How well do you truly know the American Revolution? On the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the United States, author Derek Baxter reveals just how global an effort it was to create a new country.

Forget the Liberty Bell: if you want to truly understand the American Revolution, get a passport and visit the hills of Andalucia, the lagoons of the Yucatan, and the palaces of south India. In The Forgotten World War, Derek Baxter embarks on an adventure-filled quest across four continents to uncover the story of how Americans really won our independence. He discovers how the fighting in the U.S. was only one theater of a much broader conflict, in which an unlikely group of nations banded together to take on the mighty British Empire.

On the windswept island of Jersey in the English Channel, he finds out how France attempted a full-scale invasion

At an unlikely Fourth of July party in Spain, he helps the descendent of a renowned Spanish general make a giant paella In India, he investigates one of the greatest victories of the Revolutionary War, when an army five times as large as any that Washington ever put in the field (and with considerably more elephants) annihilated the Redcoats. Baxter finds the human stories behind this long-ago conflict—sometimes with surprising results.

The Forgotten World War delivers a powerful message, right in time for our nation’s 250th anniversary. America began only when peoples of different races, languages, and religions overcame mistrust and came together.