With America's founding principles being debated today as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution. While some of the protagonists--a Native American warrior, a British aristocrat, George Washington--play major roles on the field of battle, others--a woman, a slave, and a laborer--struggle no less valiantly to realize freedom for themselves.
