Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

From the award-winning, preeminent American historian: a revelatory portrait of a crescendo moment in American history. Joseph J. Ellis' focus: the summer of 1776, the most dramatic few months in the story of our country's founding. The thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic; it cruised off the coast of Staten Island in early July. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on the run, improvising as history congealed around them. In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis weaves the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other. Revolutionary Summer enlivens familiar historical events with a freshness at once revelatory and compelling.