By Alex, founder of Highstreett
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Best books about the American Revolution: six books on the war, both sides and the man who led it
Start with David McCullough's 1776 for one year of the war told from both camps, Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming for the opening campaigns with London's view kept in, or Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles for the Americans who sided with Britain and lost. Six books follow, grouped by the part of the Revolution you want rather than ranked, and every one of them came back from a Highstreett book search run for this page. Last verified 23 October 2026.
Edition and source checks: 23 October 2026.
What Highstreett returned for “best books about the American Revolution: the war of independence from both the American and British side, the founding fathers, the Declaration, ordinary people and loyalists, and novels set during the Revolution”
- 1776, David McCullough (2005)
- Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, Woody Holton (2021)
- The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, Rick Atkinson (2019)
- The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, Joseph J. Ellis (2015)
- Johnny Tremain: A Story of Boston in Revolt, Esther Forbes (1943)
- The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War, Bernard Cornwell (2009)
See this result · Run 23 October 2026. One request, without re-prompting.
Editor’s verdict: A strong first search. McCullough, Holton and Atkinson are the books a general reader is most likely to be pointed to, and it found two novels when asked. It strayed past the war with Ellis's The Quartet, which is about 1783 to 1789, and held back Maier and Bailyn on the Declaration, Jasanoff on the loyalists and O'Shaughnessy on the British leadership. It dated The Fort to 2009; it was published in 2010. Four of its six are on this page. The run started at 13:15 UK time and is shown unedited.
How this list was made: it starts from the Highstreett book search results above, run 23 October 2026 and shown as they came back. Alex, founder of Highstreett, chose the final list.
The American Revolution began as a quarrel over taxes and who governed the thirteen colonies, and became a war from 1775, when fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, to 1783, when Britain recognised the United States in the Treaty of Paris. The Declaration of Independence came in July 1776. For British readers it is also a story about Britain: the war was run from London, fought partly by German troops Britain hired, and it ended with tens of thousands of loyalists leaving for Canada, Britain and the Caribbean. The six books below take the war year by year, from below, from the British side, from the losers, through Washington, and as a novel.
This page was built from two searches on 23 October 2026: one asking for the war from both the American and the British side, the founders, the Declaration, ordinary people, loyalists and novels, and a second asking for more on the loyalists, the British view of losing America, the ideas behind the Declaration, Washington, enslaved people and Native Americans, and novels. Between them they returned ten different books. We checked each pick against a UK edition.
If you want one year of the war, told from both sides
Both searches returned this. It is the shortest book on the page.
1. 1776, David McCullough (2005)
Narrative military history · 386 pages · Readability: accessible · brisk and humane · battle deaths, disease in camp
McCullough follows a single year, from George III opening Parliament in October 1775 to Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the surprise attack on Trenton at the end of 1776. He moves between the two armies and their commanders, Washington, Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox on one side and William Howe on the other, and draws on soldiers' letters and diaries for how the war felt to the men in it. The British edition is subtitled America and Britain at War. Differs: almost all of it is the fighting around Boston and New York, so the politics and the Declaration itself stay in the background.
Edition source: Penguin paperback, 2006, 386 pages; £16.99 and in stock at Blackwell's on 23 October 2026. ISBN 9780141021713.
If you want the British side of the war
Both searches returned this, the second for its view from London.
3. The British Are Coming: The War for America, 1775-1777, Rick Atkinson (2019)
Narrative military history · 800 pages · Readability: long but fast · cinematic · battlefield violence, smallpox
Atkinson covers the first twenty-one months of the war, from Lexington and Concord to Washington's victory at Princeton in January 1777, and gives as much time to George III, his ministers and the British generals as to the rebels. It is the first book of his Revolution Trilogy; the second, The Fate of the Day, came out in 2025. It won the George Washington Prize. Differs: it stops in early 1777, so you need the next volume or another book for the rest of the war, and it is military history first.
Edition source: William Collins paperback, 2020, 800 pages; £16.42 and in stock at Blackwell's on 23 October 2026. ISBN 9780008303334.
If you want the Americans who lost
The second search's first pick.
4. Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire, Maya Jasanoff (2011)
Narrative history · 460 pages · Readability: accessible · humane and wide-ranging · slavery, exile, poverty
About 60,000 Americans who had stayed loyal to Britain left the new United States at the end of the war, many taking enslaved people with them. Jasanoff follows them to Nova Scotia, Britain, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Sierra Leone and India, through the lives of a handful of families, and shows how they helped shape the British Empire that came after. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction and was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. Differs: it begins where the war ends, so it is a book to read second, after one on the fighting.
Edition source: HarperPress paperback, 2012, 460 pages; £12.70 and in stock at Blackwell's on 23 October 2026. In the US it is subtitled American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. ISBN 9780007180103.
If you want the man who led it
The second search offered two lives of Washington. This is the longer one; Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency is the shorter.
5. Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow (2010)
Biography · 928 pages · Readability: very long, very readable · admiring but candid · slavery, war
Chernow follows Washington from a Virginia boyhood through the French and Indian War, Mount Vernon, eight years in command of the Continental Army, the convention that wrote the Constitution and two terms as the first president. He is frank about the hundreds of people Washington enslaved and about the temper he worked hard to hide. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2011. Differs: the war is only about a third of it, and at 928 pages it is the longest book here.
