The Cause

For Pulitzer Prizewinning historian Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era, completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers. Here Ellis, countering popular histories that romanticize the Spirit of 76, demonstrates through evocative profiles of British loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and soldiers uncertain of what was being founded (Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune) that the rebels fought not for a nation but under the mantle of The Cause, a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle all but destined to give rise to the warring factions of later American history. Combining action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with characteristically trenchant insight, The Cause deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate Americas trajectory (Richard Stengel, New York Times Book Review), forcing us to finally reconsider the story we have long told ourselves about our originsas a people, and as a nation. At the intersection of his expertise and our need for coherence about our national founding arrives historian Joseph J. Ellis. . . . Ellis is no apologist, but he is a chronicler of the entire revolution, its best aspirations, its worst contradictions, and its ongoing dilemmas. Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post