By Nathaniel Philbrick
All I want to do now is go to Boston with this book and my brother Steve, and go to every place mentioned to see how our revolution came to be. This book has been sitting on my shelf for so long I forgot when and where I bought it. But I am thrilled to say I finished it and am pleasantly surprised how well the author walked me through the events and characters.
Boston is not the same geographic city it was in the 1700’s and I found myself pulling up google maps to compare to the maps in the book from the 1700’s. My memory of the history of Bunker Hill was fuzzy from my history class in high school (along with a lot of other fuzzy memories 🙂 from that time) and Nathaniel Philbrick brought it back to life for me and filled in so many details.
Not the least of which is that we lost a famous Patriot in Dr. Joseph Warren in the battle at Bunker Hill. He was a committee chair and leader of the movement against the British with Samuel Adams and others. He was also a prominent physician but wanted to be at the front lines of battle. One comment in the book that struck me was that if he had lived, that it is possible that George Washington would not have been our first president! I need to learn more about this man.
For you history buffs and New Englanders out there, get this book. I’m keeping this one.
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