://www.knowledgehouse.info/Ben%20Franklin's%2013%20Virtues%20Chart.pdf The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood: (How do you like them apples?): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6956.The_Radicalism_of_the_American_Revolution History of Poor Richard’s Almanac:  http://www.benjamin-franklin-history.org/poor-richards-almanac/ Summer Schedule: Early July- State of the City by Scott Lazenby Late July- The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin August- How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton August- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni Attributes: Opening: Simple Gifts by the United States Army Old Guard (CC Public Domain 1.0) Closing: Our homage to A Walk in the Woods, the book by Bill Bryson (2010) and film (2015) starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte that inspired our own adventures on the Appalachian Trail.      

Acclaimed historian shares a riveting account of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: two beloved early Americans who forged a nation despite wildly different personalities, backgrounds, philosophies and values New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 No relationship in America’s history better represents our nation’s internal struggles and our remarkable ability to mend division than that of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, figureheads of America’s first political parties. And no historian is better suited to craft their dual biography than Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author Gordon S. Wood. FRIENDS DIVIDED: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, now in paperback, presents Wood’s most epic accomplishment to date. In this age of sour partisanship and polarizing news narratives, their story renews one’s pride in American principles, and provides a persuasive argument in favor of ongoing dialogue and civility in the face of bitter division. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books have received the Pulitzer, Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, as well as a National Book Award nomination and the New York Historical Society Prize in American History. They include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. Photo Credit: Penguin Random House Photo. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history emeritus at Brown University. His 1969 book, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes and was nominated for the National Book Award. Wood's 1992 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Emerson Prize. His 2009 book, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815, won the New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize. In 2010, Wood was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Obama. He contributes regularly to the New Republic and the New York Review of Books.Michael D. Hattem is the Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Knox College. He received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2017 and served one year as a Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and Visiting Faculty at The New School. His current manuscript, Past and Prologue: The Politics of Memory in the American Revolution, explores the role of the historical past in revolutionary American culture and politics, particularly the importance of changing historical memories of the British and colonial pasts in shaping the dynamics of the coming of the American Revolution and the development of early American nationalism. The manuscript is currently under contract to Yale University Press. You can follow him on Twitter: @MichaelHattem.

In commemoration of Presidents’ Day, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood discusses his new book, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Harvard professor of history Annette Gordon-Reed moderates.

