Primary Sources
Rush, Benjamin, George Washington Corner, and Benjamin Rush. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush: His Travels through Life Together with His Commonplace Book for 1789-1813. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1970.
Secondary Sources
Brodsky, Alyn. Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. 1st ed. New York: Truman Talley Books, 2004.
A good account of Rush’s life. Later biographies have the benefit from access to additional Rush correspondence and documents.
Fried, Stephen. Rush: Revolution, Madness, and the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father. First paperback edition. New York: B\D\W\Y Broadway Books, 2018.
Do not recommend the Fried book on Rush as it contains extraneous information, numerous errors and misinterpretations of facts. Fried’s work reads like a novel and unfortunately, in some places it is fiction.
Hawke, David Freeman. Benjamin Rush – Revolutionary Gadfly. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1971.
The moniker in the title of this biography “gadfly, is the best characterization of Rush’s views and actions as a military officer during the Revolution. However, Rush contributed significantly to the study of medicine which is not covered as comprehensively in Hawke’s volume as by later biographers.
Unger, Harlow G. Dr. Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation. First Da Xapo press edition. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2018.
Recommend Unger’s biography as the most authoritative source for information on Rush. Highly readable with excellent scholarship and eminently readable.
