BOOK REVIEW: Fighting for Philadelphia: Forts Mercer and Mifflin, the Battle of Whitemarsh, and the Road to Valley Forge, October 5-December 19, 1777 by Michael C. Harris (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2025) When examining the 1777 Philadelphia campaign, historians often skip from the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown, in September and early October, […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR Contributor Josh Wheeler on Loyalist David Fanning’s raid against Patriots in North Carolina after the British surrender at Yorktown. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. Each […]
BOOK REVIEW: Winning the Ten Crucial Days: The Keys to Victory in George Washington’s Legendary Winter Campaign by David Price (Brookline Books, 2025) David Price’s Winning the Ten Crucial Days examines Gen. George Washington’s military campaign from December 25, 1776 to January 3, 1777. This short period was one of the most pivotal moments in […]
Philadelphia, The Revolutionary City exhibit at the American Philosophical Society (founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743) positions the historic city as the most consistently politically engaged throughout the war. While New York was occupied by the British for a large portion of the war and Boston saw action at the onset and beginning of the […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR Contributor David Price on the life of Lemuel Haynes, clergyman and an abolitionist voice in the Revolutionary Era. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and the JAR Dispatches web site. […]
This July Fourth, JAR contributors will once again provide more than two hours of Revolutionary talk on Radio Nemo, the station dedicated to the trucking industry, hosted by legendary host Dave Nemo. This year’s lineup features Shawn McGhee, Nancy Spannaus, Gary Ecelbarger, Jane Hampton Cook, with the interviews beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern on July […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR Contributor Eric Sterner about frontiersman Samuel Brady and his rescue of Jane Stoops from an Indigenous war party. While the event may be true, did it happen the way the later stories recalled? New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR Contributor David P. Ervin on the 13th Virginia Regiment’s controversial redeployment from the western frontier to the east to join the main Continental army. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening(Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America by Vaughn Scribner (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024) $29.95 Paperback Historians’ interest in the environment has remade our understanding of the past in recent years. We are now more inclined to appreciate the role that […]
BOOK REVIEW: Virginia in the American Revolution by Charles A. Mills (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2025) $24.95 paperback Why were Revolutionary War events in Virginia significant, and what was it like to reside in the rebelling colony? Charles A. Mills, a historian and prolific author, answers these questions in his new book on Virginia’s […]
BOOK REVIEW: John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence by Willard Sterne Randall (Dutton, 2025). Trends of historical research over the past few decades have steadily moved away from the “Great Man” study of the past that produced a slew of works on singular characters of important periods in favor of […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian JAR Contributor Elizabeth Reese about the life of George Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis, whose life began to spiral after the President’s passing. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon […]
“He is one of those who fought in the Revolutionary War for that Independence which the people of this Country now enjoy. That whilst his country had need of his services . . . he did not remain at home ‘idle in his cabin,’ but went wherever his country call[ed], & his General dared to […]
BOOK REVIEW: Shots Heard Round the World: American, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War by John Ferling. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025) $40.00 Hardcover. John Ferling gives readers another history of the American Revolution with his 2025 work, Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War. Despite that label in this […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and distinguished professor Franklin D. Rausch on an early, pivotal battle between Patiots (Whigs) and Loyalists in South Carolina, with the Loyalists trying to dislodge the Whigs from their strong point at Savages’ Old Fields. The battle was instrumental in drawing up the lines of what […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780 by Rick Atkinson (Crown, 2025) $42.00 Hardcover The revolt that led to the loss of its thirteen Atlantic coast colonies was one of the slowest moving train wrecks in the storied history of the British Empire. Beginning as early […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews Molly Fortune, chief executive officer of South Carolina’s 250th anniversary initiatives, including the publication of the first volume of the Francis Marion Papers. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
BOOK REVIEW: From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the American Revolution by John R. Maass (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2025) $30.00 hardcover. John R. Maass produced a very readable and enjoyable narrative with the publication of his recent text. In his introduction the author points out that warfare remains an important component of human […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Michael Cecere about how each colony prepared its militia as war with Great Britain became more of a possibility in 1774 and 1775. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America by Kostya Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2025) The story of Paul Revere’s ride through the Massachusetts countryside on the night of April 18-19, 1775, to warn that British troops were on the march, is so familiar that people might believe there […]
