As I said above, I have always tried to view those men of the American war for independence as flawed, human and fallible men, but this one seems so far to that viewpoint that I am concerned I am somehow not understanding it correctly at all.
Given what I have read to this point, it would not surprise me if the author was a far left liberal with an axe to grind against the current day Tea Party movement, and this was his way of attempting to deconstruct the foundations of this country.
I am well aware of the viewpoints that the founders had elements of ungrateful selfishness in their refusal to recognize claims that England was simply trying to extract taxes to pay for money spent by the crown in protecting the ungrateful colonials, but this author takes this as prima facie evidence that the colonials were wrong to fairly consider this aspect.
I have always felt there was a degree of truth to the Crown's motives in this their efforts to tax the colonials, but I have never accepted as wrong the stubbornness of the colonials to not accept all that was done with respect to taxation as the be all and end all of the benevolence of the crown.
Any comments on this? I intend to finish this book, but this really bothered me today.
I realized several years ago, while studying history, that the royalists never left after the revolution. It appears their descendants have been working to undermine our republic ever since and have found common cause with the European Fabian Socialists, Frankfurt School, and of course the USSR. Socialism is nothing but populist rhetoric for tyranny.
Just an excuse to bash Israel.
“I find myself wondering why this conservative friend of mine would recommend this book to me.”
maybe your friend is a closet lib and hates you.(j/k) Recommend Mark Levin’s book and ask him what he thinks of it.
I loved Mayflower, but I read it for pleasure only. I never considered that the author may have a bias. Maybe the "NY Times Bestseller" should've been a clue for me!
The last two places I've lived have been Plymouth and Charlestown, Massachusetts, so his works hold a special interest for me.
For now, Bunker Hill is on my Amazon wish list.
Thank you in advance.
Al
Your review of the book here is interesting. Apparently history is no longer taught in many of our high schools. I was watching the teen tournament on Jeapordy last week and the 3 finalists knew nothing about General (President) Eisenhower. This book sounds like another re-writing of history by the liberals.
Few things irritate me like people who trash the Founders. They’ll cheerfully tell anyone that Washington owned slaves, Jefferson slept with slaves, whatever knocks a Founder off the pedestal and gives the critic a chance to sound sophisticated and well-read.
When I hear such things I’m as thorough and merciless as a wood chipper.
Thank you for the warning. Too bad Philbrick didn’t stick to Nantucket history, and even there he wasn’t the best to be read. :(
Just as I suspected ping
It sounds like the supermarket tabloid culture to me, but that’s not a new thing either — there were ancient authors, some of whose work survives, that recorded scurrilous fables about the high and mighty.
John Adams was a bona fide nut, but he also played a vital role in organizing the Revolution; he defended the British soldiers tried for the Boston Massacre; and perhaps most importantly, took on the most difficult job of the era, perhaps of all time — he followed George Washington as POTUS. That’s not the only reason he had just one term, or why his presidency suffers in comparison with both Washington and Jefferson who followed Adams, but it was one reason.
Today’s liberals are the descendants of the Revolution’s loyalists.
Thanks for your perspective; now I can avoid reading the slanderous screed which was recommended to you.
Furthermore the Colonists contributed buckets of blood fighting the French and Indians. For the most part the French and Indians whipped the British Regulars butts, and it was those lowly Colonist who did most of the winning.
This sounds like another revisionist pile of poodoo.
Humanity almost entirely consists of crooked timbers, but, like journalists, historians sometimes have too great a fondness for telling of the flaws and errors of historical figures without placing them in proper context. The larger point is to recognize that the many weaknesses that we see on our own side today will not necessarily be fatal to our cause.
I loved this book. I am a tea party conservative and a Sarah Palin follower. I read this book twice over a couple years. Likewise, I read his other book, “Mayflower,” which was awesome. I never thought he was a bleeding heart at all. I thought it was kind of a warts and all type of story. I honestly love this author and I loved these 2 books. I read nothing but history.
I read the book . I didn’t see it as an apology for the crown. The author actually uses a lot of the principal players actual correspondence and shows them warts and all.
From the rioting resulting from the British seizure of Hancock’s ship Liberty leading to the occupation of Boston in 1768, through the bravery of America’s first black war hero at Bunker Hill, Salem Poor, to the entry of George Washington on the world stage, the author does a nice job of bringing together events that are usually addressed separately in history classes and make no sense out of context.
It’s also an excellent summary of the events leading up to the revolution. I didn’t see that the author was taking the King’s side at all. It’s just a fact that the British wanted us to pay some of the debt they incurred for defending us in the French and Indian War.
It’s also a fact that the provincials preferred to govern themselves and resisted attempts by Parliament to exercise their authority.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit.
Haven’t read the book, but it is just a fact that the history of our Revolution is a great deal more complicated and less justified than has traditionally been taught in America.
The single most obvious issue is the Patriot assumption that the British government intended to progressively destroy their freedoms, that there was a conscious conspiracy to do so.
We have the records of Cabinet meetings and other government documents, and there just was no such conspiracy. The British stumbled into war due much more to incompetence and inattention than malevolence.
You will find it difficult to locate a greater fan of the Declaration of Independence than I, but the greater part of it, the list of grievances against the King, is at best one-sided spin and at worst largely lies. If you go through the list one at a time and examine the truthfulness of the claim this is easy to see.
You will note that later British colonization of the American type, overseas settlement of British and other whites, is mostly absent tyrannical oppression of the type Americans claimed was the British intent. After all, there are certainly much worse national fates than becoming Canada or Australia. To be fair, the Brits didn’t get into another American type of colonial war possibly because they were taught a very sharp lesson by us.
The Loyalists were also appallingly mistreated. MUCH worse than Confederates were. It is actually kind of funny to read Confederate apologists complaining about how constitutional rights were violated by Lincoln, when in a somewhat similar civil war the Founders themselves violated the rights of Loyalists much more severely.
I found this boring, poorly organized and padded, but not especially leftist.