All the financial advisors I know wish they could make the time to read more books, and simply can’t. Moreover, as Independence Day dawns once again, I think many in our profession wish they knew more about our revolution, but wouldn’t know which book to read – and couldn’t give it the time even if they did.

Very well then: suppose I were to tell you that there is one book by a world-class scholar of the revolutionary period that would take you from the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 right up through the enactment of the Constitution, in 162 pages of crisply readable text? In fact, there is.

It’s The American Revolution: A History by the distinguished historian Gordon S. Wood. Mr. Wood’s lifelong scholarship of this first and most successful colonial revolution has earned him – among other honors – a Bancroft Prize (the ultimate accolade in the writing of American history), a Pulitzer Prize and, in 2010, the National Humanities Medal.

In researching his earlier classic books, Gordon Wood admits he “read and reread nearly every pamphlet, sermon and tract concerned with politics that was written in the Revolutionary era.” His scholarship has profoundly influenced colleagues in his field while attracting a larger audience.

I tell you all this not to burnish Mr. Wood’s credentials, which he certainly has no need of my doing. Rather, I’m suggesting his most spectacular achievement in these 162 lucid pages: choosing what to leave out, while still clearly tracing “the shifting ideas and social and political developments defining the early American Republic,” as the National Endowment for the Humanities citation said. (The eight-year war itself occupies only 14 pages in this most economical telling.)

Virtually every paragraph in The American Revolution is thus a complete thought. And if we’re drawn into the book by its blessed brevity, there are moments when that complete thought just stops you in your tracks, with an idea, a connection or an explanation you’d (maybe I should just say I’d) never been exposed to, or considered.

No matter how time-constrained you are, Gordon Wood’s The American Revolution is the one must-read book for all of us on this glorious Fourth of July.

© 2019 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. The twentieth anniversary edition of Nick’s classic book for clients, Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth, has just been published, and is available only on www.nickmurray.com.