BOOK REVIEW: Threshold to Valley Forge: The Six Days of the Gulph Mills Encampment by Sheilah D. Vance (Havertown, PA: Brookline Books, 2025) $24.95 Paperback. As the crow flies, the region west of Matson’s Ford and known as “The Gulph” loomed a mere dozen miles northwest of Philadelphia. The nearly weeklong encampment of George Washington […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Jude Pfister. The Federalist Papers stand amongst the most important documents from the Revolutionary era, and they are being reevaluated for a new era. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), first on iTunes, Stitcher, […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4-13, 1781 by Matthew E. Reardon. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2024.) Hardcover $35.95 Matthew E. Reardon gives scholarship on the traitor Benedict Arnold a new addition with his 2024 work, The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, […]
BOOK REVIEW: Robert Rogers, Ranger: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by Martin Klotz. (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2024). $32.50 hardcover. In 1940, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies released “Northwest Passage,” a rather loose adaptation of Kenneth Roberts’ book by the same name.[1] In it, well-liked and respected hero-figure Robert Rogers leads a skilled and disciplined […]
BOOK REVIEW: An American Triumph: America’s Founding Era Through the Lives of Ben Franklin, George Washington, and John Adams by Tom Hand (Americana Corner Press, 2023) $35.00 Hardcover. Tom Hand’s An American Triumph examines the lives of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and John Adams. Hand, a West Point graduate, created the website “Americana Corner” in […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793 by Patrick Spero (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024) $34.95 Hardcover Dreary as they may have been, the COVID lockdowns had a few positive consequences; they did give some historians, among them Patrick Spero, the Chief Executive Officer of the […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews author and JAR contributor Andrew Lawler about Virginia Royal Governor John Murray, Lord Dunmore’s decision to begin arming enslaved men in service to the Crown. Murray’s actions sent shockwaves across the colony. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Sunday evening (Eastern United States Time), […]
BOOK REVIEW: Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic by Lindsay M. Chervinsky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024) $34.99 hardcover It was the January term of my final year at Pacific Lutheran University. Thoroughly over the college experience (man cannot live on Hot Pockets and Diet Mountain Dew alone), […]
BOOK REVIEW: Washington’s Marines: The Origin of the Corps and the American Revolution, 1775-1777 by Jason Q. Bohm. (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2023) $34.95 hardcover “In December [1776] he [Major Samuel Nicholas] was ordered to march with three companies of Marines to the Jerseys to be under his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief, and continue […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Robert J. Walworth on the competing claims of New York and New Hampshire settlers in the region that ultimately became Vermont. The dispute gave rise the the Green Mountain Boys who defended the New Hampshire Grants against more recent claims from New York. New episodes […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis by M. Andrew Holowchak (Vernon Press, 2024). In The Disease of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, History, & Liberty: A Philosophical Analysis, author M. Andrew Holowchak situates Thomas Jefferson’s political ideology within a philosophical framework and positions Jefferson as a great philosopher of […]
BOOK REVIEW: A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution by Andrew Lawler (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025) $30.00 Hardcover Andrew Lawler’s recent text artfully focuses on an important and understudied American Revolutionary period, Virginia in 1775 and 1776, and topic, slavery. The title, A […]
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: The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter by Dennis C. Rasmussen (University Press of Kansas, 2023) The Constitution stands as the foundation of the United States’ government and political system, a point on which all Americans can agree even as they dispute how the document should be interpreted. […]
BOOK REVIEW: Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter by Andrew Waters (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2024) $34.95 Cloth In his Epilogue to Backcountry War, The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Sumter, Andrew Waters states he wrote the book for himself to better understand his childhood exposure to […]
BOOK REVIEW: Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution by Christopher R. Pearl (University of Virginia Press, 2024. $33.95 Paperback) Christopher Pearl’s Declarations of Independence seeks to highlight diverse experiences, motivations, and differing views on independence. Historians have examined these topics before from an ideological and theoretical point of view, […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews historian and JAR contributor Blake McGready on how Continental soldiers attempted to master the unfamiliar environment of the Hudson Highlands in order to secure the area from British control. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor Paul B. Elmore about why James Easton attempted to discredit Benedict Arnold during the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, setting off a long-standing feud. New episodes of Dispatches are available for free every Saturday evening (Eastern United States Time) on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Amazon Music, and […]
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 […]
