Best Revolutionary War books

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you choose to buy, it supports the site at no extra cost to you. The Revolutionary War doesn’t get the shelf space the Civil War or World War II gets, but the writing about it holds up. This is the founding conflict, argued over in taverns and decided in swamps and snowdrifts, and the best books about it treat it as the near thing it actually was. Washington lost more battles than he won. The whole project nearly came apart more than once. I’ve kept this list to history and biography, the books that explain what happened and why it went the way it did. For the fiction built on top of this history, see the companion list: Best Revolutionary War novels. The best Revolutionary War books 1776 (2005) by David McCullough McCullough narrows the entire war down to one year, the worst year, when Washington’s army nearly came apart before it had a chance to become an army. He works from soldiers’ letters and diaries more than from official reports, so the cold, the desertions, and the retreat across New Jersey are the way they must have felt to the men living through them. It’s the easiest entry point on this list, written for people who don’t ...