New Press People's History

A sweeping narrative of the wartime experience, A People's History of the American Revolution is the first book to view the Revolution through the eyes of common folk. Their stories have long been overlooked in the mythic telling of America's founding but are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the fight for independence. Now, the experience of farmers, laborers, rank-and-file soldiers, women, Native Americans, and African Americans-found in diaries, letters, memoirs, and other revelatory primary sources-create a gritty account of rebellion, filled with ideals and outrage, loss, sacrifice, and sometimes scurrilous acts . . . but always ringing with truth.

The acclaimed sweeping history of a nation at war with itself, told here for the first time by the people who lived it. Historian David Williams has written the first account of the American Civil War as viewed through the eyes of ordinary people-foot soldiers, slaves, women, prisoners of war, draft resisters, Native Americans, and others. Richly illustrated with little-known anecdotes and firsthand testimony, this path-breaking narrative moves beyond presidents and generals to tell a new and powerful story about America's most destructive conflict.