A YOUNG PATRIOT: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy

A brief history based on the privately printed memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin, who, at the age of 15, signed up for the Connecticut state militia on July 6, 1776, and stayed with the army for the next seven years. Murphy (The Great Fire, 1995, etc.) maintains Martin's perspective through many of the major battles and events of the war, filling in background history, larger strategy, and information about the British enemy when relevant. This work offers a view of the Revolutionary War missing from most books--instead of the broad sweep of dramatic events and change, readers see the daily misery, boredom, confusion, terror, and only occasional triumph of army life. Murphy provides the best of both, the drama and the grind, appeasing readers' fascination with war without romanticizing it.