Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Bernard Bailyn brings us a book that combines portraits of American revolutionaries with a deft exploration of the ideas that moved them and still shape our society today.

In this elegant collection of essays, he combines lively portraits of participants in the American Revolution with deft explorations of the ideas that moved them, the circumstances that shaped them, and their goals, fears, and aspirations. Bailyn offers character studies of John Adams; Thomas Jefferson; Thomas Paine; the Tory Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who was shocked to find himself the most hated man in America; an ordinary shopkeeper who kept a vivid record of his beliefs; and three preachers whose careers show the various connections between religion and revolution.

In addition, there are essays that explore the global significance of 1776, the relation of ideas to politics, the central themes of the Revolution, and the core issues in the great debate on the ratification of the Constitution.