Titoli in Rivoluzione e fondazione

La rivoluzione americana, a lungo giudicata una non-rivoluzione rispetto a quelle francese e sovietica oppure, oltreatlantico, la vera realizzazione della libertà, viene oggi studiata come un evento complesso e discordante percorso da conflitti sociali ed etnici, nonché una guerra civile e una interna al continuo scontro fra gli imperi europei. Essa non diede vita alla democrazia, perché le élite riuscirono a bloccare l'avanzata delle classi inferiori provocata dal loro forte ruolo politico e militare.

Nel 1776 il Secondo Congresso Continentale delle 13 colonie inglesi del Nord America emana la Dichiarazione d'Indipendenza, che spiega e giustifica davanti al mondo intero la condotta ribelle degli Americani contro la madrepatria inglese. Inizia così la storia degli Stati Uniti d'America, l'avventura cioè di quella che sarà la prima potenza mondiale fino ai giorni nostri.

Explore the life and legacy of James Madison, America’s fourth president and a central architect of the U.S. Constitution. This concise biography follows his early life, political career, presidency, leadership during the War of 1812, and lasting influence on the United States...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Bestseller, a landmark biography of George Washington. In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of...

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama, one of the greatest, played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths.

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.

John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.

America’s beloved and distinguished historian presents, in a book of breathtaking excitement, drama, and narrative force, the stirring story of the year of our nation’s birth, 1776, interweaving, on both sides of the Atlantic, the actions and decisions that led Great Britain to undertake a...

From acclaimed historian Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg, a celebrated re-appraisal of the meaning and the source of inspiration of The Declaration of Independence, based on a reading of Jefferson's original draft document. Inventing America upended decades of thinking about The...

"With impressive scholarly sleuthing and a storyteller's eloquence, Danielle Allen has written a landmark book about the people and the ideas that changed the world. By bringing the glamorous Duke of Richmond back to life, Allen paints a panoramic portrait of how principles of human equality and...

An acclaimed portrait of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the origins of modern conservatism and liberalism. "Clever and intellectually persuasive ... A thoughtful introduction to this famous paradigmatic opposition.” -Washington Post In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the roots of the...

The Declaration of Independence was a history-changing document, calling for a new form of government resting on a radical philosophical framework. It has inspired over 100 other declarations of independence over the last 250 years. In these 12 lectures, Professor Bell offers you far-reaching reflections on the meaning, the power, and the influence of the Declaration.

Experience one of the most influential political works in American history, Common Sense by Thomas Paine, now narrated by Gary Middleton. First published in 1776, this revolutionary pamphlet boldly called for American independence from British rule, igniting the flames of rebellion and inspiring a new nation to rise.

As Ben experimented, people peppered him with questions about electricity. Distracted, Ben was still holding the ends of two bare wires when the other ends touched the Leyden jars. A massive charge knocked him to the ground. When he clambered to his feet, he had to admit that his guests appeared...

The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths.

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, was an eyewitness to America's founding, and helped guide the new nation through her observations and advice to her famously prickly husband, who cherished her. In The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman "Not Apt to Be Intimidated," writer and researcher John L. Smith, Jr. draws on more than two thousand letters of Abigail's spanning from the 1760s to her death in 1818, interweaving Abigail's colorful correspondence with a contextual narrative.

In this masterful narrative, Winston Groom brings his signature storytelling panache to the tale of our nation's most fascinating founding fathers - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams - painting a vivid picture of the improbable events, bold ideas, and extraordinary characters who created the United States of America.   

Gore Vidal, one of the master stylists of American literature and an acute observer of American life and history, turns his literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the formidable trio of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In "Inventing a Nation", Vidal transports...

Like father, like son . . . April 1777 Alexei McKesson is a man caught between two worlds: the son of the disgraced former Duke of McKesson, and an adopted warrior of the Standing Stone. For the past two years, Alexei has been pirating ships on the St. Lawrence, and he’s never been caught...

As editor of the award-winning Library of America collection of George Washington's writings and a curator of the great man's original papers, John Rhodehamel has established himself as an authority of our nation's preeminent founding father. Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status.