Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

Joseph J. Ellis (Get this book)
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Ellis writes book after book on the American Revolutionary period. Practice makes perfect. The author's latest alternates between 1776 colonial politics during which the Continental Congress, dominated by John Adams, finally put aside efforts at compromise and opted for independence and the fighting where George Washington's army marched from triumph in the siege of Boston to catastrophe in New York. Ellis delivers few surprises and no cheerleading but much astute commentary. A traditionalist, Ellis sticks to 1776 and writes an insightful history of its critical, if often painful, events.--Kirkus