The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, yet the founding is controversial now in ways it has not been in decades. The American Enterprise Institute offers a major intellectual and educational project to reintroduce Americans to the unique value of their national inheritance. In the final volume of this eight-book series, historians explore how generations of Americans have defined, debated, and drawn on the memory of the American Revolution. From the early republic to the present, Americans have repeatedly written new histories of their independence movement and centered “the Spirit of ’76” in their arts and civic initiatives as a way to make sense of contemporary challenges. Studying the American Revolution’s legacy shows how it has shaped American civic education, informed American culture, and enabled citizens to fashion a shared identity in a pluralistic nation. Richard Brookhiser is an American journalist, biographer, and historian. He is a senior editor at National Review . He is most widely known for a series of biographies of America’s founders, including Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and George Washington. Allen C. Guelzo is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of humanities at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), among many other books. Jane Kamensky is president and CEO of Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. She was the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and is the author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley , among many other books. Rita Koganzon is an associate professor at the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina and the author of Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought (2021). Wilfred McClay is the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College and is the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (1994).