Happy Fourth of July!  Whether you celebrate with family or cookouts or fireworks, our country’s birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on freedom.

And the freedom that our Founding Fathers most espoused was the freedom of ideas.  “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain,” John Adams wrote to his wife.  We are a generation with the freedom to study these things, and anything else we want, because of what they did 235 years ago.

And so we do.  But sometimes, it is good to look back and study the world such freedom evolved out of, and the struggle it took to create it.  The Founding Fathers themselves are good sources for this – many of them were writers.  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay are among the great writings of America.

But the library has many other books that look back on those days with the benefit of historical context.  For instance, you might be interested in War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society by Harry Ward, American Revolution : A History by Gordon Wood, or New York 1776 : The Continentals’ First Battle by David Smith, among many others – all available through eBrary (login required if off campus).

Happy Independence Day!