Step back in time to the birth of the United States of America and meet the real-life rebels who made this country free! On a hot summer day near Philadelphia in 1776, Thomas Jefferson sat at his desk and wrote furiously until early the next morning. He was drafting the Declaration of Independence, a document that would sever this country's ties with Britain and announce a new nation—The United States of America. Colonists were willing to risk their lives for freedom, and the Declaration of Independence made that official. Discover the true story of one of the most radical and uplifting documents in history and follow the action that fueled the Revolutionary War.

Preoccupied with the spectacle of sincerity, the quest for a natural language led paradoxically to a greater theatricalization of public speaking as well as to a new social dramaturgy and a deeply self-conscious performative understanding of selfhood. Concerned with recovering what was assumed but not spoken in the realm of eighteenth-century speech and action, the book treats Jefferson (whose fascination with Homer, Ossian, Patrick Henry, and music theory all relate to the new oratorical ideal) as a conflicted participant in the new rhetoric and a witness to its social costs and benefits

No event in American history was more pivotal-or more furiously contested-than Congress's decision to declare independence in July 1776. Even months after American blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, many colonists remained loyal to Britain. John Adams, a leader of the revolutionary effort, said bringing the fractious colonies together was like getting "thirteen clocks to strike at once." Other books have been written about the Declaration, but no author has traced the political journey from protest to Revolution with the narrative scope and flair of John Ferling. Independence takes readers from the cobblestones of Philadelphia into the halls of Parliament, where many sympathized with the Americans and furious debate erupted over how to deal with the rebellion. Independence is not only the story of how freedom was won, but how an empire was lost. At this remarkable moment in history, high-stakes politics was intertwined with a profound debate about democracy, governance, and justice. John Ferling, drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, brings this passionate struggle to life as no other historian could. Independence will be hailed as the finest work yet from the author Michael Beschloss calls "a national resource."

In Resisting Independence, Brad A. Jones maps the loyal British Atlantic's reaction to the American Revolution. Through close study of four important British Atlantic port cities—New York City; Kingston, Jamaica; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Glasgow, Scotland—Jones argues that the revolution helped trigger a new understanding of loyalty to the Crown and empire. This compelling account reimagines Loyalism as a shared transatlantic ideology, no less committed to ideas of liberty and freedom than the American cause and not limited to the inhabitants of the thirteen American colonies. Jones reminds readers that the American Revolution was as much a story of loyalty as it was of rebellion. Loyal Britons faced a daunting task—to refute an American Patriot cause that sought to dismantle their nation's claim to a free and prosperous Protestant empire. For the inhabitants of these four cities, rejecting American independence thus required a rethinking of the beliefs and ideals that framed their loyalty to the Crown and previously drew together Britain's vast Atlantic empire. Resisting Independence describes the formation and spread of this new transatlantic ideology of Loyalism. Loyal subjects in North America and across the Atlantic viewed the American Revolution as a dangerous and violent social rebellion and emerged from twenty years of conflict more devoted to a balanced, representative British monarchy and, crucially, more determined to defend their rights as British subjects. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, as their former countrymen struggled to build a new nation, these loyal Britons remained convinced of the strength and resilience of their nation and empire and their place within it.

High school student Michael comes to terms with the fact that he is gay, and on July 4th, Independence Day, decides to tell his best friend Todd of his true feelings toward him.

This ethnohistory uses colonial-era native-language texts written by Nahuas to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The book offers the first internal ethnographic view of central Mexican indigenous communities in the critical time of independence, when modern Mexican Spanish developed its unique character, founded on indigenous concepts of space, time, and grammar. The Aztecs at Independence opens a window into the cultural life of writers, leaders, and worshippers--Nahua women and men in the midst of creating a vibrant community.

We hoped, desperately, that they came in peace. We were wrong. Thirty years after the Second Swarm War devastated Earth and its colonies, a powerful, mysterious alien ship has invaded our space. Entire planets are ravaged, whole moons shattered. Any starship sent against it never comes home. But Admiral Proctor, a war hero from our last brush with annihilation, is called out of retirement to take the reins of humanity's newest starship. The ISS Independence and her crew, with Admiral Proctor at the helm, will stand as Earth's last defense. Somehow, against all odds, they will save us, even when our enemy is not just an unstoppable alien ship, but a ghost from humanity's past bent on its utter destruction. And if they fail, we fall. For good.