Robert A. Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Minutemen and Their World (1976), winner of the Bancroft Prize, and of Books and Libraries in Thoreau's Concord (1988). With Mary Kelley, he is coeditor of An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840 (2010). A former assistant editor of Newsweek, he has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper's, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times, and his essays have appeared in The American Scholar, New England Quarterly, Raritan, and Yale Review.
"Robert Gross's The Minutemen and Their World is almost as famous
as the April 19th battle of Concord itself, and now we have it in a
new updated edition that further enriches the story. By itself this
little masterpiece reveals more of the nature and complexity of the
Revolution than a multitude of volumes." --Gordon S. Wood,
professor emeritus at Brown University and author of Friends
Divided and The Radicalism of the American Revolution "The
Minutemen and Their World remains as fresh and important as when it
was first published in 1976. It has taught generations of readers
to look behind the Revolution's slogans and heroes to see actual
men and women making difficult decisions in a far from perfect
world." --Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost: Lives on the
Edge of the American Revolution "You may think you know this most
iconic of American stories--but as the ongoing research deployed in
this great book make clear, it's a deeper, richer, more nuanced,
complicated, and shadowed story than we once imagined. And utterly
absorbing." --Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the
Station Wagon "Just in time for the Revolution's 250th anniversary,
this updated edition of The Minutemen and their World reveals the
intimate human calculation that always lies behind vast public
events. Robert A. Gross surfaces and shares the stories of ordinary
New Englanders with extraordinary insight and compassion. From
house to house and farm to farm, as Gross walks alongside Concord
residents--affluent and indigent; enslaved, indentured, and free;
across generations and gender--he shows how everyday men and women
navigated years of acute division and crisis. There is no better
way to come to grips with the rupture of Revolution. --Marla
Miller, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst and author of Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and
Landscapes of Change in Rural Massachusetts and Betsy Ross and the
Making of America. "The Minutemen and Their World is a must read
for those who wish to understand life at the dawn of the American
Revolution beyond familiar stories and static archetypes. It
remains an example of masterful writing. To enthralling prose, Bob
Gross adds fresh research and innovative historical methods that
illuminate the lives of free and enslaved African American members
of the famous Concord community and their military services to the
nascent United States. This book never loses sight of people,
offering readers a wider, more intricate view into the lives of
women and men in America's revolutionary generation." --Ronald
Angelo Johnson, Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Chair of History at
Baylor University and author of Diplomacy in Black and White: John
Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance
"What does it feel like to experience revolution? For decades, The
Minutemen and Their World has been the indispensable account
explaining how revolution and civil war transformed the lives of
everyday Americans. Now, updated with new discoveries and more
voices, it is even more essential to understanding what it was like
to live through the unprecedented changes--and painful
struggles--of the American Revolution." --Robert Parkinson,
associate professor of history at Binghamton University, and author
of Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the
Declaration of Independence "Robert Gross's The Minutemen and Their
World is still unsurpassed in capturing the personal and communal
experience of the American Revolution. This updated edition
reinvigorates this indispensable book for a new generation of
readers and scholars." --Mark Boonshoft, professor of history at
Virginia Military Institute and author of Aristocratic Education
and the Making of the American Republic "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." --Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
"The Minutemen and Their World is a classic in--well, the classic
sense of the world: a book of such enduring elegance and interest
that it will find a readership in every generation." --Joyce
Appleby "A richly detailed picture of social life and social
divisions in Concord, and a lively narrative of the coming of the
Revolution there." --Edmund S. Morgan, The New York Review of Books
"This lovely little book captures, intimately and authentically,
the life of an eighteenth century New England town . . . gloriously
good." --Michael Zuckerman
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