Edition source: Penguin paperback, 2011, 928 pages; £15.99 and in stock at Blackwell's on 23 October 2026. ISBN 9780143119968.
If you want a novel
The first search's pick for fiction; the second marked it a weaker fit for its question and held it back.
6. The Fort, Bernard Cornwell (2010)
Historical novel · 495 pages · Readability: easy · gripping, partisan about Revere · battle violence
In the summer of 1779 a small British force builds a fort above Penobscot Bay, in what is now Maine, and Massachusetts sends the biggest American fleet of the war to throw it out. Cornwell tells the siege from both sides, through the American general Peleg Wadsworth and a young Scottish lieutenant, John Moore, later the hero of Corunna, and he is unsparing about Paul Revere, who commanded the American artillery and was court-martialled afterwards. Differs: it is one small, disastrous campaign rather than the war, and the engine gave its year as 2009; it was first published in 2010.
Edition source: HarperCollins paperback, 2011, 495 pages; £10.99 and in stock at Blackwell's on 23 October 2026. ISBN 9780007331741.
The editions behind these choices
The ISBN beside each book is a current edition on sale in the UK, and the source link is the Blackwell's page we read on 23 October 2026; prices and stock are what it showed that day. Liberty Is Sweet is an American edition sold here. To buy from an independent bookshop, use the Bookshop.org links on either search at the foot of this page.
The honest bit
Every book here came from one of the two searches shown at the foot of the page. We did not add any of our own, so there are gaps. There is no book on the Declaration of Independence or the ideas behind it: the searches found Pauline Maier's American Scripture, Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution and held all three back. Native Americans and enslaved people are central to Liberty Is Sweet, but no book here is about either alone: the second search set aside Alan Taylor's The Divided Ground as a weaker fit. All six authors write in English for general readers, and five of the six are American.
Four of the ten books the searches returned are not on the page. Joseph J. Ellis's The Quartet is about the years after the war, 1783 to 1789, when the Constitution was written. His His Excellency is a shorter life of Washington than Chernow's. Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain is an American children's classic about a Boston apprentice that is hard to find in Britain, and Jeff Shaara's Rise to Rebellion is a novel of the years before the war, told through Adams, Franklin and Washington.
Questions
What is the best book on the American Revolution?
For one readable book on the war, David McCullough's 1776, which both of our searches returned. For the whole story with the people usually left out, Woody Holton's Liberty Is Sweet. For the war from the British side, Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming, which won the George Washington Prize.
Is there a book about the loyalists?
Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles, our second search's first pick, follows the Americans who stayed loyal to Britain into exile after 1783. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction.
Is there a good novel about the American Revolution?
Our first search returned Bernard Cornwell's The Fort, about the failed American attack on a British fort in Maine in 1779, and Esther Forbes's Johnny Tremain, an American children's classic. The Fort is on this page because it is easy to buy in Britain.
Highstreett's book search found a strong shelf on the war and the people in it, but held back every book it found on the ideas behind the Declaration. Describe what you want next, such as a book on the Declaration of Independence or on Native Americans in the Revolution, and it will look for you.
Describe the book you want next
Best books about the British Empire: for the empire the loyalists went on to help build.
Best books about the history of New York: for the city the British held for most of the war.
How this list was made: the searches
Every Highstreett book search this page was built from, with every book each one returned, exactly as it came back.
Search 1: “best books about the American Revolution: the war of independence from both the American and British side, the founding fathers, the Declaration, ordinary people and loyalists, and novels set during the Revolution”
Run 23 October 2026 at 13:15 BST · See this result
- 1776, David McCullough (2005)
- Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution, Woody Holton (2021)
- The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, Rick Atkinson (2019)
- The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, Joseph J. Ellis (2015)
- Johnny Tremain: A Story of Boston in Revolt, Esther Forbes (1943)
- The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War, Bernard Cornwell (2009)
Editor’s verdict: Four of these six are on the page; the verdict on this search is in the first search block above.
Search 2: “more on the American Revolution: the loyalists and the British view of losing America, the Declaration of Independence and the ideas behind it, Washington, enslaved people and Native Americans in the war, and historical novels of the Revolution”
Run 23 October 2026 at 13:16 BST · See this result
- Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, Maya Jasanoff (2011)
- The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, Rick Atkinson (2019)
- 1776, David McCullough (2005)
- Rise to Rebellion: A Novel of the American Revolution, Jeff Shaara (2001)
- His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis (2004)
- Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow (2010)
Editor’s verdict: The second search was asked for the loyalists, the British view, the ideas behind the Declaration, Washington, enslaved people and Native Americans, and novels. It found Jasanoff on the loyalists and two lives of Washington, and repeated two of the first search's books. It found Maier, Bailyn and Wood on the ideas and held all three back, and it marked the books it found on Native Americans and on slavery, including Alan Taylor's The Divided Ground, as weaker fits and dropped them, so half of the question went unanswered. Its novel, Shaara's Rise to Rebellion, is about the years before the war. Three of its six are on this page. The run started at 13:16 UK time and is shown unedited.
How the comparison was bounded
We did not compare this list with other published lists of books about the American Revolution. The six come only from the two Highstreett searches shown below; the page makes no claim about how often these books appear elsewhere.