The Minutemen and Their World, first published in 1976, is reissued now in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition with a new Foreword by Alan Taylor and a new Afterword by the author.
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The "shot heard round the world" catapulted this sleepy New England town into the midst of revolutionary fervor, and Concord went on to become the intellectual capital of the new republic. The town--future home to Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne--soon came to symbolize devotion to liberty, intellectual freedom, and the stubborn integrity of rural life. In The Minutemen and Their World, Robert Gross has written a remarkably subtle and detailed reconstruction of the lives and community of this special place, and a compelling interpretation of the American Revolution as a social movement.
"In this eloquent book, Robert Gross gives us a Concord that we have not encountered before, a surprising place that turns out to be not the quaint community of myth and legend, but a lively society, deeply engaged in the great issues of its revolutionary time--with all the tensions, anxieties, and aspirations that human being share."
Linda K. Kerber
"The Minutemen and Their World makes the American Revolution live--a vivid, compelling book that dramatizes the political consciousness and armed conflict in the very birthplace of the Revolutionary War. Few books have so brilliantly stood the test of time."
Jon Butler
"For historians, The Minutemen and Their World was a shot heard round the world. It taught us that fine history combines good scholarlship with good writing. Its reverberations are still being heard."
