Bibliographica Robertsiana

What books line the shelves of Manley Roberts and Robert James about the American Revolution? Wonder ye nae more!

Rob James

December 16, 2025

Play Dueling Banjos from the romcom date-movie Deliverance while glancing back and forth at these great bookshelves.

Manley and I will annotate (and alphabetize) these books and others over time. Like the Constitution, notwithstanding the views of any originalists, this bibliography is a breathing document, “the skin of a living thought.”

Rick Atkinson, The British are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775 – 1777 (2019) – the first volume of a planned Revolutionary War trilogy

Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day:  The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777 – 1780 (2025) – the second volume of the trilogy

[Volume 3 of the trilogy when it comes out]

Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice 1763 – 1789 (1983))

Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 to 1789 (1982)

Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution (1997) (a coffee table book)

John Ferling, Almost a Miracle:  The American Victory in the War of Independence (2007)

American Battlefield Trust, Battle Maps of the American Revolution (2021)

Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers:  The Revolutionary Generation (2000)

Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (2004)

J.P. Martin, Private Yankee Doodle: Being a Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Solider (2002 ed.) 

David McCulloch, John Adams (2001)

David McCulloch, 1776 (2005)

Nathaniel Philbrick, Valiant Ambition:  George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (2016)

John Pancake, 1777: The Year of the Hangman (1977)

Patrick O’Donnell, Washington’s Immortals:  The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution (2016)

John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the South (1997)

Dan Morrill, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution (publication date unclear)

Lawrence Babits, A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens (1998) (a dense, technical history of the battle)

Andrew Waters, ed., Battle of Cowpens:  Primary & Contemporary Accounts (2019)

Jim Stempel, American Hannibal:  The Extraordinary Account of Revolutionary War Hero Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens (2017)

John Knight, War at Saber Point:  Banaster Tarleton and the British Legion (2020)

Kenneth Roberts, Battle of Cowpens (1957)

Andrew Waters, To the End of the World:  Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis and the Race to the Dan (2020)

Alexander Rose, Washington’s Spies:  The Story of America’s First Spy Ring (2006)

Thomas Allen, George Washington, Spymaster: How the Americans Outspied the British and Won the Revolutionary War (2004) (geared for young people, but enjoyed it)

Steven Waldman, Founding Faith:  Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (2008)

Raoul Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (1976)

Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (1969) (many have been baffled—what did the colonists have to be so angry about? Colonists had principles before they really had grievances) (Joseph Warren (1775): I “hope that Britain’s liberty, as well as ours, will eventually be preserved by the virtues of America”).

Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers (2001) (Alfred North Whitehead said the only two times a new power emerged in which the leadership performed as well as could be expected were Caesar Augustus and the founding of the US).