Any suggestions for books focusing on Boston during Revolutionary war times?

Hi All,
I am going to Boston for Thanksgiving and looking to read some historical books about the area. I read (1776) by ((David McCullough)), (Rise to Rebellion) by ((Jeff Shaara)) and am currently finishing (John Adams) by ((David McCullough)).

I would appreciate any other suggestions.

Thanks,

Mike

Hi All,
I am going to Boston for Thanksgiving and looking to read some historical books about the area. I read 1776, Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara and am currently finishing John Adams by David McCullough. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two and very much engaged in John Adams.

I would appreciate any other suggestions.

Thanks,

Mike

Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer is a wonderfully written account.

Where to begin? A few quickies:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1974), Bernard Bailyn

The Ideological Origins of the Anerican Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard UIniversity Press, 1992), Bernard Bailyn

Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772-1774 (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970), Richard D. Brown.

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#5 --

Fixed.

Thanks.

Don't know if you're interested in fiction, but there's always that good old standby, Johnny Tremain!

Will also add to #4 --

The Character of John Adams (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), Peter Shaw. The "Preface" to which begins:

"John Adams's lifelong struggle with the temptations of popularity and fame was not apparent to his contemporaries, but it contributed to his lack of popularity while he lived and until recent years to his relative obscurity among the founders of the nation. The nineteenth-century custodian of Adams's reputation was his grandson Charles Francis Adams, who during the 1850s published the Works of John Adams with a biography. The judicious "Mr. Adams" of this edition resembled the obscure Charles Francis rather than his embarrassingly hotheaded ancestor. In 1933 Gilbert Chinard initiated modern revaluations with his aptly titled Honest John Adams. But in their search for a usable past the American writers of the 1920s and 1930s championed not Adams but Jefferson and Hamilton, while the imaginations of schoolboys continued to find the stuff of legend in their textbooks portrayals of Washington, Franklin, and Paine. The one exception was typical of Adams's bad luck with publicity. Ezra Pound, who found a version of his own cranky originality in Adams, devoted one of the longest and least known sequences in American poetry to him in his Cantos. . . ."

Interesting irony, as on one hand Adams was viewed by his contemporaries as a major constitutional expert, while Jefferson, on the other, had no role in framing constitutions: Adams authored all of Massachusetts' (excepting the section establishing state religion, by his cousin Sam), and that constitution was the model for the US Constitution. That distortion and imbalance persists, as many today incorrectly conflate the "Declaration of Independence" with the Constitution, overlooking their different purposes, and ignored consistencies.

Wordy Shipmates talks about John Winthrop and the Separatist colony in Boston, as well as a bit about Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson...

Ray Raphael's "The First American Revolution" is really good. I also would recommend Bailyn's book on Thomas Hutchinson.

The Character of John Adams (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), Peter Shaw.
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All of which is largely wrong.

Adams was correctly viewed by his contemporaries as someone who had aspirations to be King. He was responsible for the Alien And Sedition Acts. He was a rabblerouser and the first post-Revolutionary American politician who encouraged thugs to beat up his opponents.

The Virginia constitution - which was effectively written by Jefferson and Madison - was much more influential than the Massachusetts constitution in forming the federal constitution.

Adams was, indeed, unpopular - but not just because of his overbearing and moralistic personality. He was so generally disliked that the Federalist Party never again gained the Presidency.

Book suggestion that covers some of this: American Aurora by Richard N. Rosenfeld

"Adams was correctly viewed by his contemporaries as someone who had aspirations to be King."

Then they overlooked Hamilton.

It was John Adams who pushed the Continental Congress into declaring independence from Britain.

"He was responsible for the "Alien And Sedition Acts."

Congress makes the laws, therefore made the "Alien and Sedition Acts". He signed them.

"He was a rabblerouser and the first post-Revolutionary American politician who encouraged thugs to beat up his opponents."

Actually, the politician who subjected his political opponents to that thuggery was his cousin, Sam Adams, which was one of the purposes of his "Sons of Liberty"/"Liberty Boys".

It was Sam who, as example, attempted to intimidate the "Boston Massacre" jury -- by use of his "Liberty Boys" -- into convicting the British troops, which he labeled "murderers!" based upon falsification of the incident. See "Boston Massacre," Hiller Zobel