Getting beyond the "Bedtime Story"

Shepherd has me doing one of their “Top Five” lists today: riffing on a line I love from a book review by Jan Lewis, I chose “The best books that get beyond the ‘bedtime story’ of the American Revolution.”

I probably should have written this more than a year ago, but I found it difficult to come up with a top five list! There are already quite a few lists on the American Revolution (Kathleen DuVal did one recently), and I have so many favorite books (and favorite authors) that it seemed impossible to narrow down. Most of my favorites, of course, are academic books, and the site tries to discourage contributors from being too academic. So I chose two of my favorite historical fiction books about the Revolution, two classics, and a relative newcomer that I’ve had success assigning to undergraduates. None had received a lot of attention on Shepherd yet (even though they are all well regarded books).