The American Revolution in Review

    I admit it! I got in over my head trying to read a bunch of books about the American Revolution in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Here I am in August and I didn't finish everything I planned to read. Here are the books I read:

1. Crucible of War by Fred Anderson
2. American Revolutions by Alan Taylor
3. Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
4. The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood
5. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party by Alfred Young
6. A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
7. Ratification by Pauline Maier

And here are the articles I read:

1. A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers by Jonathan Mayhew
2. The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved by James Otis
3. The Rights of the Colonies Examined by Stephen Hopkins
4. Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue, by Act of Parliament by Daniel Dulany
5. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania by Jonathan Dickinson
6. Common Sense by Thomas Paine

I hit some kind of wall in May and ended up skipping these books:

1. American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan
2. The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon Wood
3. Shays' Rebellion by Leonard Richards
4. Empire of Liberty by Gordon Wood
5. Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff
6. What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe

It wasn't really on my list, but James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic by Jack Rakove was a book I planned to add to the list before I hit the wall.

    I wish I had the mental energy to do a longer reflection on the significance of all this reading, but honestly, I don't. I am just going to link to my reflections of each book, and I'll say that Radicalism by Gordon Wood was the best, probably followed by the Alan Taylor and Pauline Maier books.