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

For Louis Birnbaum, the early period of the American Revolution is one of the greatest stories in the world—and he has written his book to give us back that immediacy and excitement. Careful scholarship underlies every line, but the author’s purpose is to make us feel we were there—keeping watch on the British through the slow spring until the famous night that set Paul Revere galloping; sweltering with the British regulars in the unseasonable April heat as they are driven back from Concord; fighting it out to the last bullet and grain of powder on Breed’s Hill; coaxing the cannon from Ticonderoga across thin ice to get them to Washington in time; improvising the above-ground defenses on Dorchester Heights when Washington seized the high ground and found it frozen like iron; firing those cannon just enough to push the British out of Boston without burning the city as they had Charlestown across the harbor.This brilliant new history is the crown of a lifetime’s enthusiasm and research. From the embarkation of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers to strengthen General Gage in 1773, to the departure of the British from Boston in 1776, we have a totally fascinating, detailed, and moving account of the beginnings of the Revolution on the New England front.As the author writes in his foreword: “Some of this material is rare or has come to light only recently; all of it offers the modern reader the detail and sense of immediacy found only in eyewitness accounts.”