From the Town Hall web site, "In the summer of 1776, the most dramatic months in the story of America’s founding, the 13 colonies agreed to secede from the British Empire. At the same time, the British dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic; it cruised off the coast of Staten Island in early July. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on the run, improvising as history congealed around them. Offering a revelatory portrait of this crescendo season, Pulitzer Prize-winner/ historian Joseph J. Ellis, author of Revolutionary Summer, weaves the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other. Presented as part of the Town Hall Civics series with Elliott Bay Book Company. Series supported by The Boeing Company, the RealNetworks Foundation, and the True/Brown Foundation."