A biography of one of the most influential patriots during the Revolutionary War.

Adams, Alexander argues, was an unwavering politician who strove to protect the people's basic rights and who emphasized the importance of virtue, liberty, a sense of duty, and education in fashioning a republican society. Alexander's fresh reading of Adams' record and a close look into his personal life uncover a masterful politician and a man consistent in his beliefs."--BOOK JACKET.

“A brief, sharply focused biography [that] restores Adams to his rightful place as an indispensable provocateur of American liberty” (Kirkus Reviews). Samuel Adams is perhaps the most unheralded and overshadowed of the founding fathers, yet without him there would have been no American Revolution. A genius at devising civil protests and political maneuvers that became a trademark of American politics, Adams astutely forced Britain into coercive military measures that ultimately led to the irreversible split in the empire. Through his remarkable political career, Adams addressed all the major issues concerning America’s decision to become a nation—from the notion of taxation without representation to the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all acknowledged that they built our nation on Samuel Adams’ foundations. Now, in this riveting biography, his story is finally told and his crucial place in American history is fully recognized. Winner of the 2007 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award

Presents the life and accomplishments of the colonist and patriot who was involved in virtually every major event that resulted in the birth of the United States.

Examines the life of Samuel Adams, a hero of the American Revolution who is credited by some with having fired the first shot at Lexington Green, the "shot heard 'round the world."

From preface: Samuel Adams occupied a unique place among the founders of the American republic. He lived through all of the events that lead to establishing a constitutional federal republic, and served as governor of one of the more important states in the young nation. Yet unlike Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, he was not an aristocratic landowner by family, nor a soldier or lawyer by profession. Nor did he stem from a line of well-to-do merchants like the leaders from New York or Rhode Island. William Fowler's lively book describes the long and eventful life of key figures [with special attention focused on Samuel Adams] in the development of the early republic. In doing so it also clarifies a significant aspect of American life.

The "old revolutionaries" were Samuel Adams, Isaac Sears, Thomas Young, Richard Henry Lee and Charels Carroll, five men who played significant roles in the American Revolution, and who are usually overlooked in history books today. Of widely varying backgrounds and interests, all of them had thir gratest influence in the years between 1769 and 1776 and all of them saw their power transferred after the war to the men we know as "the founding fathers." In telling the stories of these men, Pauline Maier shows how the American Revolution was less a collective movement than a committment to an ideal of a republic, which different people interpreted differently, and she describes "not just why Americans made the Revolution, but what the Revolution did to them."