(Though most of the fighting was on adjacent Breed’s Hill, Bunker Hill became the battlefield’s lasting name.) Up those steep and rocky slopes marched some 2,200 British regulars, expecting to crush the rebels. The answer came on June 17, 1775, in the Battle of Bunker Hill on Charlestown Heights. If the Revolution were to end in Boston, how and where could it begin anew? His subtitle- A City, a Siege, a Revolution-discloses his intent: British-occupied Boston, seething with rebellion, is where it all begins, from Stamp Act defiance through the Boston Massacre and Tea Party.

There remained a chance war would not follow these impromptu encounters between militiamen and Redcoats.

Philbrick skillfully describes the April 1775 skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, regarding them as important but not pivotal. As he showed in his books In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, history is best told through the words and deeds of the people who lived it. Once he gets there, his narrative never leaves the desperate fighters on both sides. Philbrick knows exactly what he is doing by starting the Battle of Bunker Hill on P. 7, 1941, Philbrick’s long lead-up to Bunker Hill shows how that fierce battle, not the sharp encounters at Lexington and Concord, truly launched the American Revolution. But just as knowledge about the Panay incident gives us a broader understanding of Dec. Nathaniel Philbrick does something like this in Bunker Hill. Imagine picking up a book entitled Attack on Pearl Harbor and discovering the book begins with the 1937 Japanese bombing of the gunboat USS Panay. Book Review: Bunker Hill, by Nathaniel Philbrick Closeīunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, by Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking, New York, 2013, $32.95

Bunker hill a city a siege a revolution