I posted a longer version of this in the "History" section, but I figured I'd put something here for my fellow Floridians as well. This is a book I've mentioned to a few of you in conversation, and that I've been meaning to post about for a couple of months (ever since I read it) and finally got to today.
The book is American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People by T.H. Breen, published in 2010. I found it to be a very readable and interesting book that covered a lot of things of which even I (who have taught college history for seven years) was completely ignorant. It was also a book that I found to be a wonderful complement to Paul Revere's Ride and other works about Lexington and Concord, because it really puts the events of April 19 in a broader context.
Here's the first paragraph of the book, to give you an idea of what it's about:
"Two years before the Declaration of Independence, a young, evangelical colonial population accomplished something truly extraordinary. In small communities from New Hampshire to Georgia, it successfully challenged the authority of Great Britain, then the strongest empire in the world. The vast majority of Americans have never heard the people's story. Instead, we have concentrated attention on the lives of a small group of celebrated leaders. Without the people, however, there would have been no independent nation. Confident of their God-given rights, driven by anger against an imperial government that treated them like second-class subjects, American insurgents resisted parliamentary rule, first spontaneously, as loosely organized militants who purged the countryside of Crown officials, and then, increasingly after late-1774, as members of local committees of safety that became schools for revolution."
I put a little bit more info and a bit of review on the History section of the forum, so please check that out if you're intrigued.
Amazon delivered via the Brown Truck 'O Happiness and I must say, this is a great book. If you are telling the story, you need this book.
Thanks, Prof C.J. I'm enjoying the read.