About the Book

Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas.
 
In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation’s history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of Cold War–era propaganda.
 
By exploring the Revolution’s unique role in American history as a national origin myth, The Memory of ’76 shows how remembering the nation’s founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long-standing American political tradition.

About the Author

Michael D. Hattem is the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and teaches online graduate courses for Eastern Washington University.  His research focuses on early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory.

He earned his Ph.D. in History from Yale University and he is the author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020).  Dr. Hattem has taught History and American Studies at The New School in New York City and at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. Dr. Hattem has served as a historical consultant or contributor for a number of projects and organizations, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions.

Dr. Hattem was a member of the Washington Library’s 2014-15 class of Research Fellows and then again 2017-18.