"The best single-volume history of the Revolution I have read."
--Howard Zinn
Upon its initial publication, Ray Raphael's magisterial A People's
History of the American Revolution was hailed by NPR's Fresh Air as
"relentlessly aggressive and unsentimental." With impeccable skill,
Raphael presented a wide array of fascinating scholarship within a
single volume, employing a bottom-up approach that has served as a
revelation.
A People's History of the American Revolution draws upon diaries,
personal letters, and other Revolutionary-era treasures, weaving a
thrilling "you are there" narrative--"a tapestry that uses individual
experiences to illustrate the larger stories". Raphael shifts the focus
away from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the slaves they
owned, the Indians they displaced, and the men and boys who did the
fighting (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
This "remarkable perspective on a familiar part of American history"
helps us appreciate more fully the incredible diversity of the American
Revolution (Kirkus Reviews).
"Through letters, diaries, and other accounts, Raphael shows these
individuals--white women and men of the farming and laboring classes,
free and enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, loyalists, and
religious pacifists--acting for or against the Revolution and enduring a
war that compounded the difficulties of everyday life." --Library
Journal
"A tour de force . . . Ray Raphael has probably altered the way in which
future historians will see events." --The Sunday Times
