Maybe it's the company I keep. Over the past few weeks, when I've told friends and neighbors that I've been reading a superb new biography of Samuel Adams, almost everyone has responded by saying something to the effect of, "Oh, the beer guy!"
Well, yes, Adams was a brewer, but he was also a patriot — maybe the most crucial patriot. That's the argument of Stacy Schiff's charged new biography of Samuel Adams, The Revolutionary. Schiff illuminates how well in advance of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin or John Adams (his more prominent cousin) Samuel Adams strategized, wrote and wrangled the American Revolution into inevitability.
