Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

Benjamin Franklin was an author, physicist, innovator, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political thinker who resided in America. Franklin was just one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the US Declaration of Independence, and the first postmaster general of the United States. For his discoveries and views about electrical energy, he was an essential player in the American knowledge and the history of physics as a researcher. He is most prominent for his developments like the lightning arrester, bifocals, and the Franklin hotplate.

Harriet Tubman (March 10, 1822—March 10, 1913) was an abolitionist and political activist in the United States. Tubman, who was born into slavery, got away and went on to free around 70 enslaved people, which includes family members and good friends, through the Underground Rail Road, a network of antislavery activists and safe houses. She worked for the Union Army as an armed scout and spy throughout the American Civil War. Tubman was an activist in the women's suffrage movement in her last years.

During the years of the Early Republic, prominent Native leaders regularly traveled to American cities primarily on diplomatic or trade business, but also from curiosity. They were frequently referred to as "the Chiefs now in this city" during their visits. Colin Calloway has gathered together the accounts of these visits and created a new narrative of the country's formative years, redefining what has been understood as the "frontier." Calloway captures what Native peoples observed as they walked the streets, sat in pews, attended plays, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels.

Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior, and psychologists are actively involved in studying and understanding mental processes, including brain functions, and behavior. In fact, the field of psychology is considered a "Hub Science" with strong connections to the medical sciences, social sciences, and education. Human nature is a related concept but nevertheless a bit different, as it denotes the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was a broken man. Reeling from the loss of his wife and stung from a political scandal during the Revolutionary war, he needed to remake himself. Wandering through Europe, Jefferson saw and learned as much as he could, ultimately bringing his knowledge home to a young America. There, he would rise to power and shape a nation. More than two hundred years later, Derek Baxter, a devotee of American history, stumbles on an obscure travel guide written by Jefferson—Hints for Americans Traveling Through Europe—as he's going through his own personal crisis. 

As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer. In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson’s genius with language and his...

Two Revolutions and the Constitution describes how the American Constitution secured the gains of the American Revolution. It tells the story of how the American constitutional system drew on both Americans' experience of partial self-government in colonial America and their understanding of the British constitution. It also tells how, when they were drafting the Constitution, the Framers used what they had learned about effective constitutions since independence. This audiobook describes how the English started that struggle, and the American Constitution completed it.

George Washington came to be known as father of his country. In his role as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington defeated the British in the American Revolution and established the United States of America. Through his extraordinary military leadership, he guaranteed that the American Republic would move forward in its revolutionary experiment. So how was Washington able to win this seemingly unwinnable war? This compelling 15-lecture audio course answers this and many more questions about one of the most foundational figures in American history.

In 1776, the United States of America was born from a document that declared all men created equal and free to choose who they serve in this world. What followed was a difficult fight against a monarchy, a fight that ended with the creation of a powerful country built on the tenets of freedom and equality. These documents are some of the foundational writings from the earliest days of the country that have shaped the United States government for centuries.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines.

The complete document of the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights. Listen to The Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights and learn about civil rights and constitutional law.

On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, 39 men from 12 states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy. 

Here is the compelling narrative of the founding of America, told from a perspective that few people have ever heard. That perspective is the Sermon on the Mount. America's currency declares, "in God we trust". But did the American colonists truly trust in God in the founding of the United States? The product of nine years of research, this new work challenges much of what most of us learned in school about the founding of America and the American Revolution. Bercot's well-documented findings will surprise many people.

In Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History Emily Pears investigates efforts by the founding generation's leadership to construct and strengthen political attachments in and among the citizens of the new republic. These emotional connections between citizens and their institutions were critical to the success of the new nation.

Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Carli Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions, and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

The American War for Independence was fought in nearly every colony, but some colonies witnessed far more conflict than others. In the first half of the war, the bulk of military operations were concentrated in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. A shift in British strategy southward after the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 triggered numerous military engagements in 1779 and 1780 in Georgia and the Carolinas. Surprisingly, Virginia, the largest of the original 13 colonies, saw relatively little fighting for the first six years of the Revolutionary War.

Thomas Jefferson lived a dozen lifetimes in one. Patriot, scientist, architect, president, author of the Declaration of Independence - he preferred, above all titles, “father” and “grandfather". Yet, time and again, demand for his unique skills drew him from the quiet home he loved. In this recording, you will thrill to true stories of war and peace, loyalty and betrayal, battles against empires, and struggles against slavery.

Gold Winner of the 2008 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, Biography Category Brings to life the inspiring story of one of America's Black Founding Fathers, featured in the documentary The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song Freedom's Prophet is a long-overdue biography of...

Accomplishing the Impossible draws contemporary leadership lessons from the events and people that were central to the beginning of the American Revolution. Retired general, scholar, and educator William E. Rapp cuts through the popular mythology around the Boston Campaign and applies the historical lessons to challenges faced by today's business and public sector leaders. By doing so, he inspires today's leaders to view contemporary leadership and change management through a fresh lens.

Despite great limits of money and manpower, George Washington sought to wage an aggressive war in 1779. He launched the Sullivan-Clinton campaign against Britain’s Iroquois allies in upstate New York, and in response to British attacks up the Hudson River and against coastal Connecticut, he authorized raids on British outposts at Stony Point and Paulus Hook. But given power by Congress to plan and execute operations with the French on a continental scale, Washington planned his boldest campaign.