Revolutionary Summer

Joseph J. Ellis's focus is the summer of 1776, the most dramatic few months in the story of our country's founding. It was then that the thirteen colonies finally came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic; it anchored off the coast of Staten Island in early July. Facing this massive threat, the Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to improvise decisions on the run. In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis weaves the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other. Revolutionary Summer enlivens familiar historical events with a freshness at once revelatory and compelling.