Reading material for studying the American Revolution?

[Ostrinski]

So we've got a good discussion on the American Revolution going on in this thread http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-right-wingers-t173418/index.html?t=173418 , and in light of that I wanted to make a thread specifically asking for informative books on the subject.

[Susurrus]

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn has some good, less well-known material about that.

[Ostrinski]

Yeah I've read that, good book.

[smellincoffee]

There's A People's History of the American Revolution book out, though it tends to be thin. As for prime source material....the Adams-Jefferson letters and the Federalist papers would be good for getting into the mind of the 'founders'.

[Blake's Baby]

Tom Paine, 'Common Sense' and 'The Rights of Man' likewise.

[Ostrinski]

^I've read those too.

I guess what I'm asking for is solid secondary-source literature.

[x359594]

I guess what I'm asking for is solid secondary-source literature.

A New Age Begins: A People's History of the American Revolution (two volumes) by Page Smith is probably the best overall narrative history, told from the bottom up.

[Teacher]

He is not a Marxist but Gordon S. Wood has good books on the revolution.

For a more left-wing perspective America's Revolutionary Heritage by George Novack and The Story of American Freedom by Eric Foner hit on the revolution.

[#FF0000]

1776 by David McCullough is supposed to be a decent look at the military aspect of the revolution, but I haven't read it myself.

[Ostrinski]

1776 by David McCullough is supposed to be a decent look at the military aspect of the revolution, but I haven't read it myself.might check this out, I've read his biography of John Adams. He seems like a decent historian.

[Ismail]

I've recently acquired The American Revolution: 1763-1783 by Herbert Aptheker. He wrote two other volumes (one dealing with the colonial era and one going up to 1793) and they're Marxist in analysis. The one I acquired deals with stuff like its origins, the revolution's impact abroad, if it was a popular revolution or not, if it was conservative or not, how it was organized, the role of laborers, women and slaves, etc. I haven't read it yet but when I asked for good Marxist works on the American Revolution, the author came up a lot.

The user A Marxist Historian recommended to me the two-volume The Age of the Democratic Revolution, which has a broader subject of bourgeois-democratic movements in the Americas and Europe.

William Z. Foster wrote a large book titled Outline Political History of the Americas, which is apparently of some interest.