Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution

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Partner:: Society of the Cincinnati
Location:: Boston Athanaeum
Boston, MA
Event Date:: 05.20.14
Speaker:: Nathaniel Philbrick
Tags:: revolutionary war; american revolution; boston tea party; battle of bunker hill

Summary: In Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution Nathaniel Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to the story that ignited the American Revolution. The real central character in this story is Boston, where vigilantes fill the streets with a sinister and frightening violence even as calmer patriots struggle to see their way to rebellion. The action of the book tracks in detail the eighteen months following the Boston Tea Party (Dec. 1773), as Boston turned from the center of patriot defiance to a British-occupied city under a patriot siege.

Through storied events such as the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Philbrick builds to the extraordinary moment in American history when a group of ordinary citizens stood up to several regiments of British regulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill. This is the great tipping point, the bloodiest engagement of the Revolution when several hundred citizen soldiers had the bravery and discipline to hold their fire until the British soldiers, each one with a bayonet mounted to the barrel of his musket, marched to within fifteen yards of the patriot entrenchment. Only then, once they could see "the whites of their eyes," did the rebels fire, ultimately killing or wounding almost half the British force. Not until the third British charge did the Americans retreat, and only then because they had run out of ammunition. With this single battle, the ultimate course of the American Revolution had been foretold.

Nathaniel Philbrick is The New York Times bestselling author of National Book Award winner In the Heart of the Sea, Pulitzer Prize finalist Mayflower, Sea of Glory, and The Last Stand. Bunker Hill won the 2013 New England Book Award for Non-Fiction. He is also the author of Why Read Moby-Dick? and Away Off Shore.

This event is sponsored by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

Nathaniel Philbrick: Boston, Then and Now

03 min 44 sec

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Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, describes how Boston took shape during the American Indian Wars and before the Revolution.
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01 hr 02 min 44 sec

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