On Our Shelves

Museum professional and Ewing, NJ, resident Patricia Millen always wanted to write a book about Washington Crossing. Unfortunately, she jokes, “Peter Osborne beat me to it!” Fate intervened during the COVID pandemic, however. That’s when longtime friend and fellow museum professional Bob Sands approached her with an idea for a Washington Crossing book – with a twist. He proposed compiling a “pictorial history book” filled with images drawn from the collections of historians, foundations, societies, libraries, museums, and private citizens. Rather than give a full account of Washington’s river crossing, Bob and Patricia’s book would cover the event in the Read More

By Thomas Maddock II Historical Interpreter, Washington Crossing Historic Park In any long-term military conflict, there are many events that go unreported but have a very important impact on the eventual outcome. David Price’s fourth book, “The Battle of Harlem Heights, 1776,” gives us a thorough and informative account of this small but vital engagement. It took place on September 16, 1776 and was one of several encounters with the British and Hessians fought during the New York campaign. The Continental Army and its militia support units had been thoroughly defeated earlier at the Battle of Long Island and were Read More

Reviewed by David Price, Washington Crossing Historic Park Historical Interpreter Local author and historian Larry Kidder has once again crafted a thoroughly informed and meticulously researched narrative relating to America’s Revolutionary era. This new book continues the focus of his previous work on how the political and military turbulence of the 1770s impacted the lives of people living in the greater Delaware Valley, placing his study of their circumstances and challenges within the broader historical context of young America’s founding struggle. Kidder’s latest creation follows on the heels of his earlier accounts of this period, Ten Crucial Days: Washington’s Vision Read More

At its April 2021 meeting, the park’s book club will begin discussing its next selection, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution by Benjamin L. Carp. The meeting will be held April 19 at 5:30 PM on Zoom. Registration is required on DCNR’s website. Zoom meeting details will be provided upon registration. Participants should be prepared to discuss the Introduction through Chapter One. Then as now, the tight concentrations and diversity of people in the colonies’ largest cities offered fertile ground for political consciousness, political persuasion, and political action. Rebels Rising traces how everyday interactions in taverns, wharves, and elsewhere Read More

Reviewed by Joe Camaratta, a historical interpreter at Washington Crossing Historic Park John Haslet’s World: An Ardent Patriot, the Delaware Blues, and the Spirit of 1776 is David Price’s third in a trilogy on the Ten Crucial Days, the period from Washington’s crossing of the Delaware to the Battle of Princeton. Price focuses on those heroes underrepresented by most historians when they tell the story of the fight for American independence. The book details John Haslet’s life as an Irish immigrant who embodied the grit and determination of the patriots fighting against Great Britain. Price unfolds the development of Haslet Read More

The Washington Crossing Historic Park book club will begin discussion of a new selection at its September 21 meeting. The featured book is The British Are Coming—The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 by Rick Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who lectured at the park last year. Meetings are led by the park’s curator, Kimberly McCarty, who also selects the books. “Rick Atkinson’s research for this book included combing through the archive of King George III, so it should give us unique insight into the crossing and the events that surrounded it,” she says. As a Georgian Papers fellow, Read More

John Haslet’s World: An Ardent Patriot, the Delaware Blues, and the Spirit of 1776, will be released November 3, 2020. You can pre-order the book now on Amazon. The book can also be ordered directly from its publisher, Knox Press. Colonel John Haslet and his Delaware Continental Regiment, known as the Delaware Blues, played a pivotal role in George Washington’s 1776 campaign that culminated in the Ten Crucial Days. “Haslet was someone who kept popping up in David Hackett Fischer’s book, Washington’s Crossing,” says David Price, a historical interpreter at Washington Crossing Historic Park. “When I was planning my first book, Read More

Reviewed by David Price, Washington Crossing Historic Park Historical Interpreter Local author William L. “Larry” Kidder has produced a history of Trenton during the Revolutionary War that is meticulously researched, deeply informed, and thoroughly comprehensive in scope. This is a story that has received scant attention until now and, as such, is a worthy addition to the literature on this tumultuous period. Kidder’s wide-ranging examination of a locality that was the site of a pivotal moment in young America’s struggle for independence enables the reader to understand how this community and its residents coped with the vicissitudes of late 18th Read More