Patrick Griffin – American Leviathan
In class one we saw that the proximal cause of the Seven Years’ War was a dispute between the French and British over the Ohio territory. Following the British victory in the war colonial settlers, particularly with financial interests in this region, believed they would be free to settle intros area. So they were greatly disappointed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited settlement beyond the Allegheny Mountains.
Griffin’s book deals with settlers who defied the British and relocated in this forbidden zone. The Leviathan in the title refers to the lawless “state of nature” that existed in this original American Wild West.
Thomas E. Ricks – First Principles
Ricks is a Washington Post reporter who had previously written a number of books regarding the American military. He says he found himself so amazed and disappointed by the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election that he decided he wanted to look into the first principals upon which the United States was founded.
To this end he examined the correspondence and other writings of Americans in the revolutionary era to see what they were reading. He made a list of the most prominently reported titles and set out to read these works for himself. This book describes what he learned.
Bernard Bailyn – The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
What shaped the shining of the American revolutionaries? This book is one of the classic works on this topic. It is now in its 50th anniversary edition.
Pauline Maier – From Resistance to Revolution and American Scripture
These are two more classics in the field of trying to discern the thought processes of the revolutionary leaders.
Kevin Phillips – The Cousins Wars
This is two weeks in a row for Phillips. Here he describes his theory that the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War are actually the same war, fought by the same groups of people, at different times and different locations.
