Item Description

 Tony Williams will personally autograph to you!

The sleeper history hit of 2008, released in paperback to coincide with the heart of hurricane season!

"On September 2, 1775, the eighth deadliest Atlantic hurricane of all time landed on American shores. Over the next days, it would race up the East Coast, striking all of the important colonial capitols and killing more than four thousand people. In an era when hurricanes were viewed as omens from God, what this storm signified to the colonists about the justness of their cause would yield unexpected results.

Drawing on ordinary individuals and well-known founders like Washington and Franklin, Tony Williams paints a stunning picture of life at the dawn of the American Revolution, and of the weighty choice people faced at that deciding moment.

Hurricane of Independence brings to life an incredible time when the forces of nature and the forces of history joined together to produce courageous stories of sacrifice, strength, and survival."

 

Tony Williams is the author of five books including,  "Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Created America," co-authored with Stephen F. Knott, author of "Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth." 

He has also written "America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation's Character,"(2011), "The Jamestown Experiment:The Remarkable Story of the Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results that Shaped America"(2011),"Pox and the Covenant: Franklin, Mather, and the Epidemic that Changed America's Destiny"(2010), and, "Hurricane of Independence: The Untold Story of the Deadly Storm at the Deciding Moment of the American Revolution"(2008) 

He holds history degrees from Syracuse University and Ohio State University, and is a Professional Development Instructor at the Bill of Rights Institute, in Arlington, VA, and, the Program Director at the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute in Charlottesville, VA, that teaches Founding principles and documents to teachers and citizens. He taught history for fifteen years. He lives with his family in Williamsburg, VA. He blogs regularly for the WJMI at www.wjmi.org. 

He can be reached for speaking engagements by contacting his publisher, Sourcebooks.

 

 

"A first-time author tracks the 1775 hurricane that pummeled America's Eastern seaboard, echoing the patriotic storm in the colonies.

After forming over Africa's west coast, the   Hurricane of Independence  touched down on September 1 in New Bern, N.C., where it killed 200, and then proceeded to Norfolk, Williamsburg, Annapolis, Philadelphia, Newport and, having morphed into merely a violent rainstorm, on to New York City and Boston. Sometime around September 10 a second tempest (erroneously thought to be the tail end of the first hurricane) roared ashore in Newfoundland, killing thousands and devastating seaside communities and the British cod industry. Williams dubs this the "Codfishermen's Hurricane," and he uses the progress of both storms to examine the developments in the various colonial regions on the eve of the Revolution: the evenly divided Patriot/Tory town of Norfolk's fear of a British-inspired slave rebellion, the hurricane's destruction of the Annapolis statehouse dome, the drenching of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Washington's assumption of command of the Continental Army in Boston. But for the facts of the hurricanes themselves, Williams offers little new for even casual students of the Revolution, but he charmingly uses the hurricane as a window through which to view the psychology of the Enlightenment; the beginning of scientific inquiry and the demystification of popular superstition, captured in the persons of wealthy Virginia planter and amateur scientist Landon Carter, future Yale president Ezra Stiles and, of course, Benjamin Franklin; and the lingering suspicions among most that the hurricane reflected heaven's judgment on the political upheaval. But what was God saying? Was the tempest a punishment against the tyrannical master or a rebuke to the rebellious subjects? In agreeable prose, Williams recovers the victims' speculation on the hurricane's meaning and its almost poetic commingling of the natural and moral worlds."

"An unusual and affecting take on the American colonies at the precipice.  

"(This) double tale of natural disaster and epochal human events makes a good reading."  

Item Special Note

Tony Williams – Professional Development Instructor with the Bill of Rights Institute, Washington, D.C. 

twilliams@billofrightsinstitute.org

REVIEWS:

a great christmas gift for history lovers

By  Jessie on September 21, 2008

"I have to admit that I'm not much of a history book reader. I disliked history in high school and don't know much about it. I usually read spy stories and mysteries. I found the book in a bookstore one day and thought the cover was very cool. I flipped through the pages and liked the flow of the writing. With all the news about hurricanes I thought I would give it a try. I was not disappointed.

The book is about a hurricane that hit during the American Revolution in 1775. The author described it hitting the shores of North Carolina and Virginia. It killed hundreds of people there. The author then follows the hurricane hitting the capitals of Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston and talks about the damage it caused. Actually it didn't hit New York but the author talks about another hurricane out in the ocean almost at the same time. Almost like a perfect storm. Very cool and dramatic.

The author tells a lot of stories about the American Revolution that I didn't know much about. He told them in an interesting way that I could understand. George Washington became the general of the army, Paul Revere went on his famous ride and a general brought guns all the way from New York to Boston to use against the British army.

The big ending that the author nicely built up to was the storm hitting Newfoundland and killing 4,000 fishermen. I didn't know anyone fished for cod there back then but the author made me feel as if I was there. No one I am telling the book about has ever heard of this hurricane even though it was the second deadliest after the Galveston one.

I learned a lot about the hurricane and history by reading this book. I really enjoyed it and think it would be a good book for anyone who is not really a history buff but likes a really good story. I am going to buy a copy for my family members who do like history for Christmas."

More Than a Storm

"I never realized that there'd been a devastating hurricane during the critical period leading up to our War for Independence from Great Britain, but there was. And Professor Tony Williams describes it with the smooth readability of a novelist in HURRICANE OF INDEPENDENCE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE DEADLY STORM AT THE DECIDING MOMENT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Williams sprinkles all sorts of little nuggets of information through his description of this storm and the damage it caused. Being a confirmed landlubber, I never suspected that sailors fashioned buttons for their coats out of hardened cheese, for example, or that New Bern, Norfolk and other port towns had such distinct personalities.

I'd either forgotten, or never knew, that Roman Catholics operated under some significant disabilities in some colonies at this time. In Maryland, for example, they couldn't vote, hold office, practice law, bear arms, serve in the militia, send their children to Catholic schools or even worship publically. Describing someone as a "papist" could prompt a challenge to a duel.

Williams includes endnotes, a bibliography and a very useful index in this attractively bound book. I carried it around for a couple of weeks while reading it and it held up just fine.

I like this book and gave it five stars. It's well written, well-researched and beautifully put together.

If you're interested in hurricanes, weather, colonial history, naval lore, the American Revolution or significant port cities of this period, you'll enjoy this book."