In the Founders' Footsteps: Landmarks of the American Revolution - Hardcover

Doren, Adam Van

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1567926622 ISBN 13: 9781567926620

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2022

Synopsis

“Beautifully alive.”—Wall Street Journal
Winner of the 2022 Distinguished Book Award from The Society of Colonial Wars

A tour through the original thirteen colonies in search of historical sites and their stories in America’s founding. Obscure, well-known, off-the-beaten path, and on busy city streets, here are taverns, meeting houses, battlefields, forts, monuments, homes which all combine to define our country—the places where daring people forged a revolution.

There is always something new to be found in America’s past that also brings greater clarity to our present and the future we choose to make as a nation. Author-artist Adam Van Doren traveled from Maine to Georgia in that spirit. There are thirty-seven landmarks included, with fifteen additional locations noted in brief. From the Bunker Hill monument in Massachusetts to the Camden Battlefield Site in South Carolina, this is a tour of an American cultural landscape with a curious, perceptive, and insightful guide.

The reader steps inside cabins at Valley Forge where nearly two thousand soldiers perished during a cruel winter, meets the chef at Philadelphia’s City Tavern where the menu is based on 18th century fare, seeks out the Swamp Fox in Georgia, visits the homes of Alexander Hamilton, John and Abigail Adams, the Joseph Webb House on the Connecticut River where French general Rochambeau made plans with Washington, and much more. An unvarnished view, we also see Philipsburg Manor, in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where Blacks were once held as slaves to work in the Hudson River Valley.

For armchair travelers and anyone fascinated by Americana, Van Doren (The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents) has created an unforgettable journey through history. We see the Founders—both their stunning achievements and chilling moral failures—where they lived, fought, and agreed on a common purpose, to create a nation whose future—and legacy—is continually evolving.

About this title

About the Authors

Adam Van Doren received his masters at Columbia University and has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. He teaches art at Yale University, where he is also an associate fellow, and has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. His work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is the author of The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents, The Stones of Yale, and An Artist in Venice. Mr. Van Doren lives in New York City.

Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of Travels with George, In the Heart of the Sea, winner of a National Book Award, Bunker Hill, and many other outstanding works of nonfiction.

Edition details

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567926622
• ISBN 13: 9781567926620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256