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Joseph Ellis

Courtesy of The Music Hall

“As usual, Ellis combines powerful narrative with convincing analysis. His tale of the crucial summer of 1776 shows how political and military events wove together to create a new nation. Read this book and understand how America was born.” –Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers and pre-eminent American historian Joseph Ellis returns to The Music Hall with his new book Revolutionary Summer, a revelatory portrait of a crescendo moment in American history. It is the summer of 1776, the most dramatic few months in the story of our country’s founding. The thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic, which cruised off the coast of Staten Island in early July. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make highly consequential decisions in reaction to events over which they had no control. In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis weaves the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other. Revolutionary Summer enlivens these familiar historical events with a compelling freshness.

Writers on a New England Stage is a co-production of New Hampshire Public Radio and The Music Hall in Portsmouth.

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