Timothy Symington has been contributing to the Journal of the American Revolution since 2019. He has written book reviews for other publications as well. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a Master of Arts degree in American history.
American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington by H. W. Brands (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2026) $40.00 hardcover. The prolific historian H. W. Brands has added to his Revolutionary Era portfolio (previous books include Founding Partisans, Heirs of the Founders and Our First Civil War) with his biography of His Excellency, American Patriarch: The Life […]
BOOK REVIEW: Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution by Brook Barbier (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2026) “Muddled.” “Buzzey.” “Jolly.” “Cherry Merry.” “Swallow’d a Tavern Token.” “Cat.” These terms are all euphemisms that describe someone who is inebriated. All of these words come to us courtesy of the great Dr. Benjamin […]
BOOK REVIEW: Fire and Freedom: The American Revolution in New York, edited by Thomas S. Wermuth, Devin Lander, Jennifer Lemak, Robert Chiles. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2026) $29.95 hardcover What region of the nation do people picture when they think of the setting of the American Revolution? It is certainly no surprise that New […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025) $31.00 hardcover. The latest book by Founding Brothers author Joseph J. Ellis brings the reader back to the meaning of what he has referred to as “The Cause,” that is, the ideals […]
BOOK REVIEW: Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England by Gloria McCahon Whiting. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) $39.95 hardcover. Massachusetts had no large plantations due to its harsh winters and rocky soil, and without the ability for cash crops to be grown successfully, the demand for enslaved […]
BOOK REVIEW: The American Revolution and the Fate of the World by Richard Bell (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2025) $35.00 hardcover University of Maryland professor Richard Bell’s latest work, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, shows how the North American struggle for independence from British control was a global conflict, changing […]
BOOK REVIEW: Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution by Ronald Angelo Johnson (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2025) The years between the two well-known peace treaties that ended conflicts in North America were a time of significant social upheaval. Two places in particular, the thirteen British colonies and the Caribbean […]
BOOK REVIEW: George Washington: His Quest for Honor and Fame by Peter R. Henriques (Charlottesville, VA: University of VA Press, 2025) $24.95 hardcover Famed Washington scholar Peter R. Henriques (author of Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington) turned the content of some recent talks given at Colonial Williamsburg into a brief “interpretive biography” of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Enemies to Their Country: The Marblehead Addressers and Consensus in the American Revolution by Nicholas W. Gentile. (Amherst and Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2025) Paperback, $32.95. The first book by independent historian Nicholas W. Gentile brings to light an almost completely unknown incident that occurred in the coastal town of Marblehead, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America by Tyson Reeder (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024) $35.00 cloth, $23.99 Kindle. Tyson Reeder, James Madison historian and history professor at the University of Virginia, explores the role of foreign empires/confederacies in his excellent book, Serpent in Eden: Foreign […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Jefferson and the Fight Against Slavery by Cara Rogers Stevens (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2024. Cloth, $54.99) Thomas Jefferson, although a mind-bogglingly prolific writer, strangely published only one book during his lifetime: Notes on the State of Virginia. From this reviewer’s experience, every mention of this book has been about […]
BOOK REVIEW: William Trent: Factor of Ambition by Jason A. Cherry. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunberry Press, 2024. $34.95 Paper) Independent historian Jason A. Cherry has turned an interest in the activities of an unfamiliar western merchant during the antebellum colonial period into a fascinating and interesting book. His biography William Trent: Factor of Ambition details the […]
BOOK REVIEW: Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution by Jack D. Warren, Jr. and the American Revolution Institute of The Society of the Cincinnati (Essex, CT: Lyons Press, 2023. $59.95 cloth) George Washington walked away from power when he resigned his commission to the Continental Congress in December 1783. King George III, on […]
BOOK REVIEW: Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics by H. W. Brands. (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2023. $32.50 cloth) “’We shall be tossed at any rate in the tempestuous sea of liberty for years to come, and where the bark can land but in a political convulsion I […]
BOOK REVIEW: The War of American Independence, 1763-1783: Falling Dominoes by Stanley D. M. Carpenter, Kevin J. Delamer, James R. McIntyre and Andrew T. Zwilling (New York, NY: Routledge, 2023) The War of American Independence, 1763-1783: Falling Dominoes is the latest addition to Routledge’s War and History series, and it is being marketed primarily as […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Times That Try Men’s Souls: The Adams, the Quincys, and the Battle for Loyalty in the American Revolution by Joyce Lee Malcolm. (New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2023) “All wars are dangerous and painful . . . But the very worst war, that can sever family relationships and bonds of friendship, that touches even those […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War by Des Ekin (Essex, CT: Prometheus Books, 2023) The war with the Barbary States is often referred to as the first war of the new United States, post-Revolution. President Thomas Jefferson has been given credit […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Charles Asgill Affair: Setting the Record Straight by Anne Ammundsen (Heritage Books, 2023) What happened to British officer Charles Asgill at the end of the American Revolution is not a frequently covered topic in histories of the Revolution, and the biographies of General George Washington that cover the “Asgill Affair”often put a inaccurately […]
BOOK REVIEW: To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, 1776-1782 by Mark Maloy (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie LLC, 2023) “Walking through historic Charleston, the sight of hundreds of 18th- and 19th-century buildings will transport you back in time. The sound of horse hooves clopping on the city streets echoes off the buildings and sea […]
