The years that preceded the American Revolution were years of mounting hate and fury. Throughout these years, Paul Revere lived at the point of the flame, but, unlike the salamander, he never changed his colors. Steady, dependable, indefatigable, his was the brain and hand that organized the mechanics of Boston for the Patriot cause and by so doing insured its triumph.
Paul Revere was the typical ingenious man of his period, the buoyant and versatile Yankee who could ride express for the Committee of Safety, make the most beautiful silver of his period, roll copper and engrave copperplate, carve a false tooth, set up a powder mill, command an artillery regiment, cast cannons or bells, and print money. Through the years of growing bitterness, of secret political clubs, marching mobs, an army of occupation, and arraying of class against class, Paul Revere was a rock of strength on the Patriots' side. The story of his life is the story of the making of the Revolution.
But this book is ifninitely more than a life of Paul Rever. It is, we believe, a picture more vivid and intimate than has ever before been drawn of the little eighteenth-century city of Boston; a panorama of royal governors and their Redcoats; John Hancock, with his fine house, horses, and waistcoats; Sam Adams, born intriguer and manipulator of men; honest little John Adams; tar and feathers and tea parties, the hungry days pf the siege, and the years of the young Republic, Paul Revere lived in times of stress and strife not incomparable to our won. More perhaps than any other one man, he embodied and summed up the spirit that made the American Revolution. By patient research, by a miracle of vivid writing, Esther Forbes, author of 'Paradise,' 'A Mirror for Witches,' and other brilliant novels of early new England, has brought to life both Paul Revere and the world he lived in.
