Hitler

December 19th, 1941 - Hitler takes command of the German army.  Here are 10 books about or related to Adolf Hitler.

Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi by Thomas Weber - In Becoming Hitler, award-winning historian Thomas Weber examines Adolf Hitler's time in Munich between 1918 and 1926, the years when Hitler shed his awkward, feckless persona and transformed himself into a savvy opportunistic political operator who saw himself as Germany's messiah. The story of Hitler's transformation is one of a fateful match between man and city. After opportunistically fluctuating between the ideas of the left and the right, Hitler emerged as an astonishingly flexible leader of Munich's right-wing movement. The tragedy for Germany and the world was that Hitler found himself in Munich; had he not been in Bavaria in the wake of the war and the revolution, his transformation into a National Socialist may never have occurred.
In Becoming Hitler, Weber brilliantly charts this tragic metamorphosis, dramatically expanding our knowledge of how Hitler became a lethal demagogue.

The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic by Benjamin Carter Hett - A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen.
Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time.
To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany's leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler's hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.

Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi's Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski - Some of the Americans in Hitler's Germany were merely casual observers, others deliberately blind, a few were Nazi apologists. But most began slowly to understand what was unfolding, even when they found it difficult to grasp the breadth of the catastrophe.
Among the journalists, William Shirer understood what was happening. Edgar Mowrer, Dorothy Thompson, and Sigrid Schultz, reporters, were alarmed. Consul General George Messersmith distinguished. Truman Smith, the first American official to meet Hitler, was an astute political observer. Historian William Dodd, who FDR tapped as ambassador in Berlin, left disillusioned; his daughter Martha scandalized the embassy with her procession of lovers, Nazis she took up with; she ended as a Soviet spy.
On the scene were George Kennan, the architect of containment; Richard Helms, who rose to the top of the CIA. The writers Sinclair Lewis and Thomas Wolfe, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, and the great athlete Jesse Owens came through Germany; so did a younger generation of journalists--Richard Hottelet, Hans V. Kaltenborn, Howard K. Smith, and Ed Murrow.
These Americans helped their reluctant countrymen begin to understand Nazi Germany as it ruthlessly eliminated political opponents, instilled hatred of Jews and anyone deemed a member of an inferior race, and readied its military and its people for a war for global domination. They helped prepare Americans for the years of struggle ahead.

Hitler and the Habsburgs: The Fuhrer's Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals by James Longo - A stunning work of narrative history revealing how and why Adolf Hitler targeted the children of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, making the Archduke's sons the first two Austrians deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and how the family fought back. It was during five youthful years in Vienna that Adolf Hitler's obsession with the Habsburg Imperial family became the catalyst for his vendetta against a vanished empire, a dead archduke, and his royal orphans. That hatred drove Hitler's rise to power and led directly to the tragedy of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The royal orphans of Archduke Franz Ferdinand--offspring of an upstairs-downstairs marriage that scandalized the tradition-bound Habsburg Empire--came to personify to Adolf Hitler, and others, all that was wrong about modernity, the twentieth century, and the Habsburg's multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were outsiders in the greatest family of royal insiders in Europe, which put them on a collision course with Adolf Hitler. As he rose to power Hitler's hatred toward the Habsburgs and their diverse empire fixated on Franz Ferdinand's sons, who became outspoken critics and opponents of the Nazi party and its racist ideology. When Germany seized Austria in 1938, they were the first two Austrians arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Germany, and sent to Dachau. Within hours they went from palace to prison. The women in the family, including the Archduke's only daughter Princess Sophie Hohenberg, declared their own war on Hitler. Their tenacity and personal courage in the face of betrayal, treachery, torture, and starvation sustained the family during the war and in the traumatic years that followed. Through a decade of research and interviews with the descendants of the royal Habsburgs, scholar James Longo explores the roots of Hitler's determination to destroy the family of the dead Archduke and uncovers the family members' courageous fight against the Führer.

Hitler, My Neighbor: Memories of a Jewish Childhood, 1929-1939 by Edgar Feuchtwanger with Bertil Scali - An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor.

Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich - The historical significance of Adolf Hitler has overshadowed the man behind the public persona. For decades, misconceptions about Hitler have percolated, but to cast Hitler as purely a psychopathic monster is to ignore the facets of his personality that help explain his enigmatic hold on the German populace. Ullrich recounts Hitler's personal journey from childhood to his consolidation of political power, and in doing so captures Hitler's canniness, instinctive grasp of politics, and gift for oratory as well as his megalomania, deep insecurity, and repulsive worldview.

Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss by Laurence Rees - Fuelled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma.
Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveals the role his supposed "charisma" played in his success. Here is a fascinating social, psychological and historical investigation into the formation of a personality whose determination and vision would at the outset convince a small group of like-minded political and social outcasts but would eventually win over an entire nation and plunge the rest of the world into a cataclysm unlike any that had ever been seen before. Hitler's Charisma is a natural culmination of twenty years of writing and research on the Third Reich and a remarkable examination of the man and the mind at the heart of it all.

Hitler's Last Days: The Death of the Nazi Regime and the World's Most Notorious Dictator by Bill O'Reilly - By early 1945, the destruction of the German Nazi State seems certain. The Allied forces, led by American generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, are gaining control of Europe, leaving German leaders scrambling. Facing defeat, Adolf Hitler flees to a secret bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Blondi. It is there that all three would meet their end, thus ending the Third Reich and one of the darkest chapters of history. Hitler's Last Days is a gripping account of the death of one of the most reviled villains of the 20th century--a man whose regime of murder and terror haunts the world even today.

The Plots Against Hitler by Danny Orbach - In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. A year later, all parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler's dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely clutch of conspirators emerged - soldiers, schoolteachers, politicians, diplomats, theologians, even a carpenter - who would try repeatedly to end the Fuhrer's genocidal reign. This dramatic and deeply researched book tells the full storyof those noble, ingenious, and doomed efforts. This is history at its most suspenseful, as we witness secret midnight meetings, crises of conscience, fierce debates among old friends about whether and how to dismantle Nazism, and the various plots themselves being devised and executed.
 Orbach's fresh research takes advantage of his singular skills as linguist and historian to offer profound insight into the conspirators' methods, motivations, fears, and hopes. Though we know how this story ends, we've had no idea until now how close it came - several times - to ending very differently. The Plots Against Hitler fundamentally alters our view of World War II and sheds bright - even redemptive - light on its darkest days.

With Hitler to the End: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Valet by Heinz Linge - Heinz Linge worked with Adolf Hitler for a ten-year period from 1935 until the Führer's death in the Berlin bunker in May 1945. He was one of the last to leave the bunker and was responsible for guarding the door while Hitler killed himself. During his years of service, Linge was responsible for all aspects of Hitler's household and was constantly by his side.
Here, Linge recounts the daily routine in Hitler's household: his eating habits, his foibles, his preferences, his sense of humor, and his private life with Eva Braun. After the war Linge said in an interview, "It was easier for him to sign a death warrant for an officer on the front than to swallow bad news about the health of his dog." Linge also charts the changes in Hitler's character during their time together and his fading health during the last years of the war. During his last days, Hitler's right eye began to hurt intensely and Linge was responsible for administering cocaine drops to kill the pain. In a number of instances--such as with the Stauffenberg bomb plot of July 1944--Linge gives an excellent eyewitness account of events. He also gives thumbnail profiles of the prominent members of Hitler's "court": Hess, Speer, Bormann and Ribbentrop amongst them.
Though Linge held an SS rank, he claims not to have been a Nazi Party member. His profile of one of history's worst demons is not blindly uncritical, but it is nonetheless affectionate. The Hitler that emerges is a multi-faceted individual: unpredictable and demanding, but not of an otherwise unpleasant nature.

President Trump

We are one year away from the next American Presidential Election.  Here are ten books that have been written about President Trump since his election.

