In the revolutionary era,
Gordon Wood is pretty standard fare (and
Bernard Bailyn, if you want to go further back).
Alan Taylor, a great historian I had the privilege of studying under, wrote a really comprehensive work on American hemisphere-wide colonies, and he recently came out with a new work on the War of 1812... I have not read it, but I've shameless pillaged
his talk for material for my upcoming lecture.
Civil War is an animal all its own, but for Lincoln Presidency, everyone loves
Dorris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, and if you read Reconstruction stuff, you absolutely have to read
Eric Foner--for that time period, there is probably no better contemporary scholar.