The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89
Fourth Edition

I love this book for all the wrong reasons. In my very humble opinion, this is bad history. Morgan does little to hide his bias - if anything, he seems to revel in it with passages like, "They [the commissioners sent to Boston to enforce the Navigation Acts:] were a rapacious band of bureaucrats who......more

A classic history of the American Revolutionary Era. I think this book would be more appreciated by someone being introduced to the time period, but even as someone who has read a great deal about the Revolution, I appreciated this book and its perspective. It does an excellent job telling the big p......more

Morgan has a long and distinguished pedigree as an American historian. This book is one of his earliest works and it isn't his best. It's a light, quick read about the preludes to the Revolutionary War, the war itself, the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and ultimately the creation of the......more

A light and easy read which means less focused on the details and subtleties and more in the grand narrative style. This book is written for a general audience as one interpretation of the events of the founding which stresses the principle of equality as the driving force behind it all. The book do......more

Occasionally I dip back into U.S. history, particularly its foundational period in the late eighteenth century, to maintain some perspective on contemporary political and legal matters. This, as I recall, was one of several histories by the author, left long unread on the bookshelf in the living roo......more