DWD's Reviews

  Published by Random House Audio in November of 2021. Read by Steve Hendrickson. Duration: 16 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. When I read the title of this audiobook, OUR FIRST CIVIL WAR: PATRIOTS and LOYALISTS in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION , I was sure that I was going to be listening to an in-depth look at how the population of the young United States dealt with its neighbors and family that disagreed about the question of independence. The most famous example is Benjamin Franklin and his son William Franklin. William Franklin was the last royal governor of New Jersey and their relationship never recovered from the shock of the Revolutionary War.  This book deals with more of these issues than most histories of the Revolutionary War era, but that is not particularly hard to do - most of them mention the Franklin family situation and use it as a stand-in for all families. But, it does not go in-depth into this concept of Loyalists vs. Patriots. For example, I learned more about ...

Originally published by HarperPerennial in 1991. Richard Shenkman has written several books that show that many of the commonly-held beliefs about history are not quite true and some are absolutely false. The title comes from a quote from President Warren G. Harding when he was asked about a popular newspaper article that asserted that Paul Revere did not actually make his famous ride. Ironically, Paul Revere only gets two mentions: once on page 10 and the other on page 192. The mention on page 192 is simply the complete quote from Harding that inspired the title of the book. So, if you were thinking this was going to be a book about Paul Revere, you will be disappointed.  Instead, Shenkman's I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not is a reminder that there are always multiple views on history. Anybody that tells you that a certain group all believed a certain thing or they all did something for one reason is simplifying things and losing some of the nuance of how it re...

Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster Samuel Adams (1722-1803) When you read the history books, it seems obvious that the colonies steadily worked their way up to declaring their independence without much of a hitch. The beauty of William Hogeland's Declaration is that he shows that it was a lot closer than the history books usually portray. Samuel Adams and his cousin John Adams maneuvered many of the representatives to the Continental Congress into voting for independence and certainly manipulated the government of Pennsylvania. In fact, you could make the case that they toppled the government of Pennsylvania through a powerful media campaign combined with timely advice and political pressure and installed a pro-independence government just in time for the fateful vote. But, this new (to me) information was marred by a difficult to read text. The book just bounced around - the writing style just never got into a flow. I found it hard to read more than a page or two at ...

Published in 2013 by Penguin Audio Read by Chris Sorensen Duration: 12 hours, 58 minutes Unabridged Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution is mis-named. While the battle is in the book, it is only a part of the story. In reality, this book is a history of Boston from the 1750s and 1760s right up to the Declaration of Independence. In a lot of ways this book is much more of a biography of Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty movement, along with Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Hancock. Warren is often overlooked nowadays because he died at Bunker Hill (which was really mostly fought on Breed's Hill). The excessive focus on Warren was, in my mind, one of the great weaknesses of the book. Philbrick spent too much time worrying over Warren's alleged personal failures and not enough time getting on with the story. It just bogged things down. Philbrick does not gloss over the warts of our Founding Fathers, noting tha...

Published by Penguin Audio in 2011 Read by Arthur Morey Duration: 12 hours, 45 minutes Unabridged Referring to Noah Webster (1753-1848), the creator of the famed Webster Dictionary, as a Founding Father is generous, to say the least. He did live serve in the Connecticut militia, even deploying at one point, but he never saw much action. He did know many of the Founding Fathers and actually stayed in the homes of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but they had frequent guests so it would not be fair to characterize those friendships as particularly close friendships. He did advocate strongly for the adoption of the Constitution and for a short time was actively involved in partisan politics as a newspaper editor in New York City. But, when people think Founding Father they are usually referring to far brighter lights than Noah Webster. A 1958 stamp featuring Noah Webster If I were naming this book I would have dropped the Forgotten Founding Father angle and kept the res...

