A reassessment of one of the most famous battles in U.S. history combining military and political history by the author of The Drillmaster of Valley Forge.
One hot June afternoon in 1775, on the gentle slopes of a hill near Boston, Massachusetts, a small band of ordinary Americans-frightened but fiercely determined-dared to stand up to a superior British force. The clash would be immortalized as the Battle of Bunker Hill: the first real engagement of the American Revolution and one of the most famous battles in our history. But Bunker Hill was not the battle that we have been taught to believe it was.
Revisiting old evidence and drawing on new research, historian Paul Lockhart shows that Bunker Hill was a clumsy engagement pitting one inexperienced army against another. Lockhart tells the rest of the story, too: how a mob of armed civilians became America's first army; how George Washington set aside his comfortable patrician life to take command of the veterans of Bunker Hill; and how the forgotten heroes of 1775-though overshadowed by the more famous Founding Fathers-kept the notion of American liberty alive, and thus made independence possible.
"[A] stimulating history.... Lockhart's shrewd, well-judged interpretation corrects myths about the battle and the men who fought it while doing full justice to their achievement in creating an army-and a nation-out of chaos." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Paul Lockhart is a professor of history at Wright State University, where he teaches European and military history. He lives in Dayton, Ohio.

Drawingupon new research and scholarship, historian Paul Lockhart, author of thecritically acclaimed Revolutionary War biography The Drillmaster of ValleyForge, offers a penetrating reassessment of the first major engagement ofthe American Revolution. In the tradition of David McCullough's 1776,Lockhart illuminates the Battle of Bunker Hill as a crucial event in thecreation of an American identity, dexterously interweaving the story of thispivotal pitched battle with two other momentous narratives: the creation ofAmerica's first army, and the rise of the man who led it, George Washington.