While today's presidential tweets may seem a light-year apart from the scratch of quill pens during the era of the American Revolution, the importance of political communication is eternal. This book explores the roles that political narratives, media coverage, and evolving communication technologies have played in precipitating, shaping, and concluding or prolonging wars and revolutions over the course of US history. The case studies begin with the Sons of Liberty in the era of the Americ...

In early 1815, Secretary of State James Monroe reviewed the treaty with Britain that would end the War of 1812. The United States Navy was blockaded in port; much of the army had not been paid for nearly a year; the capital had been burned. The treaty offered an unexpected escape from disaster. Yet it incensed Monroe, for the name of Great Britain and its negotiators consistently appeared before those of the United States. "The United States have acquired a certain rank amongst nations, wh...

When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco, Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea or a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware of the mechanisms of imperial rule and trade that made such goods readily available?In Eating the Empire, Troy Bickham unfolds the extraordinary role that food played in shaping Britain during the ‘long’ eighteenth century (c. 1660–1837), when recipes from around the world peppered a new generati...

In early 1815, Secretary of State James Monroe reviewed the treaty with Britain that would end the War of 1812. The United States Navy was blockaded in port; much of the army had not been paid for nearly a year; the capital had been burned. The treaty offered an unexpected escape from disaster. Yet it incensed Monroe, for the name of Great Britain and its negotiators consistently appeared before those of the United States. "The United States have acquired a certain rank amongst nations, wh...

Blood and Daring will change our views not just of Canada's relationship with the United States, but of the Civil War, Confederation and Canada itself.In Blood and Daring, lauded historian John Boyko makes a compelling argument that Confederation occurred when and as it did largely because of the pressures of the Civil War. Many readers will be shocked by Canada's deep connection to the war--Canadians fought in every major battle, supplied arms to the South, and m...

In the tradition of Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919 comes a new consideration of Canada’s most famous war and the Treaty of Ghent that unsatisfactorily concluded it, from one of this country’s premier military historians.In the Canadian imagination, the War of 1812 looms large. It was a war in which British and Indian troops prevailed in almost all of the battles, in which the Americans were unable to hold any of the land they fought for, in which a young woman nam...

In his first work of nonfiction, bestselling novelist James Webb tells the epic story of the Scots-Irish, a people whose lives and worldview were dictated by resistance, conflict, and struggle, and who, in turn, profoundly influenced the social, political, and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through the present day.More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the bor...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the Revolution comes “an elegant, concise, and lucid summary of the Revolution’s origins, the war itself, and the social and political changes wrought by the struggle for American independence” (The Wall Street Journal).“This slim book tells a big story: one that invites the reader to contemplate the relationships between liberty, power, rights...

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic. Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the election of George Washington as first president, Robert Middlekauff offers a panoramic history of the conflict between England and America, highlighting the drama and anguish o...

In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean — and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role — permanently changing the political and cultural landscape of North America.Anderson s...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.George Washington – a figure synonymous with American history. His image is known worldwide, marked on American currency, postage stamps – even a state is named after him. George Washington in an Hour explores the man beneath the symbol. This is the essential chronicle of Washington’s life – his rise from middle class Virginian upbringing to America’s first President, elected unanimously twice.Explore Washington’s legacy...

In 1783 and 1784, some fifty thousand Americans felt that they could not support the revolution against Britain. They were called Loyalists – and there would be no place for them in the new United States.As they streamed into the Canadian colonies to the north, they changed forever the face of settlement there. Their arrival would eventually lead to the formation of the provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario.First published in hardcover in 1984, the bicentenary of the migra...