  Published by Alfred A. Knopf in September of 2014 I have read many histories of the Revolutionary War and most only tell the story of the build-up to the war from the American side and only describe Britain's political scene as it was interpreted by the colonists. To be fair, it was often misinterpreted by the colonists. But, in reality, there were two sides to this fight and it was not just the colonists that were misinterpreting the political signals of their brethren across the Atlantic. The British government had no idea how far their colonial governments had evolved along democratic lines (compared to a modern democracy they were all quite restrictive but when compared to Britain they were quite open).  The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773. Nick Bunker picks this moment to be the point of no return between Britain and the colonists. In fact, it seemed that often Britain was barely aware of the colonies because it had too many other crises...

Disappointing Published by HarperAudio in 2007 Read by Sam Tsoutsouvas Duration: 12 hours, 56 minutes Jay Winik's April 1865 is one of my favorite Civil War histories - it holds a very safe place on a shelf that has to be purged on a regular basis to make room for new books because it is a brilliant history.  Before I go on with this review I must note that I listened to the abridged audiobook version of this book (so far as I can determine, there is no unabridged version). Despite the abridgment, this book still clocks in at nearly 13 hours. Some of my criticisms are undoubtedly due to the abridgment. Winik's thesis in this book is that the time period from 1788 to 1800 was a time of revolutionary ardor and that most of the great European powers were affected. Victor Hugo wrote:  “One can resist the invasion of armies;  one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.” Winik looks at how the ideas of America's Founding Fathers and the French philosophes affected...

A fun read. Not real deep, but fun. Good vacation read for history buffs. Richard Brookhiser got the idea for What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers from the questions from his audiences when he would give a public lecture on the founders. "Richard, what would the founding fathers have said about...(illegal immigration, marijuana, the war in Iraq, etc.)? So, he collected a number of those questions, did a little research and wrote this fun little book. Richard Brookhiser is the writer of the best overall biography of George Washington that I have read, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington . This one is not the same quality, although I am giving them both the same score: 4 stars. Gouverneur Morris Why? A book of this sort is just different creature than a biography. By its very nature it is a series of starts and stops (the question and answer format). This inhibits the flow of the book in many ways, but does make it good for t...

A look at the Revolutionary War generation Originally published in 1983. Theron Nelsen and co-author Doug Wead's What Price Freedom: The Adventures of Early American Heroes is a series of short biographies of 9 men and 1 woman of the Revolutionary War generation. None of the biographies is too detailed (vary from 7-17 pages) and none focus on the more controversial parts of their lives (like Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, for example). Nevertheless, the book is pretty well done and chock full of good quotes. The biographies included are: John Paul Jones (1747-1792) Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Greene Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones, Francis Marion, Deborah Sampson, George Washington. John Adams is left out, but then again, when this book was written, Adams was not as popular as he is today. If you are an Adams fan, he is quoted extensively in the book, which is one of the reasons I was surprised he was le...

The "Forgotten" Founding Father Samuel Adams (1722-1803) George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin. John Adams. All there at the founding of our country. All recognized for their unique contributions to the revolution. Author Gary Wills noted that Adams was "the most influential man at the first two Congresses." He was on the committees of correspondence that tied the colonies together in the first place and no one was on more committees in the Continental Congress. It is easily argued that Samuel Adams had as great a role, if not greater than any other member of the Congress. He had such an integral part to play that a local newspaper noted in his obituary that "to give his history at full length, would be to to give an history of the American Revolution." In Samuel Adams: A Life,  Ira Stoll tells the story of Samuel Adams. Called by some the Last of the Puritans for his strong religious faith and willingness to express it openly, A...

  T he Glorious Cause is the second in Shaara's two volume piece historical fiction concerning the Revolutionary War. Rise to Rebellion was the first, and I believe the superior of the two, but The Glorious Cause is an excellent novel as well. Rise to Rebellion is the superior of the two novels due to the changes of heart that the readers sees in John Adams and Benjamin Franklin concerning the issue of independence from England. The Glorious Cause has little of that type deep soul-searching. However, it is a fantastic portrayal of the difficulties encountered by the Continental Army and George Washington, in particular. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) If I were to have my druthers, I would have preferred that Shaara had broken the second 600+ page novel into two novels  to make it a trilogy and expanded them both by delving more into the politics of the day and the difficulties of fighting a war with the governmental structures and restrictions that ...