A Pulitzer Prize finalist for history, Kevin Phillips is a regular commentator for NPR and has been a political and economic commentator for four decades. He served as chief political strategist for Richard Nixon during the 1968 election, and in his 1970 work The Emerging Republic Majority, he accurately forecasted a major shift to the right in electoral politics. His bestselling works include Bad Money, called “frighteningly persuasive” (New York Times); Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich; American Dynasty, about the ascent of the Bush family; and American Theocracy. 1775 upends conventional wisdom, arguing that the titular year—not the commonly mythologized 1776—was the critical launching point of both the revolutionary war and American independence.