Patriots (Langguth)

A narrative history of the American Revolution from the Stamp Act through Yorktown, written by a newspaperman and told almost entirely through the people who made it happen — Samuel Adams, Otis, Hancock, Washington, Franklin, Henry, Arnold — with each chapter built around a figure and a scene rather than around a cause. The approach is reportorial: Langguth reconstructs what individuals said and did at particular moments and lets the political argument emerge from that.

Context: The list’s Revolution entry, and the pairing with The Founders and the Classics is the informative part — one book on what the founders did, one on what they had read.

Connections

• A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
• A. J. Langguth — the author, a former New York Times correspondent.
• Founding Fathers — the subject.
• Benjamin Franklin and George Washington — two of the figures the narrative follows.
• The Founders and the Classics — the companion on this list: the reading behind the generation this book narrates.
• History — narrative political history as a form.