United States at 250 Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
“In
this surprising and illuminating collection,an all-star lineup of our finest historians of America delivers essays at once profound and personal.”
- Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
THEAMERICANREVOLUTIONAT250
Twenty-FourHistoriansReflectontheFounding
Edited by Francis D. Cogliano
The Revolutionary Age
In these powerful and personal essays, some of the most celebrated historians of the American Revolutionary era reflect on the meaning of 1776 to the nation in 2026, offering fresh insights and food for thought on every page. They tackle the most pressing topics that Americans debated in 1776 and continue to debate today: the meaning of democracy; the nature of information wars; immigration and the rights and obligations of citizenship; race and slavery; public health; the various and conflicting legacies of the founders; and the shifting nature of commemoration itself. Like the Revolutionary generation they know so well, on some issues these scholarly authorities find themselves largely in accord; on others they vehemently disagree. This is historical debate at its most urgent.
03April2026|288pp
9780813954622|£25.99/$32.95|HB
UNIVERSITYOFVIRGINIAPRESS
THECOURSEOFHUMANEVENTS
“Steve Sarson returns the Declaration of Independence to its proper historical context by smartly revealing the long history of debates over rights and natural law that shaped Thomas Jefferson's prose. Sarson's deep research and thoughtful analysis help readers understand how "all men are created equal" made sense to men who lived a very different reality.”
-LindsayM.Chervinsky,Executive Director,GeorgeWashington PresidentialLibrary,authorofMaking the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic
TheDeclarationofIndependenceandtheHistoricalOriginsoftheUnitedStates
Steven Sarson
The Revolutionary Age
Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have been more deliberate than 'When in the Course of human events,' the phrase with which he opened the Declaration of Independence. As Steven Sarson shows, the original Declaration moved through the ages of human history from Creation to American independence, assessing it according to 'the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.' The Declaration's history and historical consciousness therefore help answer one of American history's great questions: How did the founders reconcile their lofty views on equality and liberty with the inequities and iniquities that they maintained in their time? The contingencies of history and the complexities of natural law, Sarson demonstrates, meant that the Declaration's eloquent promises of equality and liberty only applied partially to women and poor men, and not at all to Loyalists, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved people. The Declaration's assertion that 'all men are created equal' has since become a promise of universal equality and liberty. As we reach its 250th anniversary, it is important to understand its original context as well as to continue the mission of making its promises a lived reality for all.
30November2025|276pp
9780813953977|£26.99/$35.00|PB
UNIVERSITYOFVIRGINIAPRESS
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS
GEORGEWASHINGTON
HisQuestforHonorandFame
Peter R. Henriques
What drove George Washington to become the preeminent man of his time and to secure a lasting reputation as one of history's great leaders? In this concise and engaging profile, Peter Henriques - a renowned Washington expert - recounts how Washington possessed a desperate desire to be seen, admired, honored, and above all to be remembered. Over the course of his life, Washington deliberately and selfconsciously shaped his public image. Even his decision, dictated in his last will and testament, to emancipate the men and women he had held in slavery during his lifetime related directly to his desire to be perceived as honorable after his death and to safeguard his posthumous reputation.
23September2025|160pp|20b&willus 9780813954189|£19.99/$24.95|HB
UNIVERSITYOFVIRGINIAPRESS
LAFAYETTE
LessonsinLeadershipfromthe IdealistGeneral
Marc Leepson
The Marquis de Lafayette is an icon of both American and French history. In Marc Leepson's concise and engaging biography of this captivating figure, we learn how Lafayette, born into an aristocratic French family of warriors, traveled to the colonies at the age of nineteen to fight as a volunteer in the American Revolutionary War. Continental Army Major General Lafayette was soon embraced by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who became his lifelong friends. A fearless, accomplished battlefield commander, he also helped to convince the French court to provide crucial financial and military support to the Americans, which aided their defeat of the British.
02June2025|228pp|14b&willus. 9780813954424|£16.99/$21.95|PB
UNIVERSITYOFVIRGINIAPRESS
COFFEENATION
HowOneCommodityTransformedthe EarlyUnitedStates
Michelle Craig McDonald
Early American Studies
Illuminates how coffee tied the economic future of the early United States to the wider Atlantic world. Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide, and so omnipresent its popularity is often taken for granted. But even everyday habits have a history. When and why coffee become part of North American daily life is at the center of Coffee Nation. Using a wide range of archival, quantitative, and material evidence, Michelle Craig McDonald follows coffee from the slavery-based plantations of the Caribbean and South America, through the balance sheets of Atlantic world merchants, into the coffeehouses, stores, and homes of colonial North Americans.
