PBS will air Ken Burns' six-part documentary series "The American Revolution" in 2026. A companion book, titled "The American Revolution: An Intimate History," co-written by Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, will accompany the series' release.

The series and book will debut in advance of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026. This date also marks the 200th anniversary of the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson previously authored the Declaration of Independence and owned approximately 600 people during his lifetime. Adams served as the nation's first vice president and second president.

Burns and Ward wrote that the American Revolution was "a bloody struggle that would engage more than two dozen nations, European as well as Native American, that also somehow came to be about the noblest aspirations of humankind." Approximately one-fifth of the colonists remained loyal to the British crown. Many Indigenous nations aligned with the British to block colonists' westward expansion. Some enslaved people sought freedom by siding with the Patriots, while British forces offered emancipation to others who sided with them.

The companion book includes essays from Maya Jasanoff, Vincent Brown, and Philip J. Deloria. Gregory E. O'Malley, author of "The Escapes of David George," documents the life of David George, who was born enslaved on a Virginia tobacco plantation in 1742. George escaped his enslaver at age 19, fleeing to the Carolina backcountry. He was later held captive in Creek and Natchez communities and sold by his Indigenous captors to a fur trader, detailing a decade of re-enslavement on a South Carolina plantation.

During the Revolution, David George organized a mass escape to British lines with 50 men, women, and children. He started what is likely the world's first Black Baptist church. At the end of the war, George relocated to Nova Scotia with white Loyalists and other newly emancipated Black people. O'Malley writes that George's situation highlights a "bitter irony" that "rights to 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' describe perfectly what David George and thousands of other Black refugees pursued by fleeing the American Revolution rather than joining it." Jack Kelly wrote the book "Tom Paine's War."