Human Tradition in the American Revolution

This collection of 17 biographies provides a unique opportunity for the reader to go beyond the popular heroes of the American Revolution and discover the diverse populace that inhabited the colonies during this pivotal point in history.

The writing is uniformly excellent and the subjects well chosen—and only half the biographies are about white males. This collection should appeal to a wide audience. I will certainly use it in my American Revolution course., It would take an American Hogarth to paint such a group of intriguing men and women from different classes, religions, races, and regions. But all of us can now explore and compare these diverse and well-documented lives, relating them to the more familiar faces and places of the Revolutionary era., In this wonderful collection of concise and imaginative essays, the editors convey the immense diversity of the American Revolution in a way that no conventional narrative ever could. Reading these essays is a real pleasure., A fascinating potpourri of lives of Revolutionary era Americans, each different, each illuminating, all presenting a complex portrait of the lived experiences of late eighteenth-century Americans.

Nancy L. Rhoden teaches early American and English history at the University of Southern Indiana. Ian K. Steele teaches British Atlantic and American colonial history at the University of Western Ontario.