The stirring events of the country's birth have been often represented in U.S. literature. It has given dramatic material to playwrights from William Dunlap to Maxwell Anderson, to novelists from James Fenimore Cooper and William G. Simms to S. Weir Mitchell, Paul Leicester Ford, Kenneth Roberts, and Howard Fast. Older histories, still read for their literary value, are those of George Bancroft, John Fiske, and G. O. Trevelyan.
Countless excellent studies have been made of particular aspects and incidents; some examples are H. E. Wildes, Valley Forge (1938); R. B. Morris, ed., The Era of the American Revolution (1939); C. Van Doren, Secret History of the American Revolution (1941); L. Montross, Rag, Tag and Bobtail: The Story of the Continental Army (1952); C. Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets: The Propaganda War of the American Revolution (1961); A. Heimert, Religion and the American Mind (1966); and J. W. Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots (1986).
For works of more general interest, see C. H. McIlwain, The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation (1923, repr. 1973); J. F. Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926, new ed. 1961); J. C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (1943, new ed. 1959); C. R. Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution (1954); L. H. Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution (“New American Nation” series, 1954); E. S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89 (1956); H. S. Commager and R. B. Morris, ed., Spirit of 'Seventy-Six (1958); S. F. Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (rev. ed. 1957); H. Peckham, The War for Independence (1958); R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959); B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967); R. B. Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered (1967, repr. 1979) and The American Revolution, 1763–1783 (as ed., 1971); J. P. Greene, ed. The Reinterpretation of the American Revolution (1968); M. Jensen, The Founding of a Nation (1968); J. R. Alden, A History of the American Revolution (1969); G. S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969, repr. 1998), The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), The American Revolution (2002), Revolutionary Characters (2006), and The Idea of America (2011); D. Higginbotham, The War of American Independence (1971); P. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution (1972); S. G. Kurtz and J. H. Hutson, Essay on the American Revolution (1973); K. Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (1976, repr. 1987); T. Draper, A Struggle for Power (1995); A. J. O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided (2000) and The Men Who Lost America (2013); J. J. Ellis, Founding Brothers (2000), American Creation (2007), and Revolutionary Summer (2013); J. Rhodehamel, ed., The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence (2001); D. H. Fischer, Washington's Crossing (2005); D. McCullough, 1776 (2005); S. Weintraub, Iron Tears (2005); J. Rakove, Revolutionaries (2010); T. N. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots (2010); J. Ferling, Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free (2011); M. Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War (2011); K. Philips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution (2012); C. Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (2014); K. DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (2015); A. Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1805 (2016); H. Hoock, Scars of Independence (2017); R. Atkinson, The British Are Coming (2019); S. R. Taaffe, Washington's Revolutionary War Generals (2019); T. Cole Jones, Captives of Liberty (2020).
See also bibliographies by T. R. Adams (2 vol., 1980) and R. L. Blanco (1983).
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