27May2025|280pp|16b&wphotos 9781512827552|£36/$45.00|HB
UNIVERSITYOFPENNSYLVANIAPRESS
ROADSTOPOWER,ROADSTOCRISIS
TheWarfortheAmericanInterior andtheInfrastructuralRoutes ofRevolution
Alec Zuercher Reichardt
Early American Studies
Maps the Seven Years' War for the American Interior and reconstructs the inter-imperial roots of the American Revolution. Centering on the 18th-century geopolitical struggle for the greater Ohio Valley, Reichardt reframes a familiar story by uncovering the larger imperial competition to gain, control, and exploit communication networks across North America and the Atlantic. Through a comparative perspective, Reichardt traces British infrastructural development alongside the efforts of other major powers in North America, including the French Empire, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Cherokee Nation, and other Indigenous polities.
26August2025|277pp|25maps&12illus. 9781512828283|£44/$55.00|HB
UNIVERSITYOFPENNSYLVANIAPRESS
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
LET
THEOPPRESSEDGOFREE
AbolitionisminColonialand RevolutionaryAmerica
Nicholas P. Wood
Early American Studies
Tenacious activism by Quakers, African Americans, and antislavery evangelicals made antislavery central to the American Revolution. In Let the Oppressed Go Free, Nicholas P. Wood presents the opponents of slavery who sustained and expanded the antislavery movement during the American Revolution in the face of widespread hostility. These early abolitionists were inspired by antislavery theology: the view that slavery was a sinful form of oppression that would provoke God's wrath against slaveholding societies.
04November2025|384pp|10illus. 9781512828320|£36/$45.00|HB
UNIVERSITYOFPENNSYLVANIAPRESS
THEDISAFFECTED
Britain'sOccupationofPhiladelphia DuringtheAmericanRevolution
Aaron Sullivan
Early American Studies
This exploration of the British occupation of Philadelphia highlights the perspectives of those wearied by and withdrawn from the War for Independence. Elizabeth and Henry Drinker of Philadelphia were no friends of the American Revolution. Yet neither were they its enemies. The Drinkers were a merchant family who, being Quakers and pacifists, shunned commitments to both the Revolutionaries and the British. They strove to endure the war uninvolved and unscathed. They failed. In 1777, the war came to Philadelphia when the city was taken and occupied by the British army.
31March2026|304pp|7illus. 9781512829693|£22.99/$29.95|PB
UNIVERSITYOFPENNSYLVANIAPRESS
CRESCENTMOONOVERCAROLINA
WilliamMoultrieandAmericanLiberty C. L. Bragg
Crescent Moon over Carolina examines the life of Major General William Moultrie (1730-1805) who is best remembered for his valiant defense of an unfinished log fort on Sullivan's Island at the entrance to Charleston harbor against a determined British naval attack on June 28, 1776. While the Continental Congress in Philadelphia considered a draft of the Declaration of Independence, Moultrie and his garrison of South Carolinians proved that untested, but courageous, American soldiers could stand firm and prevail against British might.
C. L. Bragg combines a scholarly survey of lowcountry South Carolina culture, the American Revolution, and the early political history of the state and the United States.
19March2026|382pp|15b&wIllus.
9781643366784|£20.99/$27.99|PB
THEUNIVERSITYOFSOUTHCAROLINAPRESS
GENERALNATHANAELGREENE ANDTHEAMERICANREVOLUTION INTHESOUTH
Edited by Gregory D. Massey & Jim Piecuch
AmajorgeneralintheContinentalArmy duringtheAmericanRevolution,Nathanael Greenehasreceivedhistoricalattentionasa commanderwhosuccessfullycoordinatedthe actionsofseeminglydisparatekindsof soldiers—regularContinentaltroops,militia men,andpartisanguerrillas.Hehasoften beenacclaimedasthesecondmost importantmilitaryfigureoftheRevolution, behindGeorgeWashington.General Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution in the Southoffersnewperspectives onGreene'sleadershipofContinentaltroops, hisuseofthemountedtroopsofSouth CarolinapartisanleadersThomasSumterand FrancisMarionandhisintegrationoflocal militiaintohisfightingforce.
26March2026|284pp|19b&willus. 9781643366791|£22.99/$29.99|PB
THEUNIVERSITYOFSOUTHCAROLINAPRESS
