Synopses & Reviews
According to the traditional telling, the American Revolution began with "the shot heard round the world." Now in paperback, Ray Raphael's
The First American Revolution uses the wide-angle lens of a people's historian to tell a surprising new story of Americas revolutionary struggle.
In the years before the battle of Lexington and Concord, local people men and women of common means but of uncommon courage overturned British authority and declared themselves free from colonial oppression, with acts of rebellion that long predated the Boston Tea Party. In rural towns such as Worcester, Massachusetts, democracy set down roots well before the Boston patriots made their moves in the fight for independence. Richly documented, The First American Revolution recaptures in vivid detail the grassroots activism that drove events in the years leading up to the break from Britain.
Review
"The best single-volume history of the Revolution I have read." Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
Review
"Raphael makes a compelling case that these early events were critical to the success of the war that followed and should no longer escape our notice."
Publishers Weekly
Review
"An exciting distillation of the discoveries of a generation of scholars about ordinary people in the American Revolution. A very readable, thought-provoking book." Alfred Young, author of The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
Review
"A cracking good read....Ray Raphael writes about the American Revolution as if he had been in the thick of it." Roy Porter, author of Enlightenment: Britain and the Making of the Modern World and London: A Social History
About the Author
Ray Raphael is the author of numerous books, including A People's
History of the American Revolution; An Everyday History of
Somewhere; Men From the Boys; and Tree Talk. He lives in northern California.