Book of the Year

If there’s just one title you’ll read this year, make it Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775–1777, which recently won the 2020 George Washington Prize. Announced virtually (due to the ongoing pandemic) during the National Book Festival on September 25, it is one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious literary awards, recognizing the year’s best new books on early American history.

This is the first volume in a new Revolutionary War trilogy by Atkinson, a best-selling author and the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for history and journalism. According to the jury, the book moves beyond a mere narrative of the war’s battles and campaigns, as Atkinson unfolds a broader geographical and cultural fabric of the Revolutionary War and captures the humanity and inhumanity of the war’s varied combatants.

A jury composed of notable scholars Carol Berkin, Christopher L. Brown, and David Preston selected the finalists from a field of more than 60 books. Beyond merely promoting new scholarly works and research developments, the award pays special attention to works that have the potential to inspire the general public to learn more about American history.

Three institutions sponsor the prize: Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington's Mount Vernon.But don’t stop with Atkinson’s book; the other finalists are also worth putting on your reading list:

Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
Richard Bell brings vivid new detail to what he identifies as “the reverse underground railroad” —the illicit networks that seized free African Americans and spirited them away to the rapidly expanding slave markets in the cotton south.

The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President
Matthew R. Costello examines the process of a nation’s memory-making around its first president, documenting the rise of what Costello terms “historical tourism,” the selling by African American storytellers of an image of Washington as a man of the people, and finally, the emergence of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.

Heirs of an Honored Name: The Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America
In this enthralling saga, Douglas Egerton traces how John Adams’s descendants carried some of his highest—and many of his most questionable—values into the 19th century, capturing each of them as individuals who carried the burden of their progenitor’s fame.

World of Trouble: A Philadelphia Quaker Family’s Journey Through the American Revolution
Drawing upon the collection of papers left by Henry and Elizabeth Drinker, author Richard Godbeer captures the environment that shaped their choices and relationships over a half century, which sheds new light on Philadelphia under British occupation, the shifting meanings of allegiance in crisis, and the impact of republican values on a young nation.

A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution
David Head’s lively narrative thrusts the reader into Philadelphia taverns, Continental soldiers’ huts at Newburgh, and the headquarters of generals Washington and Gates to demystify the so-called conspiracy.

The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington
Martha Saxton adds much-needed complexity to a relationship often painted in the stereotypical terms of an uncaring and demanding mother and a dutiful son, in the process surfacing the difficulties widows and mothers faced, even among the 18th century’s elites.