A look into how George Washington and other revolutionary leaders used letters and the press to rally support for independence and help win the American Revolution.
The American Revolution was not only fought on bloody battlefields, it was waged with the ink of pen and print.
George Goodwin shows how the leaders of the American Revolution brilliantly weaponized information and propaganda through correspondence and newspapers, shaping public perception, mobilizing support, and swaying the colonies toward open rebellion.
Once the war began, George Washington’s tireless ability to deploy the pen and press as a weapon of war helped to unite and sustain very different colonies and colonists during the eight long years before victory.
Drawing on a wealth of contemporary accounts, letters, and publications, Goodwin demonstrates how liberty and authority were contested through ideas, images, and rhetoric at the time of America’s birth—and how, 250 years on, the Revolution can be seen as America’s first great media war.
About the Author
George Goodwin is the author of four highly-acclaimed historical studies. The latest of these is Propaganda Wars of the American Revolution, published by Yale Univeristy Press in 2026. It is a successor to his Benjamin Franklin in London: The British Life of America’s Founding Father, published in hardcover and paperback by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and Yale University Press (USA).
His previous works were Fatal Colours – Towton 1461 on the reign of Henry VI and the 1st War of the Roses; and Fatal Rivalry — Henry VIII, James IV and the battle for Renaissance Britain, Flodden 1513, both published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and W W Norton (USA).
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