Commonwealth Books
Publications
and
Programs
"Pocket Book" Illustrated Histories of America
The nine books in this series will be available in paperback format and will be approximately 5 X 8 inches in size. The stories they tell are between 150 and 200 pages in length and include illustration reference information, endnotes and bibliographies.
These stories are highlighted by portraits of their protagonists and numerous vivid illustrations of the events they remember rendered by the trade's most celebrated masters. Among these are English-men Ernest Crofts, Archibald Stevenson Forrest, Charles M Padday, T. H. Robionson, J.M.W. Turner and Richard Caton Woodville and Americans John Chapman, Alonzo Chappel, Edwin Williard Deming, John Ward Dunsmore, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Barry Faullkner, Violet Oakley, Howard Pyle, John Trumbull, and N.C. Wyeth.
Books in this series retail for $16.00. They can be purchased on this website through PayPal's online credit card processing system for $18.75 (shipping included), from other online booksellers and at selected bookstores from Colonial Williamsburg to Boston.
Retailers can order books in this series from Commonwealth Books' distributor which is Ingram Book Group. Standard return policies and discounts are available.
Stories for Young Readers
The five books in this series will be available in paperback format and will be approximately 5 X 8 inches in size. Each book contains approximately twenty five vignettes depicting people and events in five phases of the War for American Independence. The series' five themes are: The Storm Breaks, Campaigning in the North, Extraordinary Men and Women, The War in the South and Victory. Each book will be approximately 100 pages in length and will contain images of its protagonists, illustrations of the events it remembers and maps of the campaigns and places in which they occurred. Among the illustrators presented in this series will be Alonzo Chappel, John Ward Dunsmore, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Edward Percy Moran, Howard Pyle, Meade Shaffer, John Trumbull and N.C. Wyeth.
Books in this series retail for $12.00. They can be purchased on this website through PayPal's online credit card processing system for $14.75 (shipping included), from other online booksellers and at selected bookstores.
Retailers can order books in this series from Commonwealth Books' distributor which is Ingram Book Group. Standard return policies and discounts are available.
Programs in these series are meant to be entertaining. Their underlying purpose, however, is to broaden public interest in America's history and heritage and keep it alive in the public mind.
Programs are structured as interviews conducted by Commonwealth
Books publisher, James Thompson, who prompts his guests (scoundrels like Sir William Berkeley, the covetous governor Virginia during the English Civil War and after the restoration of Charles II, and heroines like Lady Sally Fairfax, intimate friend of George Washington) to remem-ber the history they made and to share their favorite stories about the famous people they knew.
These interviews are supported by colorful images like the ones found on these webpages.
These programs highlight the contributions of particular communities to the construction of America's heritage. They are produced in conjunction with local organizations and sponsors, who are the real stewards and preservers of our common history and heritage.
Commonwealth American History programs are conducted as narrated slide shows which connect the people who made America's history with each other and with the events they masterminded and produced.
Commonwealth Books believes that to understand these people and events, they must be seen in appropriate settings. These programs are therefore more than mere recitals of facts. They place their characters within political trends so audiences can grasp the impulses that inspired them to act. They reconstruct their personal relationships. They reveal why they thought as they did, what they aimed to accomplish and the significance of their actions.
Commonwealth Books draws the material for these programs from its "pocket book" histories. They include four to six episodes and are typically offered as courses in continuing education programs at colleges and universites within the historical footprints of our texts.
For information about these courses, refer to the course syllabi at the bottom of the navigation menu on the left side of this website.
Individual episodes will hosted in 2011 by the Society of Colonial Dames at Wilton House in Richmond, Stratford Hall, home of the Lees on Virginia's Northern Neck, by the Friends of John Dickinson's Mansion in Dover Delaware, the Delaware Historical Society in Wilmington and by Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City.
Sets of Commonwealth "American History" Programs can be purchased on CD from this website. For more information refer to our "Purchase On Line" page.
Commonwealth Books
1800 Edgehill Center
Alexandria, VA 22307
(703) 407-3719
and at
info@commonwealthbooks.org
