His suggestion that Boston might have suffered less had Warren survived is “wishful speculation, not serious history,” but it’s a small flaw in an “otherwise realistic corrective to the conventional version of the nation’s struggle to be born.” The author “puts a human face” on the unruly throng “who managed, for better or worse, to write the first chapters of the story of the United States. Philbrick’s true hero is Joseph Warren, a Boston doctor and rebel leader who died on Bunker Hill. A grim standoff froze the action in Boston for months, and the author works to keep us engaged by providing an unflattering portrait of George Washington, the colonial forces’ novice commander. Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from citizens to vigilantes.

Philbrick’s book “loses the urgency of its opening chapters” once that day’s last shot is fired, said Bob Hoover in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though the British retook two hills overlooking Cambridge that day, 1,000 British troops were killed, the rebels established the viability of their makeshift army, and a negotiated peace became implausible. But the Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place on June 17, 1775, proved to be a game changer. Massachusetts patriots often resisted orders, swilled rum, and tarred and feathered anyone even suspected of loyalist sympathies. The rebels’ military readiness was another matter, said Scott Martelle in the Los Angeles Times.

After 1775’s Battle of Lexington and Concord, for example, the Americans acted quickly to win sympathizers in England by deploying a schooner that delivered their version of events 12 days before the Royal Navy’s account reached London. But boy were they shrewd propagandists, said The Economist.

Bunker hill a city a siege a revolution