The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy by Greg Miller - It has been called the political crime of the century: a foreign government, led by a brutal authoritarian leader, secretly interfering with the American presidential election to help elect the candidate of its choice. Now two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post national security reporter Greg Miller investigates the truth about the Kremlin's covert attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win the presidency, Trump's steadfast allegiance to Vladimir Putin, and Robert Mueller's ensuing investigation of the president and those close to him. Based on interviews with hundreds of people in Trump's inner circle, current and former government officials, individuals with close ties to the White House, members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, foreign officials, and confidential documents, The Apprentice offers striking new information about: the hacking of the Democrats by Russian intelligence; Russian hijacking of Facebook and Twitter; National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's hidden communications with the Russians; the attempt by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, to create a secret back channel to Moscow using Russian diplomatic facilities; Trump's disclosure to Russian officials of highly classified information about Israeli intelligence operations; Trump's battles with the CIA and the FBI and fierce clashes within the West Wing; Trump's efforts to enlist the director of national intelligence and the director of the National Security Agency to push back against the FBI's investigation of his campaign; the mysterious Trump Tower meeting; the firing of FBI Director James Comey; the appointment of Mueller and the investigation that has followed; the tumultuous skirmishing within Trump's legal camp; and Trump's jaw-dropping behavior in Helsinki. Deeply reported and masterfully told, The Apprentice is essential reading for anyone trying to understand Vladimir Putin's secret operation, its catastrophic impact, and the nature of betrayal.

Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America by David Horowitz - Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election was more than a historic upset. It was the beginning of a major political, economic, and social revolution that will change America -- and the world.
One of the nation's foremost conservative commentators, New York Times bestselling author, and a mentor to many of Donald Trump's key advisers, David Horowitz presents a White House battle plan to halt the Democrats' march to extinguish the values America holds dear.
Big Agenda details President Trump's likely moves, including his:
* First wave of executive orders -- restoring Guantanamo, Keystone XL, nixing amnesty
* Surprising judicial appointments -- Supreme Court and the federal judiciary
* Radical changes to federal rules & regulations -- Obamacare, EPA overreach, and a New Deal for black America
With the White House and Senate in GOP hands, and a Supreme Court soon to follow, President Trump will have a greater opportunity than even Ronald Reagan had to reshape the American political landscape while securing the nation's vital security interests abroad.
"No president since FDR and his famed '100 Days' has the chance Donald Trump has," Horowitz argues.
But he writes that the GOP and Trump must recognize they are not fighting policy ideas, but an ideology -- a progressive one with a radical agenda to stop Trump in an effort to reduce America's power and greatness.
Big Agenda is a rallying cry and indispensable guide for how to claim ultimate victory for the conservative cause.

The Case for Trump by Victor Davis Hanson - In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the United States--and an extremely successful president. Trump alone saw a political opportunity in defending the working people of America's interior whom the coastal elite of both parties had come to scorn, Hanson argues. And Trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue this opening to victory, dismantle a corrupt old order, and bring long-overdue policy changes at home and abroad. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump's. But after decades of drift, America needs the outsider Trump to do what normal politicians would not and could not do.

Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win by Luke Harding - An explosive exposé that lays out the story behind the Steele Dossier, including  Russia's decades-in-the-making political game to upend American democracy and the Trump administration's ties to Moscow.
December 2016. Luke Harding, the Guardian reporter and former Moscow bureau chief, quietly meets former MI6 officer Christopher Steele in a London pub to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's Russia connections. A month later, Steele's now-famous dossier sparks what may be the biggest scandal of the modern era. The names of the Americans involved are well-known--Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page--but here Harding also shines a light on powerful Russian figures like Aras Agalarov, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Sergey Kislyak, whose motivations and instructions may have been coming from the highest echelons of the Kremlin.
Drawing on new material and his expert understanding of Moscow and its players, Harding takes the reader through every bizarre and disquieting detail of the "Trump-Russia" story--an event so huge it involves international espionage, off-shore banks, sketchy real estate deals, the Miss Universe pageant, mobsters, money laundering, poisoned dissidents, computer hacking, and the most shocking election in American history.

