The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution introduces scholars, students and generally interested readers to the formative event in American history. In thirty-three individual essays, by thirty-three authorities on the Revolution, the Handbook provides readers with in-depth analysis of the Revolution's many sides, ranging from the military and diplomatic to the social and political; from the economic and financial, to the cultural and legal. Its cast of characters ranges far, including ordinary farmers and artisans, men and women, free and enslaved African Americans, Indians, and British and American statesmen and military leaders. Its geographic scope is equally broad. The Handbook offers readers an American Revolution whose geo-political and military impact ranged from the West Indies to the Mississippi Valley; from the British Isles to New England and from Nova Scotia to Florida. The American Revolution of the Handbook is, simply put, an event that far transcended the boundaries of what was to become the United States.

In addition to a breadth of subject matter, the Handbook offers a broad range of interpretive and methodological approaches. Its authors include social historians, historians of politics and institutions, cultural historians, historians of diplomacy, imperial historians, ethnohistorians, and historians of gender and sexuality. Instead of privileging a single or even several interpretive perspectives, the Handbook attempts to capture the full scope of current revolutionary-era scholarship. Nothing comparable has been published in decades.