Shelfology Book Pairing

America and Britain at War

by David McCullough

America's most acclaimed historian presents the intricate story of the year of the birth of the United States of America. 1776 tells two gripping stories: how a group of squabbling, disparate colonies became the United States, and how the British Empire tried to stop them. A story with a cast of amazing characters from George III to George Washington, to soldiers and their families, this exhilarating book is one of the great pieces of historical narrative.

A History

by Gordon S. Wood

In The American Revolution, Gordon S. Wood makes new the story of how and why the American colonies grew apart from and broke with their mother country, establishing a fundamentally new experiment in government. Writing with great elegance and authority, he awakens us to the drama and contingency of those long-ago events and teases out, magnificently, the process of mutation that led to the formation of America's distinctive and astonishingly resilient national character. The compact between the American government and its people is unique to history, and in telling the story of its birth in a single commanding narrative, Gordon S. Wood has done a service of timeless value.