Who was Thomas Jefferson?  Do we really need another book about him?  Andrew Burstein has written other books on Jefferson, and his new book, Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait answers both questions with depth and grace.  Jefferson was an extraordinarily interesting person, and Burstein navigates his ambition, friendships, rivalries, political controversies, and intellectual inquiries.  Biography, Burstein shows, is not just storytelling but interpretation, recovering what Jefferson and his generation thought they were doing as they built a new nation, reconsidering the Revolution as lived experience rather than legend/  Burstein shows  Jefferson and his contemporaries as vividly human architects of an unfinished experiment.

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On today’s episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Robert Allison charts a course across storm-tossed legal waters with historian Suzanne Amy Foxley, author of The American Experience of British Prize Law, 1776–1804.

From the decks of daring privateers to the hushed chambers of admiralty courts, Foxley reveals how the American Revolution was fought not only with muskets and cannon, but with writs, warrants, and meticulously argued cases. Together, they explore how captured ships became “prizes,” how neutral nations navigated perilous seas of diplomacy and commerce, and how early Americans learned to play a global legal game while still inventing their own nation.

Listeners will discover the human stories behind the paperwork: sailors gambling their lives for profit and patriotism, merchants insuring fortunes against the tides of war, and judges wrestling with British legal traditions in a world suddenly unmoored from the Crown.

It’s a conversation where maritime adventure meets courtroom drama, and where the Revolution emerges as a battle for legitimacy as much as liberty. Set your compass, trim your sails, and join us for a voyage into the law that helped shape America’s place on the world’s oceans

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Lights, camera, Revolution! In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Bob Allison sits down with acclaimed filmmaker Kirk Ellis to explore the alchemy that turns ink on a page into images that linger in the national memory.

Ellis, the creative force behind the celebrated screen portrayals of Benjamin Franklin (2024) and John Adams (2008), pulls back the curtain on shaping complex founders into compelling, human characters. From distilling intricate historical texts into sharp, resonant dialogue to balancing documentary truth with dramatic momentum, he shares how research, imagination, and restraint combine to build stories worthy of the era they depict.

The conversation wanders through script drafts, set designs, and the quiet, crucial choices that make a candlelit room feel alive and a political argument feel urgent. It’s a master class in storytelling, where history doesn’t just speak, it steps into the frame.

Whether you’re a filmmaker, a history lover, or a teacher seeking new ways to bring the founding generation to life, this episode offers a front-row seat to the craft of turning the written word into a cinematic legacy.

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Manufacturing Independence: Forging a Nation in the Crucible of War

What did it really take to turn rebellion into a revolution—and ideals into a functioning nation? In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Robert Allison welcomes Professor Robert Smith of the Valley Forge Military College, author of Manufacturing Independence:  Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution, for a sweeping conversation about the workshops, foundries, supply lines, and human ingenuity that powered the American cause.

Smith peels back the romantic veneer of the Revolution to reveal a world of iron, timber, powder, and persistence. From cannon cast in makeshift furnaces to uniforms stitched by candlelight, listeners discover how farmers, artisans, merchants, and soldiers became the hidden engine of independence. Together, Allison and Smith explore how local industry, wartime logistics, and civilian resilience shaped strategy on the battlefield and survival on the home front.

This episode invites you into the noisy, smoky, and determined world behind the musket’s flash—where a nation was not only declared, but made. Whether you’re a history devotee or a curious first-time listener, Manufacturing Independence offers a fresh lens on how Americans forged freedom with their hands as much as with their words.

https://www.westholmepublishing.com/book/manufacturing-independence-robert-f-smith/

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In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Robert Allison of Suffolk University speaks with Independent Historian Bob Hyldburg, who is leading the effort to erect a public statue honoring Sarah Bradlee Fulton in Medford.

Sarah Bradlee Fulton emerges as a figure woven through some of the most dramatic moments of the Revolution in Massachusetts. She took part in the Boston Tea Party, helping disguise and equip the participants who struck a symbolic blow against imperial authority. In the bloody aftermath of the Battle of Bunker Hill, she aided wounded Provincial soldiers and assisted families driven from their homes as Boston became an armed camp. Months later, in March 1776, Fulton carried critical intelligence out of British-occupied Boston to the American lines, information that helped secure the fortification of Dorchester Heights and hastened the British evacuation of the city.

