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Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution
Price $37.50Hardcover
Special Order
Woody Holton
Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes WOODY HOLTON—the award-winnng author of Abigail Adams and Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution—for a discussion of his latest book, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution. He will be joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian ANNETTE GORDON-REED, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Using more than a thousand eyewitness accounts, Liberty Is Sweet explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes.
Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics.
Liberty Is Sweet gives us our most complete account of the American Revolution, from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.
