Throughout his life George Washington amassed an impressive personal collection of over ninety maps and atlases. Upon his death, a selection of those maps was bound together into an atlas (now owned by Yale University) and used as the foundation for George Washington's America: A Biography Through His Maps by Barnet Schecter. Twenty-six of his maps, depicting locations from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia to the western coast of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, have been reproduced in rich detail and full color. The maps highlight the prominent role of geography in shaping Washington's personal, military, and political outlook. In crafting this unique biography, Schecter interweaves Washington's maps with his correspondence and other writings to produce a narrative portrait that interprets his life as a surveyor, military commander, president, and finally private citizen and land speculator.

In A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America, James E. McWilliams takes the reader on a culinary tour of Colonial America - from the British West Indies to the regional cuisines of the Thirteen Colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. The meat of the book focuses on the many ways British colonists, Native Americans, and African slaves influenced and adapted to new ingredients, landscapes, cooking methods, and attitudes about food. We also learn about the evolution of regional American foodways from the self-sufficient farms of New England to the establishment of rice as the staple cash crop in the Carolinas.

Based on real events from the Revolutionary War, this children's book tells the story of the enduring friendship between George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. The story begins with their first meeting in the summer of 1777, and follows Washington and Lafayette as they encounter a parade in Philadelphia, review the troops together, and fight at the Battle of Brandywine-where Lafayette was wounded. Filled with full-page, color illustrations and excerpts from Lafayette's writings, this book is suitable for grades 3 and up!

This week's featured book explores the relationship between colonists and their king in colonial British America beginning with the Glorious Revolution in 1688. By looking at colonists' daily lives, annual celebrations, and writings, Brendan McConville argues that there was a strong emotional attachment to Great Britain's monarchs during this period that has been overlooked by earlier historians. By focusing on this relationship between king and subject, the book traces the colonists' growing disenchantment with King George during the 1760s and 1770s-culminating with the events of 1776.

In the following excerpt from The King's Three Face: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776, we learn about the physical and symbolic destruction of objects associated with the Monarchy. These actions signaled the tragic and radical rupture with the King and royal America.

In journalist Charles Rappleye's hefty biography of Robert Morris, we learn about the rise and fall of one of America's founding fathers. Morris-a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution-is largely remembered for his financial contributions to the war effort through his shipping and banking company, Willing & Morris. A member of the Pennsylvania Council of Safety and the Continental Congress, Morris used his merchant network to equip the Continental Army with gun powder, weapons, and other supplies. He is also credited with raising the necessary funds that allowed General George Washington to move the army to Yorktown in the fall of 1781. After the war, Morris invested heavy in several ruinous land speculation schemes, resulting in him spending three years in debtor's prison. He died in the spring of 1806 and is buried at Christ Church in Philadelphia.

The year 1778 saw the entry of France into the American War for Independence and the exit of William Howe-Commander in Chief of the British Army in America since 1775. Taking over for Howe, Henry Clinton faced a bigger challenge than his predecessor, he was now fighting a global war against the rebelling colonies and their European ally. Receiving new commands from Lord George Germain, principal Secretary of State for American affairs, General Clinton was ordered to send troops to protect British interests along the Atlantic-from Nova Scotia to the West Indies. Further, Germain wrote to Clinton that an "attack should be made upon the Southern Colonies, with a view to the conquest & possession of Georgia and South Carolina." Needing to provision the army for the campaigns ahead, Clinton spent the summer and fall of 1778 foraging in the counties around New York City, including Bergen County, NJ and Westchester County, NY.

Alan Taylor’s The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 addresses the paradoxical and complex subject of slavery in a state dedicated to ideals of liberty and freedom, yet that still enslaved two-fifths of their population. As the book’s title suggests, white Virginians viewed their enslaved populations as an “internal enemy,” enticed by the British to run away from their masters and mount an armed rebellion against them during the American Revolution. Therefore, when the British returned to the Chesapeake during the War of 1812, invading plantations and freeing slaves, Virginians faced another wave of fear of this “internal enemy” that further deepened the state’s commitment to slavery in the early decades of the 19th century.

Military historian Patrick O'Donnell's Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution tells the dramatic story of the First Maryland Regiment and the War for Independence. Known as Smallwood's Battalion, the First Maryland Regiment was present at many of the major battles of the Revolutionary War, including the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Camden, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, and Yorktown.

First published in 1980, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America is now considered both a foundational text in the field of women's history and a defining work for the history of early America. In this groundbreaking study of women's letters, diaries, and legal records, Linda Kerber revealed new insights in how women exercised their rights as political beings and examined the rise of the "Republic Motherhood" ideology. From a woman's perspective the American Revolution was a "strongly politicizing experience," as women served the war effort as nurses, cooks, laundresses, and sometimes as soldiers and spies. In the wake of the war women found themselves in the new Republic without a clear political role and so they shifted their political energies to nurturing civic virtue in their sons and daughters.

Nathaniel Philbrick's Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution offers an intriguing look at perhaps the two most famous men to emerge from the Revolutionary War-one hailed a hero, the other a villain. The story follows Arnold's fall from one of Washington's greatest generals to America's most legendary traitor. We learn how Arnold's anger after being overlooked for promotion by the Continental Congress, coupled with the loss of his personal fortune and debilitating war injuries, led him to sell his loyalty to the British. Juxtaposed against Arnold's fall is the story of George Washington's rise, and Philbrick portrays the commander in chief as one whose greatest attribute was an "extraordinary ability to learn and improve amid...challenging circumstances."