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly - Donald Trump loves golf. He loves to play it, buy it, build it, and operate it. He owns 14 courses around the world and runs another five, all of which he insists are the best on the planet. He also claims he's a 3 handicap, almost never loses, and has won an astonishing 18 club championships.
How much of all that is true? Almost none of it, acclaimed sportswriter Rick Reilly reveals in this unsparing look at Trump in the world of golf.
Based on Reilly's own experiences with Trump as well as interviews with over 100 golf pros, amateurs, developers, and caddies, Commander in Cheat is a startling and at times hilarious indictment of Trump and his golf game. You'll learn how Trump cheats (sometimes with the help of his caddies and Secret Service agents), lies about his scores (the "Trump Bump"), tells whoppers about the rank of his courses and their worth (declaring that every one of them is worth $50 million), and tramples the etiquette of the game (driving on greens doesn't help). Trump doesn't brag so much, though, about the golf contractors he stiffs, the course neighbors he intimidates, or the way his golf decisions wind up infecting his political ones.
For Trump, it's always about winning. To do it, he uses the tricks he picked up from the hustlers at the public course where he learned the game as a college kid, and then polished as one of the most bombastic businessmen of our time. As Reilly writes, "Golf is like bicycle shorts. It reveals a lot about a man." Commander in Cheat "paints a side-splitting portrait of a congenital cheater" (Esquire), revealing all kinds of unsightly truths Trump has been hiding.

Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump by Jerome R. Corsi - The truth behind how well-funded hard-left extremists, the mainstream media, and Obama/Clinton holdovers in the government bureaucracy have combined with clandestine forces within the US intelligence apparatus - the "Deep State" -- to block and undermine Trump's every move. At 2:45 a.m. ET on Nov. 8, 2016, television networks announced to a stunned nation that Pennsylvania's 20 electoral had gone for Donald Trump, making him the president-elect of the United States, defying all odds in a surreal victory that sent the Deep State into an immediate sense of panic.
By dawn on Nov. 9, 2016, the Deep State forces that expected Hillary Clinton to continue the leftist politics of Barack Obama were already planning Donald Trump's demise.
What emerged from the hard left was a political strategy calculated to block Donald Trump from being inaugurated, and if that failed, to make sure Donald Trump would not long serve out his term as 45th President of the United States.
Investigative journalist and conspiracy expert Jerome Corsi goes into shocking detail about how this Deep State or Shadow Government secretly wields power in Washington, and why the Deep State is dangerous - capable of assassinating Trump, if efforts to impeach him or to force him to resign fail.
Corsi will also define a three-point strategy Trump -- as a political independent, opposed both by Democratic Party enemies and GOP establishment -- must employ to stay in office and have a chance of a successful first term in office.

Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America by Seth Abramson - Looking back at this moment, historians will ask if Americans knew they were living through the first case of criminal conspiracy between an American presidential candidate turned commander in chief and a geopolitical enemy. The answer might be: it was hard to see the whole picture. The stories coming in from across the globe have often seemed fantastical: clandestine meetings in foreign capitals, secret recordings in a Moscow hotel, Kremlin agents infiltrating the Trump inner circle...
Seth Abramson has tracked every one of these far-flung reports, and now in, Proof of Collusion, he finally gives us a record of the unthinkable--a president compromising American foreign policy in exchange for financial gain and covert election assistance. The attorney, professor, and former criminal investigator has used his exacting legal mind and forensic acumen to compile, organize, and analyze every piece of the Trump-Russia story. His conclusion is clear: the case for collusion is staring us in the face. Drawing from American and European news outlets, he takes readers through the Trump-Russia scandal chronologically, putting the developments in context and showing how they connect. His extraordinary march through all the public evidence includes:
-How Trump worked for thirty years to expand his real estate empire into Russia even as he was rescued from bankruptcy by Putin's oligarchs, Kremlin agents, and the Russian mafia.
-How Russian intelligence gathered compromising material on him over multiple trips.
-How Trump recruited Russian allies and business partners while running for president.
-How he surrounded himself with advisers who engaged in clandestine negotiations with Russia.
-How Trump aides and family members held secret meetings with foreign agents and lied about them.
By pulling every last thread of this complicated story together, Abramson argues that--even in the absence of a report from Special Counsel Mueller or a thorough Congressional investigation--the public record already confirms a quid pro quo between Trump and the Kremlin. The most extraordinary part of the case for collusion is that so much of it unfolded in plain sight.

Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff - The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.S. election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. [This book] is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no 'third-rate burglary.' It was far more sophisticated and sinister-- a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle-- including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn-- and Russia. [This book] chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington?

Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump by Dan Bongino and D. C. McAllister with Matt Palumbo - Everyone has an opinion about whether or not Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The number of actors involved is staggering, the events are complicated, and it's hard to know who or what to believe. Spygate bypasses opinion and brings facts together to expose the greatest political scandal in American history.
Former Secret Service agent and NYPD police officer Dan Bongino joins forces with journalist D.C. McAllister to clear away fake news and show you how Trump's political opponents, both foreign and domestic, tried to sabotage his campaign and delegitimize his presidency. By following the names and connections of significant actors, the authors reveal:
Why the Obama administration sent a spy connected to the Deep State into the Trump campaign
How Russians were connected to the opposition research firm hired by the Clinton campaign to find dirt on Trump
How the FBI failed to examine DNC computers after they were hacked, relying instead on the findings of a private company connected to the DNC and the Obama administraton
Why British intelligence played a role in building the collusion narrative
What role Ukrainians played in legitimizing the perception that Trump was conspiring with the Russians
How foreign players in the two events that kickstarted the Trump-Russia collusion investigation were connected to the Clinton Foundation, and
What motivated the major actors who sought to frame the Trump campaign and secure a win for Hillary Clinton

The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America by Bill O'Reilly - A rare, insider's look at the life of Donald Trump from Bill O'Reilly, the bestselling author of the Killing series, based on exclusive interview material and deep researchReaders around the world have been enthralled by journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bill O'Reilly's Killing series--riveting works of nonfiction that explore the most famous events in history. Now, O'Reilly turns his razor-sharp observations to his most compelling subject thus far--President Donald J. Trump. In this thrilling narrative, O'Reilly blends primary, never-before-released interview material with a history that recounts Trump's childhood and family and the factors from his life and career that forged the worldview that the president of the United States has taken to the White House. Not a partisan pro-Trump or anti-Trump book, this is an up-to-the-minute, intimate view of the man and his sphere of influence--of "how Donald Trump's view of America was formed, and how it has changed since becoming the most powerful person in the world"-- from a writer who has known the president for thirty years. This is an unprecedented, gripping account of the life of a sitting president as he makes history. As the author will tell you, "If you want some insight into the most unlikely political phenomenon of our lifetimes, you'll get it here." 

American Revolution

Happy Independence Day!  Here are 10 books on the American Revolution to enjoy this 4th of July.

Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence by Jack Kelly - Band of Giants brings to life the founders who fought for our independence in the Revolutionary War. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are known to all; men like Morgan, Greene, and Wayne are less familiar. Yet the dreams of the politicians and theorists only became real because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. We know Fort Knox, but what about Henry Knox, the burly Boston bookseller who took over the American artillery at the age of 25? Eighteen counties in the United States commemorate Richard Montgomery, but do we know that this revered martyr launched a full-scale invasion of Canada? The soldiers of the American Revolution were a diverse lot: merchants and mechanics, farmers and fishermen, paragons and drunkards. Most were ardent amateurs. Even George Washington, assigned to take over the army around Boston in 1775, consulted books on military tactics. Here, Jack Kelly vividly captures the fraught condition of the war--the bitterly divided populace, the lack of supplies, the repeated setbacks on the battlefield, and the appalling physical hardships. That these inexperienced warriors could take on and defeat the superpower of the day was one of the remarkable feats in world history.

Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency by Logan Beirne - Blood of Tyrants reveals the surprising details of our Founding Fathers' approach to government and this history's impact on today. Delving into the forgotten--and often lurid--facts of the Revolutionary War, Logan Beirne focuses on the nation's first commander in chief, George Washington, as he shaped the very meaning of the United States Constitution in the heat of battle. Key episodes illustrate how the Founders dealt with thorny wartime issues: Who decides war strategy? When should we use military tribunals over civilian trials? Should we inflict harsh treatment on enemy captives if it means saving American lives? How do we protect citizens' lights when the nation is struggling to defend itself? Beirne finds evidence in previously-unexplored documents such as General Washington's letters debating torture, an eyewitness account of the military tribunal that executed a British prisoner, Founders' letters warning against government debt, and communications pointing to a power struggle between Washington and the Continental Congress. Vivid stories from the Revolution frame Washington's pivotal role in the drafting of the Constitution. The Founders saw the first American commander in chief as the template for all future presidents: a leader who would fiercely defend Americans' rights and liberties against all forms of aggression. Blood of Tyrants pulls the reader directly into the scenes, filling the void in our understanding of the presidency and our ingenious Founders' pragmatic approach to issues we still face today.

The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson - Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other masterly books about World War II, has long been admired for his unparalleled ability to write deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative history. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he tells the story of the first twenty months of the bloody struggle to shake free of King George's shackles. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, the ragtag Continental Army takes on the world's most formidable fighting force and gradually finds the will and the way to win. It is a riveting saga populated by singular characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of how best to deploy artillery; Nathaniel Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes one of America's greatest battle captains; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves himself the nation's greatest diplomat; George Washington, the commander-in-chief who learns the difficult art of leadership amid the fire and smoke of the battlefield. And the British are here, too: we see the war through their eyes and their gunsights, and as a consequence the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels is all the more compelling. Full of fresh details and untold stories, The British Are Coming gives stirring new life to the first act of our country's creation drama. It is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. But once begun, the war for independence can have only one of two outcomes: death or victory.

Igniting the American Revolution: 1773-1775 by Derek W. Beck - The Revolutionary War did not begin with the Declaration of Independence, but several years earlier in 1773. In this gripping history, Derek W. Beck reveals the full story of the war before American independence -- from both sides. Spanning the years 1773-1775 and drawing on new material from meticulous research and previously unpublished documents, letters, and diaries, Igniting the American Revolution sweeps readers from the rumblings that led to the Boston Tea Party to the halls of Parliament -- where Ben Franklin was almost run out of England for pleading on behalf of the colonies -- to that fateful Expedition to Concord which resulted in the shot heard round the world. With exquisite detail and keen insight, Beck brings revolutionary America to life in all its enthusiastic and fiery patriotic fervor, painting a nuanced portrait of the perspectives, ambitions, people, and events on both the British and the American sides that eventually would lead to the convention in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Captivating, provocative and inspiring, Igniting the American Revolution is the definitive history of these landmark years in our nation's history, whose events irrevocably altered the future not only of the United States and England, but the whole world.

Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution by Thomas P. Slaughter - "What do we mean by the Revolution?" John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson in 1815. "The war? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it." As the distinguished historian Thomas P. Slaughter shows in this landmark book, the long process of revolution reached back more than a century before 1776, and it touched on virtually every aspect of the colonies' laws, commerce, social structures, religious sentiments, family ties, and political interests. And Slaughter's comprehensive work makes clear that the British who chose to go to North America chafed under imperial rule from the start, vigorously disputing many of the colonies' founding charters.
When the British said the Americans were typically "independent," they meant to disparage them as lawless and disloyal. But the Americans insisted on their moral courage and political principles, and regarded their independence as a great virtue, as they regarded their love of freedom and their loyalty to local institutions. Over the years, their struggles to define this independence took many forms, and Slaughter's compelling narrative takes us from New England and Nova Scotia to New York and Pennsylvania, and south to the Carolinas, as colonists resisted unsympathetic royal governors, smuggled to evade British duties on imported goods (tea was only one of many), and, eventually, began to organize for armed uprisings.
Britain, especially after its victories over France in the 1750s, was eager to crush these rebellions, but the Americans' opposition only intensified, as did dark conspiracy theories about their enemies--whether British, Native American, or French.
In Independence, Slaughter resets and clarifies the terms in which we may understand this remarkable evolution, showing how and why a critical mass of colonists determined that they could not be both independent and subject to the British Crown. By 1775-76, they had become revolutionaries--going to war only reluctantly, as a last-ditch means to preserve the independence that they cherished as a birthright.

Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard - Told through the eyes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Great Britain's King George III, Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the reader from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe. What started as protest and unrest in the colonies soon escalated to a world war with devastating casualties. O'Reilly and Dugard recreate the war's landmark battles, including Bunker Hill, Long Island, Saratoga, and Yorktown, revealing the savagery of hand-to-hand combat and the often brutal conditions under which these brave American soldiers lived and fought. Also here is the reckless treachery of Benedict Arnold and the daring guerrilla tactics of the "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776 by Richard R. Beeman - In 1768, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush stood before the empty throne of King George III, overcome with emotion as he gazed at the symbol of America's connection with England. Eight years later, he became one of the fifty-six men to sign the Declaration of Independence, severing America forever from its mother country. Rush was not alone in his radical decision--many of those casting their votes in favor of independence did so with a combination of fear, reluctance, and even sadness.
In Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor, acclaimed historian Richard R. Beeman examines the grueling twenty-two-month period between the meeting of the Continental Congress on September 5, 1774 and the audacious decision for independence in July of 1776. As late as 1774, American independence was hardly inevitable--indeed, most Americans found it neither desirable nor likely. When delegates from the thirteen colonies gathered in September, they were, in the words of John Adams, "a gathering of strangers." Yet over the next two years, military, political, and diplomatic events catalyzed a change of unprecedented magnitude: the colonists' rejection of their British identities in favor of American ones. In arresting detail, Beeman brings to life a cast of characters, including the relentless and passionate John Adams, Adams' much-misunderstood foil John Dickinson, the fiery political activist Samuel Adams, and the relative political neophyte Thomas Jefferson, and with profound insight reveals their path from subjects of England to citizens of a new nation.

Revolution Song: The Story of America's Founding in Six Remarkable Lives by Russell Shorto - "In his epic new book, Russell Shorto takes us back to the founding of the American nation, drawing on diaries, letters and autobiographies to flesh out six lives that cast the era in a fresh new light. They include an African man who freed himself and his family from slavery, a rebellious young woman who abandoned her abusive husband to chart her own course, and a certain Mr. Washington, who was admired for his social graces but harshly criticized for his often-disastrous military strategy. Through these lives we understand that the revolution was fought over the meaning of individual freedom, a philosophical idea that became a force for violent change. A powerful narrative and a brilliant defense of American values, Revolution Song makes the compelling case that the American Revolution is still being fought today and that its ideals are worth defending.

The Strategy of Victory: How General George Washington Won the American Revolution by Thomas J. Fleming - Led by the Continental Congress, the Americans almost lost their war for independence because their military thinking was badly muddled. The embryo nation narrowly escaped from the disastrous results of these misconceptions thanks to the levelheaded intelligence of one man: General George Washington. Following the flush of small victories in 1775, patriot leaders were convinced that the key to victory was the homegrown militia--local men defending their families and homes. Washington knew that having and maintaining an army of regular professional soldiers was the only way to win independence. He fought bitterly with the leaders in Congress over the creation of a regular army. In the end, he and his army prevailed. In Strategy of Victory, prolific historian Thomas Fleming examines the battles that created American independence, revealing how the strategy of a professional army, backed by a corps of citizen soldiers determined to fight for their freedom, worked on the battlefield, securing victory, independence and a lasting peace for the young nation.

Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It by John E. Ferling - Written in the authoritative and narrative-driven style that has made his books critical and commercial successes, John Ferling's Whirlwind will become the definitive history of the American Revolution for our time. This master historian illuminates the years 1763 to 1783--from the end of the French and Indian War that left England triumphant in North America to the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the final departure of British troops from New York City. Embracing characters both celebrated and unknown, Ferling chronicles the myriad and complex events and contentious viewpoints that drove Americans in their insurgency against Great Britain and sustained them in the seemingly quixotic belief that they could win their independence. He takes us to the halls of power in Parliament and the streets of London to view the Revolution from British perspectives. He presents the individual battles--from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown---in a fresh and dramatic new light. With a wide scope and insight, John Ferling brings the most important event in America's long history to a new generation of American readers.