American Revolution

You say you want a revolution? Through history, that hasn't always been a popular idea. In fact, about 20% of Colonists in 1776 were so opposed to a war for independence, they sided with the British. Some of them even joined the British army. Others fled the Colonies for Canada and elsewhere. But the rest banded together to start a new nation. Want to learn more about the American Revolution? Use the direct links on The Times' Launch Point Web site. http://www.latimes.

However the Syrian crisis turns out, it holds a lesson for American leaders. They have often been ready to confront those who violate international norms, such as Syrian President Bashar Assad, but reluctant to join worldwide agreements that express those norms. Such treaties would help deter the would-be perpetrators and would increase the legitimacy of actions taken against them. American leaders have been suspicious of diplomacy and multilateral negotiating, but the founders took a different view.

At first, Dayna Hanson says, she felt "a little intimidated" when she decided to create a "multimedia extravaganza" about the American Revolution. As an artist, she says, "I don't often undertake such sweeping topics, and I didn't feel like I had a ton of knowledge about this part of history. " Best known for co-founding the Seattle-based dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells, Hanson wound up embarking on a rigorous research-based quest to expose the contradictions she observed between America's founding principles and current political and economic realities.

Had it not been for America's founding conservatives, we would not be celebrating Independence Day on July 4. In fact, it's unlikely we would be celebrating our independence at all. Few people today realize how similar the Revolutionary era was to our own: Endless war, financial crashes and mounting public debt, popular outrage against rich bankers and taxation, and such bitter partisan dispute that Congress was frequently deadlocked for months on...

For freedom-loving Americans, today's celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is a dream come true. Think about it--a national holiday in honor of the grandson of Georgia slaves. A holiday that affirms the struggle of a people yearning to be free, a struggle that still endures in many ways in many places. What an extraordinary opportunity to call this nation to account, and to challenge America to be its best self.

Five Italian restaurant critics looked dubiously at the plates before them. Each held a small corn tamale with green chile salsa and an eggshell stuffed with spicy shrimp egg foo yong with ginger and shiitake mushrooms. Three wavy strips of toasted blue corn tortilla bristled from the scrambled eggs. "Is this edible?" asked one diner, pointing to the blue corn. Another took an exploratory bite of the tamale. "Ah, no," he said, shaking his head.

The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather by Michael G. Hall (Wesleyan University Press: $29.95; 528 pages) During the last week or so of family holiday gatherings, I've been coming up with lots of anecdotes about Increase Mather, a man about whom I knew little or nothing until I began to read Michael G. Hall's exhaustive biography, "The Last American Puritan."

Gordon S. Wood is an immensely distinguished historian whose masterpiece, "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Readers who know that book will recognize the Modern Library's "The American Revolution" as a distillation of its arguments. Comparatively little has been lost, and some points emerge with greater force than before.

In "Patriots," Langguth gives the making and winning of the American Revolution in all its glory, gore and moral frailty. A spicy, toothsome work of American history.--Jody Powell RAINBOW'S END by Genaro Gonzalez (Arte Publico Press: $8.50, paper; 227 pp.) "Rainbow's End" captures the ambiente of a borderland household: a grandfather who swam across the Rio Grande in the 1930s, Vietnam vets and smugglers.--Tom Miller

One hundred prisoners held in the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in a hunger strike -- a desperate attempt to get the attention of President Obama, who was elected in 2008 having promised to shut the place down. Not only did Obama fail to close the facility, his administration has neglected to appoint anyone to oversee repatriation of the 86 current prisoners who have been cleared for release. Among the 166 detainees at Guantanamo, some, no doubt, are true enemies of the United States.

BOSTON -- Amid heightened security and facing a packed audience, President Obama on Thursday urged this city and nation to put aside its fears and tragedies and reclaim the spirit and grace that had been disrupted by terrorist bombs. The crowd, including civic and political dignitaries and some of the runners and families caught in the twin blasts at the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon, looked on as Obama stepped to the lectern at Boston's famed Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Cross for an interfaith service.

Re "Holocaust's children," Column One, Jan. 4 Doris Small's story, in which she escaped Nazi Germany before World War II thanks to the rescue mission Kindertransport, is indeed very moving and poignant. But let's not forget that there was an effort by a few Americans to actually try to do the same thing the British government was doing then. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who in 1939 urged her husband to support a bill in Congress to allow 20,000 Jewish children to come to America and be temporarily adopted by American parents for the duration of the hostility.

The most famous speech in American history begins this way: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. " Lincoln's eloquence at Gettysburg was lyrical but not historically accurate. For no such thing as a "new nation" had been proposed in 1776; only a temporary union of sovereign states, declaring their independence from Britain, then presumably going their separate ways.

At first, Dayna Hanson says, she felt "a little intimidated" when she decided to create a "multimedia extravaganza" about the American Revolution. As an artist, she says, "I don't often undertake such sweeping topics, and I didn't feel like I had a ton of knowledge about this part of history. " Best known for co-founding the Seattle-based dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells, Hanson wound up embarking on a rigorous research-based quest to expose the contradictions she observed between America's founding principles and current political and economic realities.

Ethan Allen His Life and Times Willard Sterne Randall W.W. Norton: 619 pp., $35 As any student of Vermont history can tell you - and the recent flood devastation in that state underscores all too well - water has played a huge role in shaping what would become the 14th state to join the Union. The Connecticut River forms Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, and Lake Champlain forms the majority of the state's western border with New York. But the boundary lines of current-day Vermont were hardly the result of riparian randomness: The future state was carved out of competing colonial claims asserted by New York and New Hampshire, and if there were a single individual who was as much a force of nature as the waters themselves at shaping the Green Mountain State, most historians would agree it was Ethan Allen.

The boy's only light was the firelight. It flickered on the walls of the log cabin and danced in his deep, serious brown eyes. It was late -- the middle of the night -- his favorite time of day -- his time for reading. He especially liked to read Aesop's fables, the Bible and "The Life of Washington. " George Washington's words flickered in the firelight: "The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them . . . . Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.

"Henry Ford: The Car Man" Carin T. Ford Henry Ford's invention created a new American industry. When Henry was young, he learned how steam engines worked while watching a teakettle boil on the stove in the kitchen. When the steam escaped the teakettle, Henry would stare at it and become very interested. He thought, "What if I made my own engine by steam?" After studying hard and watching teakettles, he made his first car, the Quadricycle. His interest in the car led up to his famous Model T.