|
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff. Best known by many as a brand of beer, Adams was actually an essential Founding Father who is well deserving of further attention. And Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Schiff gives him his due. This revelatory biography chronicles Adams’ transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, eloquent radical who mobilized the colonies and led an astonishing campaign of civil resistance that culminated in the American Revolution. He was an open critic of British colonial policy, using newspapers to make his case for open resistance, particularly taxation without representation. From the Stamp Act Crisis to the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party, Adams was a leading pot stirrer, and for a time became the most wanted man in America.
In her review of the book, NPR's Maureen Corrigan wrote, "A superb new biography of Samuel Adams...Adams was...a patriot — maybe the most crucial patriot. The Revolutionary is not merely a dutiful exhumation of a poorly remembered Founding Father, it's a thrilling, timely account of how the American Revolution happened; how the colonists were radicalized and came to think of themselves not as Bostonians or Virginians, but as 'Americans.' The Revolutionary is informed on every page by scholarship, but Schiff, as Adams himself did, knows how to hold an audience.”
| 
