Description

Finalist for the 2018 George Washington Prize By Eric Hinderaker. ISBN 978-0-674-04833-1. Copyright 2017. Hardcover with 358 pages including 29 illustrations and maps, index, notes and appendix. On the night of March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd gathered in front of Boston's Custom House, killing five people. Denounced as an act of unprovoked violence and villainy, the event that came to be known as the Boston Massacre is one of the most familiar incidents in American history, yet one of the least understood. That dramatic episode is revisited with a detailed examination of the facts of that fateful night, competing narratives that molded public perceptions at the time, and the long campaign afterward to transform the tragedy into a touchstone of American identity.