1774: The Long Year of Revolution

Mary Beth Norton

Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History Emerita at Cornell University, where she taught from 1971 to 2018. In 2005-6, she was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge. She has written seven books about Early American history, including Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, and In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. She was an author, with others, of A People and A Nation, which appeared in its 11th edition in 2018, one of the leading U.S. history textbooks since its initial publication in 1982. Her most recent work is 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, published by Alfred A. Knopf in February 2020, currently a Vintage paperback, which is the subject of her talk today. It won the 2021 George Washington Prize as the best book on the American Revolution published the preceding year. She has been elected a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She served as president of the 12,000- member American Historical Association in 2018.

Making Thirteen Clocks Strike as One: Race, Fear, and the American Founding

Robert Parkinson

Robert Parkinson is Professor of History at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution, and most recently, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier, published by Norton in May 2024.

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The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House

J.L. Bell

J. L. Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War, a National Park Service report on Gen. George Washington in Cambridge, and numerous articles. He maintains the Boston 1775 website, offering daily postings of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the American Revolution in New England.

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From Hingham to Yorktown: The Military Campaigns of General Benjamin Lincoln

Robert Allison

Robert J. Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University. His books include, a biography of American naval hero Stephen Decatur, and short books on the history of Boston, the American Revolution, and an edition of The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Two of his classes, “Before 1776: Life in Colonial America,” and “The Age of Benjamin Franklin” are available from The Great Courses. As chair of Revolution 250, a consortium of organizations planning Revolutionary commemorations in Massachusetts, he hosts its weekly podcast (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1336051) featuring conversations on the Revolution with historians and interpreters. He is President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (https://www.colonialsociety.org/), a scholarly organization focused on early American history, and a life-trustee of the USS CONSTITUTION Museum. For contact information, visit https://www.robertallisonhistory.com/

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Hingham’s Revolutionary Canteens

Joel Bohy

Joel Bohy is the director of Historic Arms & Militaria at Bruneau and Co. Auctioneers and a frequent appraiser of Arms & Militaria on the PBS series Antiques Roadshow, an active member of the American Society of Arms Collectors, the Company of Military Historians, The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, an instructor for Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archeologist, and an advisory board member of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts helped lead to his passion for historic arms & militaria, conflict archaeology, historic arms, and his research into Hingham’s historic Revolutionary War canteens.

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How to Radicalize a Moderate: John Hancock and the Outbreak of the Revolutionary War

Brooke Barbier

Brooke Barbier is a public historian with a PhD in American History from Boston College. She is the author of King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father (Harvard University Press) and Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire. Because she believes beer makes history even better, she founded Ye Olde Tavern Tours in 2013, a popular guided outing along Boston’s renowned Freedom Trail.

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The Declaration of Independence: A Guide for Our Times

Danielle Allen

Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus; and Justice by Means of Democracy. Her many edited volumes include From Voice to Influence: understanding citizenship in a digital age and A Political Economy of Justice. She writes a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post.

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