1776: An Illustrated Masterpiece

In 1776, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with George Washington in the tumultuous year of our nation’s birth. It is the story of men with real shortcomings, but an indefatigable spirit of perseverance in the face of impossible odds who are the recipients of numerous unusual Providences of God – without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideas of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

This is an incredible book! An abridged version of David McCollough’s masterpiece on the providential history of America’s War for Independence, this version contains illustrations, famous paintings of men such as Washington, Hamilton, Gen. Greene, Mercy Warren, Lord North and others. Throughout the volume are vellum envelopes containing facsimile reproductions of 37 original primary source documents – recreating the sense of digging through past archives to learn for yourself the amazing truth of the struggles during this epic year. Book comes in a decorative protective box case. Hardcover, 256 pages.  Visit The Vision Forum to purchase this book today.

The books editors record: Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined Redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost – Washington, who had never before led an army in battle.

The book begins in London on October 26, 1775, when His Majesty King George III went before Parliament to declare America in rebellion and to affirm his resolve to crush it. From there the story moves to the Siege of Boston and its astonishing outcome, then to New York, where British ships and British troops appear in numbers never imagined and the newly proclaimed Continental Army confronts the enemy for the first time. David McCullough’s vivid rendering of the Battle of Brooklyn and the daring American escape that followed is a part of the book few readers will ever forget. As the crucial weeks pass, defeat follows defeat, and in the long retreat across New Jersey, all hope seems gone, until Washington launches the “brilliant stroke” that will change history. The darkest hours of that tumultuous year were as dark as any Americans have known. Especially in our own tumultuous time, 1776 is powerful testimony to how much is owed to a rare few in that brave founding epoch, and what a miracle it was that things turned out as they did.

Filed under: American History, David McCullough, John Adams

John Adams Comes to HBO

Filed under: American History, David McCullough, John Adams

David McCullough and 1776

Filed under: David McCullough

Biography Recommendation

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot–”the colossus of independence,” as Thomas Jefferson called him. Adams spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution, rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war. He was learned beyond all but a few, regarded by some as “out of his senses,” and his marriage to the wise–and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

Like his masterly, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, David McCullough’s John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. It is both a riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time, much of it drawn from an outstanding collection of Adams family letters and diaries. In particular, the more than one thousand surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams, nearly half of which have never been published, provide extraordinary access to their private lives and make it possible to know John Adams as no other major American of his founding era.

Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites–one a Massachusetts farmer’s son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country.  At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day–their day of days–July 4, in the year 1826.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James’s, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the White House.

This is history on a grand scale–a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.  I highly recommend this book to any lover of American History. 

Filed under: American History, Book Recommendations, David McCullough, John Adams