{"product_id":"the-cause-the-american-revolution-and-its-discontents-1773-1783-9781631498985","title":"The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn one of the most \"exciting and engaging\" (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis--one of our most celebrated scholars of American history--throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with \"surprising relevance\" (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with \u003cem\u003eFounding Brothers\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Cause\u003c\/em\u003e returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTaking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, \u003cem\u003eThe Cause\u003c\/em\u003e interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the \"band of brothers\"; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCountering popular histories that romanticize the \"Spirit of '76,\" Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of \"The Cause,\" a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding--slavery and the Native American dilemma--problematic at best.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten with the vivid and muscular prose for which Ellis is known, and with characteristically trenchant insight, \u003cem\u003eThe Cause\u003c\/em\u003e marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era. A landmark work of narrative history, it challenges the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people, and as a nation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEllis, Joseph J.:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cstrong\u003eJoseph J. Ellis\u003c\/strong\u003e is the best-selling author of twelve previous books, including \u003cem\u003eAmerican Sphinx\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the National Book Award, and \u003cem\u003eFounding Brothers\u003c\/em\u003e, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Plymouth, Vermont.","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50529295335698,"sku":"9781631498985","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_33ba5940-cffd-4ca0-ae23-01e3eacbc5b5.jpg?v=1731344233","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-cause-the-american-revolution-and-its-discontents-1773-1783-9781631498985","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}