The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bailyn

I really liked this book. At first, it seemed like it was going to be dry and boring. So I put it aside and read a couple of other books and even started reading the biography about Hamilton by Chernow. Then I realized that this book would be such a good base for the Hamilton book, and I really loved it from then on. Man, his chapter on the hypocrisy of continuing to have slavery in America while "freeing" themselves from the "slavery" of Great Britain! I kept saying AMEN throughout the whole chapter. Really good. 

So, I would recommend this, but I am a history nerd, and I love the connections with Hamilton. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

James Mustich

There was nothing inevitable about the American Revolution. Bailyn illuminates the radical beliefs that inspired the unprecedented effort to champion individual liberty against the power of the state. Tracing the animating principles of the revolutionary movement back to eighteenth-century European thought, Bailyn provides an insightful education in the Enlightenment roots of the Founders’ conception of law, government, and the Rights of Man.