Skip to main content

About the Book

About the Book

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

This "glorious" revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize winner is about the most essential Founding Father (Ron Chernow) --- the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” John Adams thought his cousin was “the most sagacious politician” of all. With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history.

Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a singular moment, Adams packaged and amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool in an innovative arsenal to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts, he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason.

In THE REVOLUTIONARY: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’ improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.

Audiobook available, read by Jason Culp

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
by Stacy Schiff

  • Publication Date: October 24, 2023
  • Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction
  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books
  • ISBN-10: 0316441090
  • ISBN-13: 9780316441094