If you’ve been enjoying this podcast series on The Empire: A 250 Year American Story, and if you’re a history nerd like myself, then this list is for you. (Photo above is from the top shelf in my library on American history.)
Following is a list of different sources and books I referenced or learned from while prepping for the first few 16 episodes of this series.
Pre-Colonial and Indigenous America (Before 1492)
These books were great for setting the stage on this study.
- Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts
- Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
- A Land So Strange
Colonial Era (1607–1775)
Every book on this section of the list is excellent. I have a hard time even deciding which one I like the most. From a narrative point of view the Mayflower book is great, but from the discovery of history I didn’t know, the Roger Williams one is incredible. And then, I am always a sucker for any book by Mark Noll.
- The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance
- Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War
- American Colonies: The Settling of North America
- In the Beginning was the Word
- Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul
Revolutionary Period (1775–1789)
This section of the list is a little embarrassing. I got sucked in and didn’t realize how deep I went down the rabbit hole. The biographies on this list are incredible. You can tell from the podcast episodes my favorites by the amount of times I quote particular books or sometimes I just flat out said it.
- Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
- Washington: A Life
- American Revolutions: A Continental History
- The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution
- First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks, Romans and the Enlightenment
- Franklin and Washington, the Founding Partnership
- The Cause, The American Revolution and Its Discontents
- The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of America’s Founding
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- John Adams
- The Grand Incendiary: A Biography of Samuel Adams
- Radicalism of the American Revolution
- American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
- Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth
- American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It
- 1776
- American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation
- The Light and the Glory: Discovering God’s Hand in the Founding of the United States
This post is part of our collection and series The Empire: A 250 Year American Story. Each week for the duration of 2026, new episodes will release, telling the unique, complex, and fascinating story of America’s history.
