Customer Reviews

Paul Revere: Rider for the Revolution (Historical American Biographies)

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I ordered this book for my son as he had a book report due on an historical biography. My son is a very reluctant reader and as it was rather lengthy, I offered to read some pages and he could read some pages aloud to me. History is a fascinating subject, but Barbara Ford has reduced Paul Revere's life and contribution to so tedious an excercise, I couldn't even stay interested. The book has too many characters and it is difficult to remember who they are and what they did. Ford uses terms such as "whig" and "tories" and "regulars", without much explanation as to what those terms mean. In chapter six, Ford says, "As Revere helped carry John Hancock's trunk away from the tavern, he heard the first shot of the American Revolution". She doesn't indicate here why Revere secured John Hancock's trunk, what was in the trunk, or why that was important. She does go on to say that the trunk survived and is currently on display at the Worcester Historical Museum in Massachusettes. So? What was in the trunk? There is no definitive timeline, except in the chronology at the end of the book. There is no sense of the drama of being a country at war. The characters have no personalities. The battles have no interest. The book makes no effort to engage the young reader at any level.