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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.

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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 51–60 of 248 items
Image 10012020 Alexanderhamiltonbook

Curators' Book List on Alexander Hamilton

Posted: January 09, 2019
Read an excerpt from Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton that inspired the Broadway hit musical Hamilton: An American Musical.
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Declaration book cover

Declaration

Posted: June 12, 2019
This excerpt by William Hogeland explores the people, backroom politicking, and passions that ignited our pursuit of liberty during the American Revolution.
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Desperate Sons book cover

Desperate Sons

Posted: May 26, 2015
This excerpt from Les Standiford describes America's growing number of grievances with its mother country and Britain's indifference to colonists' complaints
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This image depicts the book cover of Digging in The City of Brotherly Love by Rebecca Yamin. The cover is a photo of a Philadelphia park in the fall. The top and bottom of the book cover are purple. The title of the book is written in front of a yellow strip.

Digging in the City of Brotherly Love

Posted: July 11, 2018
Read this excerpt from Rebecca Yamin that features a 19 century insurance policy, suggesting an explanation to a unidentified recovered artifact.
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Don Troiani's Soldiers Of The American Revolution book cover

Don Troiani’s Soldiers of the American Revolution

Posted: December 13, 2017
These works by Don Troiani show his original paintings of soldiers alongside the actual objects he studied in his artistic recreations.
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Double Feature Ten Crucial Days Read the Revolution book Covers

Double Feature: Countdown to the 10 Crucial Days

Posted: December 15, 2021
Read excerpts from William Kidder's Ten Crucial Days: Washington’s Vision for Victory Unfolds and Lynne Cheney's When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots.
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Book covers for First Martyr of Liberty and The Remarkable Cause.

Double Feature: First Martyr of Liberty and The Remarkable Cause

Posted: February 22, 2023
Read excerpts from Mitch Kachun's First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory and Jean O'Connor's The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution.
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This image depicts the book cover of American Cake by Anne Byrn. The book cover shows a white frosted cake with pink rose petals on top. The cake sits on a white cake stand with more petals surrounding the right side of the stand. Below this image is the title of the book. Below the title of the book are three smaller photographs of cakes dated 1770, 1903, and 1963.

Double Feature: Gingerbread

Posted: November 22, 2017
Read these excerpts featuring Colonial recipes along with tempting and intriguing stories about our early American culinary history.
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Image 120420 Rtr184 Henry Knox Cannons

Double Feature: Henry Knox's Winter Adventure

Posted: December 09, 2020
Read excerpts from Don Brown's Henry and the Cannons: An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution as well as Phillip Hamilton's The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox.
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Epic Journeys of Freedom book cover

Epic Journeys of Freedom

Posted: October 14, 2015
Read this excerpt from Cassandra Pybus that personalizes the wartime stories of black men and women who fled their American masters to seek freedom.
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