According to Proverbs 13:20, "You are the company you keep," but if you looked at the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, you could not find men so different. Jefferson was a political radical and envisioned himself as a champion of democracy, he was an aristocrat and a planter, he was a Southerner and a slaveowner. Adams, on the other hand, came from New England's rising middling classes, and while he was a revolutionary, he was a much more conservative thinker, and at his core was a political skeptic and a pessimist about human nature.But in the crucible of revolution, an unlikely friendship was born and continued to blossom while the pair were in France together. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond.But as the early 19th century came into focus and the Age of Jackson began to dawn, these two men were nudged into reconciliation.To explain this fascinating tale of friendship, division, and resolution is Gordon S. Wood.Dr. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and Professor of History at Brown University. He was the recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution and  The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 won a 1970 Bancroft Prize. In 2010 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. His other works include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America. His most recent work is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and is published by Penguin Press. Friends Divided also available as an audiobook with Audible.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826. Reportedly Adams' last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives”—without realizing his former vice president had predeceased him. Despite the fact that the political colleagues faced off in one of the dirtiest presidential campaigns in American history, the pair ended their lives not only at the same time but as friends who had exchanged letters for years. But their previously acrimonious relationship as leading figures of our first political parties, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Gordon S. Wood points out in his new book, had an immense effect on the eventual shape of the United States' political fault lines and culture. Lewis H. Lapham talks with Gordon S. Wood, author of Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were very different guys representing opposing political parties. Jefferson was a wildly popular aristocrat from Virginia; Adams was a middling, dyspeptic lawyer from Massachusetts. But they were fast friends, and their relationship ultimately survived a presidential election in which they faced off as candidates. Historian Gordon S. Wood explains why their friendship should give us hope. Wood’s book is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In lieu of a Spiel today, we’re sharing a piece of The Gist’s Washington live show. Mike talked to FiveThirtyEight senior writer Perry Bacon Jr. about the Alabama Senate race and the growing momentum behind the Republican tax bill.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were very different guys representing opposing political parties. Jefferson was a wildly popular aristocrat from Virginia; Adams was a middling, dyspeptic lawyer from Massachusetts. But they were fast friends, and their relationship ultimately survived a presidential election in which they faced off as candidates. Historian Gordon S. Wood explains why their friendship should give us hope. Wood’s book is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In lieu of a Spiel today, we’re sharing a piece of The Gist’s Washington live show. Mike talked to FiveThirtyEight senior writer Perry Bacon Jr. about the Alabama Senate race and the growing momentum behind the Republican tax bill.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a young man, Benjamin Franklin drew up a "plan for attaining moral perfection" based on a list of 13 virtues. Half a century later he credited the plan for much of his success in life. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll explore Franklin's self-improvement plan and find out which vices gave him the most trouble. We'll also learn how activist Natan Sharansky used chess to stay sane in Soviet prisons and puzzle over why the Pentagon has so many bathrooms. Sources for our segment on Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1791. Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 2005. Dinah Birch, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 2009. Here's Franklin's list of virtues: Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. And here's a sample page from his "little book":   Related: As an exercise in penmanship, the teenage George Washington copied out "110 rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation," and Thomas Jefferson once sent a "decalogue of canons for observation in practical life" to the new father of a baby boy. Listener mail: Human rights activist Natan Sharansky's use of mental chess to keep himself sane in Soviet prisons is detailed in his 1988 memoir Fear No Evil and in this BBC News Magazine article. Greg's research queries: The authority on jumping up steps at Trinity College, Cambridge, seems to be G.M. Trevelyan, who became Master there in 1940. In his Trinity College: An Historical Sketch (1972), he writes: It is a well-authenticated Trinity tradition that Whewell, when Master, jumped up the hall steps at one leap, a feat that is very seldom accomplished even by youthful athletes. Sir George Young told his son Geoffrey Young that he had actually witnessed this performance; Sir George said that the master, in cap and gown, found some undergraduates trying in vain to accomplish the feat. He clapped his cap firmly on his head, took the run, and reached the top of the steps at one bound. In a letter to the Times on March 16, 1944, he writes, "On a recent visit to Cambridge, General Montgomery, on entering the Great Court at this college, pointed to the hall steps and said to me, ‘Those were the steps my father jumped up at one bound.’ The general’s father, Henry Hutchinson Montgomery, afterwards Bishop, was an undergraduate at Trinity from 1866 to 1870. He came here from Dr Butler’s Harrow with a great reputation as a runner and jumper." He adds, "Now we have a fully authenticated case of which I had not heard. Bishop Montgomery himself told his son the general, and the story was often told in the family. The general has asked me to send the facts to you in the hope that publication may elicit further facts." I don't know whether he ever received any. As far as I can tell, Swiss criminologist Karl-Ludwig Kunz's essay "Criminal Policy in Duckburg" was published only in a 2009 collection titled Images of Crime 3: Representations of Crime and the Criminal, which I can't seem to get my hands on. The fullest discussion I've been able to find in English is this brief 1998 article from the Independent. The program to distribute bananas to Icelandic children in 1952 is mentioned in science writer Willy Ley's 1954 book Engineers' Dreams. The credit "Diversions by Irving Schwartz" in the 1966 movie The Sand Pebbles is mentioned (but not really explained) in this 2007 Telegram obituary of character actor Joseph di Reda. MIT historian T.F. Peterson's 2003 book Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT says that the legend IHTFP ("I hate this fucking place") "has been unofficially documented in both the U.S. Air Force and at MIT as far back as the 1950s." This MIT page traces it as far back as 1960 and gives dozens of euphemistic variants. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was submitted by listener Paul Kapp. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!