Reddit reviews The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States)

For the Revolutionary War

• This Glorious Cause. One volume book, so it's not going to cover everything but for a general overview of the Revolutionary War it's great.
  
  
• Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy I'm partial to this one because of the focus on the Navy.
  
  
• Paul Revere's Ride Fischer does a great job in explaining the build up to the Revolution using Revere as a central figure.
  
  
• The First Salute. Barbara Truchman writes here about the vital role the Dutch played in keeping the Revolution alive via trade, and the consequences of that trade for the Dutch. It can sometime lose focus as Truchman goes into great detail about things that probably would be better left to footnotes, but it's still a great read. (Her Guns of August won a Pulitzer, and in my opinion it's a must-read for anyone at all interested in WWI.)
  
  For the Civil War
  
  
• The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. I'm a big fan of this, but it is three volumes so that means it's rather long.
  
  
• Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is also another classic in the field.
  
  
• Grant's Memoirs and Sherman's Memoirs are both must-reads.
  
  I have to recommend Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, both fantastic military fiction.
  
  
  
  

Now this is a good question. However, I'm afraid I may be disappointing you again. I think it depends at least in part in where your interests lie...are you more interested in military, political, social, economic history etc. Does it matter to you if you learn American history chronologically or not? The below list includes great works in several categories....

Manhood in America: A Cultural History by Michael Kimmel
history of the united states army weigley
battle cry of freedom mcpherson

and if I were to recommend a single volume, and one volume, to start it would be...http://www.amazon.com/The-Glorious-Cause-Revolution-1763-1789/dp/019531588X

It's an Oxford History, usually a stamp of sound quality.

Let's get it started then. What would you be interested in reading? I have some options on my reading list, maybe you are interested. If not, you can also suggest some titles and then we can decide.

• On China, Henry Kissinger I read his book on world order a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed it a lot. He played a major role in reestablishing diplomatic relations with China, so I think this might turn out to be an interesting read.
  
• The Glorious Cause, Robert Middlekauff This US history book spans the period prior to the independence up to it's aftermath (1763-1789). Chronologically speaking, it is the first book in the Oxford series on the history of the United States. I have heard great things about this series, in particular McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. I plan to read the whole series little by little.
  
• The Global Minotaur, Yanis Varoufakis I learned about this book by reading his more recent book And the Weak Suffer What They Must?. This is more of a history of political economy, and covers the period from the end of WWII to the 2008 crisis. As far as I know, Global Minotaur covers the same period as the book I read but focuses more on the US than Europe. I'm not an economist, so there are some things I wasn't able to understand, but for the most part I had no problem at all and enjoyed it quite a bit.
  
  
• Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell I learned about this book reading a collection of essays by Chomsky entitled on Anarchism. Here, Chomsky talks about some rare "truly socialist" movement that appeared in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. This movement was crushed by both Franco's military coup and the Soviet army. Orwell fought there and this book narrates his experience. Given the great experience I had reading 1984, I think this could be a very interesting read.
  
  
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand I have hear many things for and against this author, but I have never read it. I have also heard that this book is better from a literary standpoint than Atlas Shrugged, and also was written earlier, so this could be a good starting point.