Image courtesy of Colonial National Historical Park, Yorktown.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

2016 Harry M. Ward American Revolution Round Table of Richmond Book Award Winner

The 2016 winner of our annual book award is:

Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014).

Dr. Claudio Saunt is the Richard Russell Professor of History at the University of Georgia. In West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, he has given us a very different perspective on the year of Independence. While he ties his narrative to events in the East—the focus of most historians of the Revolution—his primary concern is with developments far to the west. Saunt pictures a North America in a state of dramatic and often violent change. In 1776, as American rebels were seceding from the British Empire, the Russians were exploring Alaska, the Spanish were settling San Francisco, and the Lakota Sioux first entered the Black Hills in modern South Dakota. On the California coast near San Diego the Kumeyaay Indians fought their own war of independence from the Spanish. Professor Saunt’s book challenges us to see the Revolutionary period through a new and fascinating lens. Compellingly written and based on deep and interesting research, West of the Revolution belongs on the book shelves of everyone interested in America’s formative years.

Honorable Mentions:
John Beakes, Otho Holland Williams in the American Revolution (Mount Pleasant, SC: Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co. of America, 2015).

Ethan A. Schmidt, Native Americans in the American Revolution: How the War Divided, Devastated, and Transformed the Early American Indian World (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014).

Robert M. Owens, Red Dreams, White Nightmares:  Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind, 1763-1815 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015).

Derek W. Beck, Igniting the American Revolution, 1773-1775 (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2015).

Marla Miller, Rebecca Dickinson: Independence for a New England Woman (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014).

Ken Miller, Dangerous Guests: Enemy Captives and Revolutionary Communities during the War for Independence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).

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