Explore the Museum's historic Old City neighborhood and iconic Revolutionary-era sites on daily walking tours. Info & Tickets

Dismiss notification

About

Curated by Museum staff since 2013, Read the Revolution features excerpts from thought-provoking books about the American Revolution. Read the Revolution was created with thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Subscribe to get the biweekly Read the Revolution featured excerpts emailed right to your inbox for free.

Subscribe Now

Speaker Series

Inspired by the Read the Revolution featured excerpts, the Read the Revolution Speaker Series brings celebrated authors and historians to the Museum for lively, facilitated discussions of their work. Each Read the Revolution Speaker Series program, hosted by Museum President & CEO Dr. R. Scott Stephenson, includes a special talk and audience Q&A.

About the Series

All Books

Showing 111–120 of 272 items
Book cover for King Hancock book featuring a large portrait of John Hancock's face with the title King Hancock in gold and Hancock written in his famous signature.

King Hancock

Posted: April 10, 2024
Read an excerpt from Brooke Barbier's book, King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father.
Read More
Learning to Stand and Speak book cover

Learning to Stand and Speak

Posted: May 13, 2020
Read an excerpt of historian Mary Kelley's book Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America's Republic.
Read More
This image shows the book cover of Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution by Arthur Tourtellot. It is a white background with three colored illustrations in the middle showing scenes from the battle. The left and right images are soldiers in the battlefield and the middle image shows Redcoats in front of a building.

Lexington and Concord

Posted: April 10, 2019
This excerpt from Arthur Tourtellot takes us on a journey into the events of Lexington and Concord starting with an overview of the British Army in Boston
Read More
This image depicts the book cover of the Museum of the American Revolution’s Liberty: Don Troiani’s Paintings of the Revolutionary War exhibit catalog. The cover is a painting by Don Troiani titled “Battle of Bunker Hill.” The painting shows solders behind a dirt mound, with their rifles pointing toward the right of the image. There are cannonballs lodged into the ground in  front of them and smoke fills the sky.

Liberty

Posted: October 13, 2021
Read an excerpt from Don Troiani and the Museum's book Liberty: Don Troiani's Paintings of the Revolutionary War, which accompanies the exhibit of the same name.
Read More
Book cover for Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton.

Liberty is Sweet

Posted: July 27, 2022
Read an excerpt from Woody Holton's book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution.
Read More
Women's Work Book Cover

Liberty's Daughters

Posted: August 13, 2013
Read an excerpt from Mary Beth Norton's book, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800.
Read More
Image 091520 1776x2652 Libertysdaughters

Liberty's Daughters

Posted: May 10, 2023
Read an excerpt from Mary Beth Norton's groundbreaking book, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800.
Read More
Liberty's Exiles Original book cover

Liberty's Exiles

Posted: January 06, 2016
This excerpt from Maya Jasanoff illustrates exiled loyalists' experience and what it meant as an American colonist returning to Great Britain after defeat
Read More
Liberty's Exiles book cover

Liberty's Exiles

Posted: August 14, 2019
This excerpt from Maya Jasanoff illustrates exiled loyalists' experience and what it meant as an American colonist returning to Great Britain after defeat.
Read More
 Rtr Madison S Hand Revising The Constitutional Convention

Madison's Hand

Posted: December 26, 2018
This excerpt from Mary Bilder discusses James Madison’s personal and political evolution and his enduring ambivalence toward the Constitutional Convention
Read More
12 of 28 pages