This episode invites listeners to reconsider the Revolution not only as a story of famous generals and statesmen, but as a collective struggle sustained by courage, resolve, and individuals like Sarah Bradlee Fulton, whose legacy is finally being brought into view.

https://www.lookingbackatMedfordhistory.com

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Few figures of the American Revolution wielded words as powerfully as Thomas Paine. In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Robert Allison is joined by historian and journalist Jack Kelly, author of Tom Paine’s War, for a wide-ranging conversation about Paine’s outsized influence on the Revolutionary cause.

Kelly explores how Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense transformed colonial resistance into a popular movement for independence, reaching audiences far beyond elite political circles. The discussion traces Paine’s role as a wartime propagandist, the impact of The American Crisis during the darkest days of the war, and George Washington’s strategic use of Paine’s words to sustain morale in the Continental Army.

The episode also examines Paine’s complicated personality, his transatlantic radicalism, and his uneasy place in the postwar United States, where the man who helped ignite the Revolution found himself increasingly marginalized. Together, Allison and Kelly consider why Paine mattered so deeply in his own time and why his ideas about liberty, democracy, and popular sovereignty continue to resonate 250 years later.

A compelling look at the power of ideas in wartime America, this episode reminds us that the Revolution was fought not only with muskets and cannon, but with ink, paper, and the force of persuasion.

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Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis joins host Professor Robert Allison to talk about his new book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic side of the American Founding.  Drawing on decades of scholarship, Ellis reflects on the ideas, personalities, and hard choices that shaped independence and the early republic.

Together, Allison and Ellis explore what made the Revolution truly revolutionary, how figures like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, whose stories Ellis has told in works such as Founding Brothers and Passionate Sage, understood their moment in history, and why the founding era continues to challenge, inspire, and provoke debate 250 years later. Insightful, candid, and  engaging, this episode offers listeners a master historian’s perspective on America’s most consequential generation—and the unfinished work they left behind.

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In this episode of the Revolution 250 Podcast, host Professor Robert Allison is joined by Reese Holmes, National President of the Children of the American Revolution, for a lively conversation about one of the nation’s oldest and most forward-looking patriotic youth organizations.

Together, they explore the origins of the Children of the American Revolution, founded in 1895 by Concord author Harriet Lothrop to foster knowledge of America’s founding ideals among young people, and the organization’s enduring mission to promote historical education, civic responsibility, service, and patriotism. Holmes discusses how C.A.R. members engage with Revolutionary history through research, preservation, public programs, and community service, while also developing leadership skills that prepare them to be thoughtful citizens.

In her presidential year, Reese Holmes has been focusing on the Revolutionary Valor program, and working toward creating  "Founding Martyr," a documentary on Dr. Joseph Warren. 

The conversation highlights how today’s C.A.R. brings the Revolutionary generation to life for new audiences and how youth involvement plays a vital role in the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution. From lineage and memory to action and service, this episode underscores why the past still matters and why its stewardship increasingly rests in young hands.

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In this episode, our host Professor Robert Allison welcomes historian and educator Sean Heuvel, Director of Graduate and Professional Enrollment at Christopher Newport University, for a spirited exploration of the newly edited Revolutionary War Memoirs of General William Heath. Together they stroll through Heath’s vivid accounts of the Siege of Boston, the New York campaign, the intrigues of command, and the quiet burdens shouldered by a Massachusetts gentleman-general whose pen was often as sharp as his sword.

Heuvel shares why Heath’s memoirs remain an essential, underappreciated window into the Revolution’s early campaigns and the personalities who shaped them. With fresh annotations, contextual framing, and a keen editorial eye, Heuvel illuminates Heath not as a footnote, but as a thoughtful architect of the Continental cause.

It’s a conversation that lifts a lantern toward the lesser-known corners of the war and reminds us that every revolution depends on more than its marquee heroes. Tune in and meet General Heath anew. 

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 Join host Professor Robert Allison for a dynamic conversation with historian Ronald Angelo Johnson, author of Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution. Together they explore how the American Revolution unfolded within a vibrant and contested Atlantic world shaped by Black leadership, Caribbean revolutions, and international diplomacy. Johnson, who holds the the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History at Baylor University,  highlights the  global forces—from Haiti to Europe—that influenced American independence and redefined ideas of freedom. The Revolution was not an isolated struggle, but was part of a far-reaching web of alliances, conflicts, and revolutionary change. 

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