BOOK REVIEW: East Florida in the Revolutionary Era 1763-1785 by George Kotlik (Athens, GA: NewSouth Books, University of Georgia Press, 2023) Historian and JAR contributor George Kotlik’s new book, East Florida in the Revolutionary Era 1765-1785, explores a topic that he considers to be on the fringe of Revolutionary War scholarship: East Florida. There is a […]
BOOK REVIEW: Remembering John Adams: The Second President in History, Memory and Popular Culture by Marianne Holdzkom (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2023) Marianne Holdzkom does not hide her fascination with John Adams anywhere in her book, Remembering John Adams: The Second President in History, Memory and Popular Culture. She starts off in the Preface explaining […]
BOOK REVIEW: American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation 1765-1795 by Edward J. Larson (New York, NY: WW Norton & Company, Inc., 2023) The 1619 Projectundeniably makes the case that American history can only be properly understood if slavery is a central pillar (perhaps THE central pillar). The peculiar institution was always […]
BOOK REVIEW: Samuel Elbert and the Age of Revolution in Georgia: 1740-1788 by Clay Outzts (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2022) Professor Clay Ouzts has given Revolutionary War scholars a lengthy but valuable chronicle of the war in the southern department in his book Samuel Elbert and the Age of Revolution in Georgia: 1740-1788. A figure […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh by Thomas S. Kidd (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022) There seems to be a reliable annual tradition of biographies about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson being published. What else can we learn about these American icons? Baylor University professor Thomas S. Kidd is […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown and Company, 2022) Stacy Schiff, who previously authored an acclaimed book on the Salem witch trials, The Witches: Salem, 1692 (2015), has written an excellent biography of who Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “man of the Revolution,” Samuel Adams. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams focuses on the activities […]
BOOK REVIEW: No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson by Gary S. Williams (University of Akron Press, 2022) The Founders with whom most Americans are familiar were all on the eastern seaboard: Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton. Librarian Gary S. Williams has delivered a thorough and extensive biography […]
BOOK REVIEW: Robert Morris: Inside the Revolution by Robert M. Morris (Waterville, OR: Trine Day LLC, 2022) Entrepreneur and inventor Robert M. Morris (no relation to the book’s subject) is the perfect channel to present the story of the American Revolution’s “forgotten” hero, Robert Morris. George Washington is Father of the Nation, James Madison is […]
BOOK REVIEW: Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 byRicardo A. Herrera (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2022) The myth of the Valley Forge winter encampment is that the Continental Army went through terrible conditions and heroically came out as a much more disciplined force in the end. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution by Eric Jay Dolan (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022) Marine historian Eric Jay Dolin, the author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates (2018) and Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (2007), has added to our understanding of […]
“The Chiefs Now in This City:” Indians and the Urban Frontier in Early America by Colin G. Calloway (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) BOOK REVIEW: In London in 1710, the four “Indian kings” went to see several plays and operas, as well as a Punch and Judy show. When they famously attended an operatic performance […]
BOOK REVIEW: These Distinguished Corps: British Grenadier and Light Infantry Battalions in the American Revolution by Don N. Hagist. (Warwick, England: Helion & Company, Limited, 2021) Don N. Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution (2012) and Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution (2020), has given Revolutionary War […]
BOOK REVIEW: William Hunter: Finding Free Speech—A British Soldier’s Son Who Became an Early American by Eugene A. Procknow (Mechanicsburg, PA: Sunbury Press, Inc., 2022) An unknown, virtually invisible figure finds his historical reputation established in William Hunter: Finding Free Speech—A British Soldier’s Son Who Became an Early American. Eugene A. Procknow, frequent contributor to the Journal […]
BOOK REVIEW: Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021) The eminent historian and author Gordon S. Wood has turned a series of recent lectures into his latest work, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution. The focus of the book is what Wood considers […]
BOOK REVIEW: Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution by Woody Holton (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021) Some historical narratives are plain and straight forward, almost like a Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece. The Mona Lisa is very explicit: you know exactly what the painting is about because the image is directly in front […]
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: An American Story by Daniel Bullen (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2021) There is truth to the adage that history is told by the victors. It is no coincidence that we are taught that the rebellion named after Pelham, Massachusetts, farmer Daniel Shays was the event that led to the Constitutional Convention. Massachusetts […]
FILM REVIEW: Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed. Directed by Chris Stearns. Executive Producers James Kirby Martin and Ray Raymond. (Talon Films Production, 2021) One of the most hated men in American history receives a different image in the Talon Films production Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed. Based on the book Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior […]
BOOK REVIEW: Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence by Robert G. Parkinson (Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2021) The final grievance that Thomas Jefferson included in the Declaration of Independence used blatantly racist language, making it […]
BOOK REVIEW: Decision At Brandywine: The Battle on Birmingham Hill by Robert M. Dunkerly (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021) Historian and National Park Ranger Robert M. Dunkerly begins his book with an admission that the Battle of Brandywine is his passion: “Brandywine has fascinated me since I was young” (page ix). What follows is an unusual […]
BOOK REVIEW: Surveying in Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History by Dan Patterson and Clinton Terry (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2021) One of the first things that people may learn about George Washington is that his earliest professional experience was in the field of surveying. He did this briefly, until his half-brother […]