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Happy Birthday, America! January 2026 kicks off America’s semiquincentennial commemoration—250 years of independence from Great Britain. Let your library card invite you to the birthday banquet of books below. No time for a feast? Find the perfect Revolutionary War energy bar. At the appetizer table, sample any gourmet documents that strike your fancy. Savor a soup simmered from rich stories of common people. Select either or both of the heartiest main courses, each a superbly crafted, award-winning history. And for an off-beat desert selection, try a revolutionary novel that takes the cake! What are you waiting for? Dig in!!
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The American Revolution: a history by Gordon S. Wood
If you don't have time for a whole banquet, this brief book is the world-class energy bar of Revolutionary War history—packed tight with delicious nutrient-dense brain food that’s easy to digest. Gordon S. Wood, a longtime Brown University professor and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, synthesizes the causes, character and consequences of the war that “thirteen insignificant British colonies" waged against “the greatest and richest empire since the history of Rome.” You’ll finish this book with a clear understanding of the war’s “disruptive and creative force” that paved the way for 250 more years of American history.
The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence edited by John Rhodehamel
These mouthwatering appetizers, prepared by Library of America, present Revolutionary War history in the actual words of those who were there, with notes, thumbnail biographies and a chronology to pave the way. Dip into a curated collection of more than 120 public and private documents, bearing witness to a sweeping variety of Revolutionary era voices and viewpoints. On the first page, find Paul Revere’s own words about his famous ride. On the last, you witness as “the General’s hand which held the address shook as he read it.” The general? George Washington, of course, resigning as the Continental Army’s commander-in-chief.
A People’s History of the American Revolution by Ray Raphael
Your soup course simmers together stories of how "real people, not paper heroes” shaped the fight for independence. Historian Raphael Ray writes: “It’s time to replace, or at least supplement, the traditional picture of the Revolution with an elaborate mosaic of new scenes and different characters.” He devotes chapters to different participants: rebels, fighters, women, loyalists and pacifists, Native Americans and African Americans. “(T)he American Revolution was our first civil war, pitting neighbors against neighbors and splitting families apart,” Ray writes. “Much of the violence, unsanctioned by any formal military organization, took place in houses and barns and public streets....”
The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
Craving a main course smothered in prestigious prizes like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award? Savor this penetrating look at America's origin story. Annette Gordon-Reed foregrounds Thomas Jefferson’s “human property” to tell a multi-generational “story of slavery, intertwined families, pain, loss, silence, denial, and endurance.” Or how about insightful, cinematic Revolutionary War history? Feast on The British Are Coming and The Fate of The Day, the first two volumes of Pulitzer Prizewinner Rick Atkinson's Revolutionary War Trilogy. Meet King George III on his finest day, then witness his miscalculation to control the "deluded Americans.” The rest, ahem, is history.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Dessert! Scoop up this young adult novel, where computer camp and social studies class forge accidental American revolutionaries. Techy teens, skipping school when a massive bomb explodes, are imprisoned, tortured and released. How to fight back against “Gulag America?” By beating the powerful and paranoid surveillance state at its own game. Cory Doctorow does for ethical hacking what John le Carré did for espionage, plunging readers deep into the nitty gritty of how hackers outthink the bad guys. Ragtag ringleader Marcus Yallow schools classmates on the Declaration of Independence. “Freedom,” he says, “is something you have to take for yourself.”
About the Author
Barbara Cornell is a Library Associate at the William O. Lockridge Bellevue Neighborhood Library. She grew up in Michigan, where the public library across the street from her house was a first declaration of independence. Since then, she has lived in five countries and always finds a home in books. She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Washington, DC.