“Listen my children, and you shall hear/of the midnight ride of . . .  Joseph Warren?”
Okay. Okay. It doesn’t scan like Longfellow’s original. But that’s the problem. In making sure we “hear” about “Revere,” Longfellow’s famous poem ignored the man whose name should be as familiar as those of John Adams or John Hancock. A man who deserves to be honored this Patriots’ Day, the civic celebration of America’s Revolutionary beginnings that is more widely known as Beantown’s “Marathon Day.”
A successful physician and progressive thinker, Joseph Warren was a farmer’s son born in 1741 in Roxbury, outside Boston. Warren chose his profession when he saw his father die after a fall from a tree. Later, he became an outspoken advocate of inoculations to battle the plague of smallpox sweeping colonial America and vaccinated his most famous patient, John Adams.
But medicine was not his only passion. As the colonies began to clash with Mother England, Warren was drawn to the red-hot center of Boston’s patriot inner circle. He became a propagandist, spymaster and orator who modeled himself on Cicero, martyr of the Roman Republic, occasionally appearing in a toga to deliver incendiary speeches.
Most likely, it was Warren who led those men disguised as Indians to the “party” where they tossed a shipload of British tea into Boston Harbor. And he was the crucial go-between, linking Boston’s upper crust patriots –who got most of the glory– and the workingmen and artisans – like Paul Revere – who did most of the dirty work.
But Warren was left out of our poems. And our schoolbooks. And that’s too bad, because his story is compelling.

It was Warren who issued Revere’s “riding orders” on that night in 1775, setting the stage for the fateful April 19th morning at Lexington and Concord –the reason behind Patriots’ Day and, with it, the running of the Boston Marathon. A few weeks after those citizen-soldiers, known as Minute Men, became the first to fight and die in the American Revolution, Warren took to the front lines at the battle called “Bunker Hill.”  An enemy ball caught him in the head and he fell.

For the British, Warren’s death was a coup, celebrated by tossing the rebel doctor’s body into a mass grave with other fallen Americans. But for the patriot cause, the loss of Warren cut deep. Abigail Adams mournfully wrote to husband John: “Not all the havoc and devastation they have made has wounded me like the death of Warren. We want him in the Senate; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician, and the warrior. When he fell, liberty wept.”
Paul Revere later returned to the battleground to locate the rebel leader’s body. He was able to identify his compatriot’s remains because Revere had fitted the false teeth that Warren wore, one of the first known cases of forensic dentistry.

Yet, Joseph Warren’s story remained buried, overshadowed by the more illustrious Founders with better biographers –and admiring poets. He became the most important Founding Father most of us never heard of.

This Patriots’ Day, when the runners “hit the wall” at Boston’s “Heartbreak Hill,” let’s remember, it’s not about the Marathon. Nor was it just a bunch of cranky tea drinkers complaining about taxes. As the life and untimely death of Joseph Warren attest, Patriots Day –and the original Tea Party– were about idealism, selflessness, the communal good, courage and sacrifice –civic virtues that are all too often in short supply.

But with Independence Day just around the corner, here is a list of ten of my favorite books about the Revolutionary War era. It is by no means compete or comprehensive — just some interesting books that deserve more attention. I’ve avoided the  obvious, such as the huge bestsellers by David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, in favor of some more obscure but worthy reads, including a few older books that merit rereading.

Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth

A former New York Times correspondent, Langguth combines a reporter’s eye with a historian’s breadth in this large overview of the people on both sides of the Revolution. Though written 20 years ago, still an excellent introduction.

Liberty!: The American Revolution and Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History by Thomas Fleming

The first of these is one of the best overviews of the Revolution, originally published as companion to a PBS series. The second title is a more recent work by one of America’s master historian-storytellers whose lively writing brings the complex story of Washington’s political genius to life.

Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye

Surprise! A writer thinking a writer and a book deserve more attention. This is a biography of the “greatest radical of a radical age,”  whose 46 -page pamphlet Common Sense changed history, and whose legacy has been coopted.

Almost A Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence by John Ferling

A comprehensive account of the military victory that almost wasn’t.

Rebels and Redcoats; The American Revolution Through the Eyes of Those Who Fought and Lived It by George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Ranking

A volume filled with firsthand accounts of the war.

Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet That Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution by James Nelson

With a novelist’s flair, Nelson tells the story of how the man who became America’s most reviled villain staved off an early defeat of the American cause.

Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth A. Fenn

A wonderful exploration of the deadly disease that killed far more people than the war did and its impact on the history of the times.

A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence by Ray Raphael.

From the Howard Zinn school of history, a great distillation of the Revolution from the perspective of the working men and women who helped start the Revolution and then did most of the fighting. A good corrective to the simplistic “great man” view of history.

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby

Not really about the Revolution, but a wonderful study of the tension between the role of religion in building the nation and the concept of separation of church and state –always a worthy subject as we contemplate those familiar words: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”