Includes bibliographical references and index.

"From more than a thousand pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic during the period [of 1764-1776], acclaimed historian Gordon S. Wood has selected thrity-nine of the most influential and emblematic to reveal as never before how this momentous revolution unfolded. Here, in the first volume of a two-volume set, are nineteen works from the trans-Atlantic debate triggered by Parliament's imposition of new taxes and regulations designed to reform the empire. What begins as a controversy about the origin and function of colonies ... quickly becomes a deeper dispute about the nature of political liberty itself."--Jacket flap.