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Upon its initial publication, Ray Raphael’s magisterial A People’s History of the American Revolution was hailed by NPR’s Fresh Air as “relentlessly aggressive and unsentimental.” With impeccable skill, Raphael presented a wide array of fascinating scholarship within a single volume, employing a bottom-up approach that has served as a revelation.
A People’s History of the American Revolution draws upon diaries, personal letters, and other Revolutionary-era treasures, weaving a thrilling “you are there” narrative—“a tapestry that uses individual experiences to illustrate the larger stories”. Raphael shifts the focus away from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the slaves they owned, the Indians they displaced, and the men and boys who did the fighting (Los Angeles Times Book Review).
This “remarkable perspective on a familiar part of American history” helps us appreciate more fully the incredible diversity of the American Revolution (Kirkus Reviews).
“Through letters, diaries, and other accounts, Raphael shows these individuals—white women and men of the farming and laboring classes, free and enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, loyalists, and religious pacifists—acting for or against the Revolution and enduring a war that compounded the difficulties of everyday life.” —Library Journal
“A tour de force . . . Ray Raphael has probably altered the way in which future historians will see events.” —The Sunday Times
"A tour de force…Ray Raphael has probably altered the way in which future historians will see events."
—The Sunday Times (London)
“The unique value of Raphael's work lies in its mining, from extant primary sources, of the extraordinary recollections of ordinary witnesses to history.”
—Booklist
“The nervy energy of this People's History is an arresting antidote to the air of self-satisfied triumphalism that so many Americans casually assume each July Fourth.”
—Fresh Air (NPR)
“A cracking good read…Ray Raphael writes about the American Revolution as if he had been in the thick of it. His no-nonsense approach and style clarify the big issues and reveal the personal dimensions. This is truly a history of the people for the people.”
—Roy Porter, author of Enlightenment
“Raphael uses his considerable gifts as a writer [to weave] a tapestry that uses individual experiences to illustrate the larger stories of social groups.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Ray Raphael has written more than twenty books, including A People’s History of the American Revolution, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get It Right, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, and The Spirit of 74: How the American Revolution Began (co-authored with Marie Raphael), all published by The New Press. He has taught at a one-room public high school, Humboldt State University, and College of the Redwoods and is currently a senior research fellow at Humboldt State University and associate editor of Journal of the American Revolution. He lives in Northern California, where he hikes and kayaks.