One rebellion,told from both sides.

Thirteen colonies with no army, no navy, no treasury and no country took on the leading power in the world and won, and the standard account of how tends to leave out both the money and the losing side. So this path runs Washington for the war, Hamilton for the machinery that paid for it, George III for the view from London, and Jefferson for the words and the enormous contradiction underneath them. Four books, four vantage points, one event that none of the four saw whole.

The order runs by when each man's story ends, which happens to be a good argument too. Washington first because without an army in the field nothing else matters. Hamilton second because he is the one who works out that independence is an accounting problem. George III third, once you have seen what he was up against, because a mad tyrant is a poor explanation for losing a war. Jefferson last, because his sentence about equality is the promise the whole thing is measured against, and he owned people while writing it.

Four books, an hour each, roughly four hours. This is not a military history: you will get Yorktown in outline, not in order of battle. Slavery is not treated as a footnote to the founding, particularly in the fourth book, and George III's illness is described as the medical uncertainty it remains.