Ken Burns’s The American Revolution presents the war for independence as a defining event with consequences that reached far beyond the thirteen colonies. At the moment of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, the film underscores this significance with the observation that “the world would never be the same.” Some reviews have noted that while the film […]
Category: From Our Collections
The American Revolution—A Film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt
The epic new documentary series The American Revolution—a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt—premiers on PBS on November 16, 2025. This six-part series chronicles the story of the creation of the United States and its eight-year war for independence from Great Britain. Last month, the American Revolution Institute hosted a conversation with […]
Honoring the French-American Alliance
In the library of the American Revolution Institute, history surrounds on the shelves. Among the collections are works that help tell the story of the alliance between France and the United States, one of the most important turning points in deciding the Revolution. This partnership, formalized in February 1778 with the Treaty of Alliance, was […]
Mapping the Revolution with Information Science Graduate Students
The library of the American Revolution Institute recently hosted four graduate students as part of the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI) Alternative Spring Break program. The UMSI students spent a week in Washington, D.C., to work with us on a project, “Mapping the Revolution,” that supports cataloging and digitization of historic and rare […]