Boston 1775

As Patriot’s Day nears try these fascinating history books on the battle at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill.

The Day the American Revolution Began: 19 April 1775
      by William H. Hallahan,

At four in the morning on April 19, 1975, a line of British soldiers stared across the village green of Lexington, Massachusetts, at a crowd of seventy-seven Amercican militiamen. A shot rang out, and the Redcoats replied with a devastating volley. Drawing on diaries, letters, official documents, and memoirs, William H. Hallahan vividly captures the drama of those tense twenty-four hours. 

The Battle of April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, and Charlestown Massachusetts
 by Frank Warren Coburn

Then one of the other mounted officers behind Pitcairn, brandished his sword and the regulars huzzaed in unison.  He then pointed his pistol toward the Minute Men and fired.  A detailed history of the battle first published in 1912 and updated in 1922.

Red Dawn at Lexington: If They Mean to Have a War, Let It Begin Here!
     by Louis Birnbaum

Using eyewitness accounts extensively, Birnbaum brings to life events in and around the Boston of 1773-1776: the arrival of British reinforcements; the rising tensions among colonists; and the ensuing battles at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill, all related in vivid details that allow us to see many different individuals and the issues at stake within the framework of that era.

The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington
     by Paul Douglas Lockhart

One hot June afternoon in 1775, on the gentle slopes of a hill near Boston, Massachusetts, a small band of ordinary Americans--frightened but fiercely determined--dared to stand up to a superior British force. But Bunker Hill was not the battle that we have been taught to believe it was.

With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Bunker Hill and the Beginning of the American Revolution
     by James L. Nelson

The battles of Lexington and Concord, deemed the shots heard around the world, are usually considered the opening conflicts of the Revolutionary War. Perhaps so, but as Nelson indicates in his detailed and stirring account, the subsequent battle at Bunker Hill had a much greater impact in both America and Britain.

Tyson