Book review and recommendation: American Spring by Walter R. Borneman
Having an interest in the American Revolution and (especially) what led to it as a comparison to what we are experiencing today, I looked for a good book that would describe the detailed conditions that led up to it. I am happy to report that I found it, and give a strong thumbs up. The book is "American Spring", by Walter R. Borneman. It was published only last year (2014) and so includes the very latest historical analysis. Borneman is a true historian, and provides ample bibliography and footnotes of the original accounts and documents used. He dispels many commonly held myths based on shaky or rumored information, and supports his conclusion with facts from reliable original sources.
The book covers from December 13 1774 to early July 1775, from the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party to the aftermath of Bunker Hill. It includes the battles of Concord and Lexington in very great depth.
Some of my takeaways were:
- The early days of the revolution were messy, in the sense that not everyone was on the same page and wanted to revolt to the same degree
- The patriots did have a very efficient (for the time) communication network from the very beginning
- King George III and those around him were all for "putting the colonies in their place", even with many British citizens sympathetic to the colonists
- The loyalists/tories of the time were large in number, and remind me somewhat of our dependent class. However, our dependent class are VERY uninformed compared to the loyalists, even with all of the news sources and social media now
- The loyalists seemed to just want to get along, for the most part, and not actively fight for the British. I suspect our dependent class will fight with some determination when the handouts disappear
Anyway a great read for the amateur historian as well as modern day concerned citizens.
