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LIBERTY! THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, by Thomas Fleming, Viking Books, 394 pages, $39.95.

This lavishly illustrated companion volume to the PBS television series of the same name examines the evolution of the ideas that inspired American colonists to rebel against Great Britain. The extraordinary events and characters of the era are portrayed through more than 200 color and black and white paintings, documents, and personal stories of many of the period’s most influential individuals. The book also features accounts of some lesser-known events, including a second Boston Tea Party and the operation of the first submarine. Fleming’s analysis ranges from the military (the Battle of Yorktown) to the political (the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Constitution).