BOOK REVIEW: The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night that Saved America by Kostya Kennedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2025) The story of Paul Revere’s ride through the Massachusetts countryside on the night of April 18-19, 1775, to warn that British troops were on the march, is so familiar that people might believe there […]
Because of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” most people think that Revere was critical to the start of the Revolutionary War. In trying to dispel Longfellow’s myth of a lone hero, modern scholars have portrayed Revere as just one rider among dozens on 18-19 April 1775, and argued that his previous rides […]
Myth: “Alerted by signal lanterns, express riders Paul Revere and William Dawes eluded British patrols and spurred their horses toward Lexington along separate routes to warn Hancock and Adams.” – Created Equal: A History of the United States, a 2009 college textbook[1] “When Revere and fellow patriot William Dawes saw two lights shine, they set […]
