Every summer, TeachingAmericanHistory brings together scholars and teachers from around the nation to our campus in Ashland to enjoy week-long seminars on focused topics in American history and government. These courses can be taken for , or simply for your personal enrichment -- some participants describe the experience as an "intellectual retreat" where they can enjoy both conversation and collegiality. If you aren't able to join us in person this summer, we hope you'll consider joining us in spirit by checking out some of the myriad texts we'll be discussing. If you're reading along, we invite you to join the conversation using #TAHreading to share your thoughts! , THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION , by Gordon S. Wood (Modern Library, 2003). Clocking in at fewer than 200 pages, Gordon Wood’s short history of the American Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the birth of the United States. Amateur and professional historians alike will find something new and useful in this concise and precise rendering of the Revolution’s origins, battles, and social and political aftermath. For example, did you know that although only nine colleges existed in America by 1776, sixteen more were established over the course of the next twenty-five years? I didn’t. This fact alone reveals something true and beautiful about the uniqueness of America and Americans. A new nation founded on the principles of self-government, unlike all other nations that had ever existed in the history mankind, requires citizens be educated in those principles. Without this education, citizens will not be able to maintain their democratic republic through succeeding generations, and the success of the American experiment in self-government will fade out over time. Wood’s narrative not only stresses the importance of that education, but contributes to it in a much-needed way. All this and much more comes through in Wood’s brief yet brilliant rendering of the American Revolution, without ever collapsing into ‘history lite.’ It is a delightful little book that is a great pleasure to read. and , THE RISE OF MODERN AMERICA David Hadley: I'd like to recommend an essay that we’ll be using an excerpt from Randolph Bourne’s The State. It is a fascinating consideration of the effect of war on a democratic society. Perhaps most famous for Bourne’s observation that “War is the health of the state,” Bourne wrote during World War I to explain the contradiction between the U.S. goal of making the world safe for democracy and the increasingly restrictive policies of the U.S. government at home amid the rising tide of anti-German sentiment. Differing from many progressives of the time, including his former teacher John Dewey, Bourne argued that the war could not be made to serve progressive ends; the war had its own logic, and while the power of the government might increase in ways the progressives approved, ultimately the war increased the symbolic power of the state in ways previously unknown in the American experience.  The elevation of the state as the symbol of the nation, Bourne feared, could damage American democratic traditions. Bourne died in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic while still refining “The State”, leaving an incomplete but still deeply considered and provocative essay behind him. One need not agree with all of his arguments or observations (as I do not) to find in it important questions about the meaning and potential implications of the United States’ rise as a global military superpower. and , COLONIAL AMERICA Cara Rogers: When I teach the history of the Puritans and slavery, I use four primary texts that the National Humanities Center conveniently placed side-by-side in a combined document. Students read an antislavery pamphlet by Samuel Sewall (who was the only Salem Witch Trial judge to publically apologize for that affair), the counter-attack from proslavery Puritan John Saffin, a rebuttal by Sewall, and finally the