PRODUCT INFORMATION PAGE Rise to Rebellion View and buy for $7.99 on Amazon.com

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Here are some customer reviews of Rise to Rebellion : There is not question that the revolutionary war, and the period and people around it, is a very complex and multi-faceted subject. Endless volumes can, and have, been written about each aspect of it. While most of these volumes examine the facts, few make them come alive. Jeff Shaara does!! He gets into the minds of his characters. In this wonderful book, they are no longer just historical and distant figures but ordinary human beings, with all the characteristics, thrown into extraordinary circumstances. The reader shares in their fears and triumphs and leaves the book parting company with old friends. This is my first experience with Shaara. However, I am going to read his other works while anxiously awaiting the volume of this story.... Jeff Shaara is truly blessed to be able to bring history to life as he has done in Rise to Rebellion. This account of the early days of the Revolutionary War is done in the same vein as his work on the Civil War. He takes the historical characters involved (John Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin and others) and breathes life into them. Perhaps we'll never know what their actual conversations were like but Shaara's book is as close as we'll ever come. This is a marveleous way to study history. It reads like a novel yet is rich in historical fact. If you love history, especially American history, you'll want this book for your library. The Shaaras, father and son, have perfected a writing style for historical novels that is easy to read, and gives the reader excellent views of the human side of our history. In fact, their works "humanize" the great figrues of America's past, beginning with the three book series on the Civil War, the one book on the Mexican War, and now this first book, of two, on the Revolution. We get to peer inside the minds of some of our Founding Fathers, and their British adversaries, and all of these folks appear to be more like us rather than stiff figures read about in dusty history books. I like this type of writing, and as long as it stays as true as possible to the historical record, which it appears to be doing, I will continue to read these works. I hope Jeff Shaara does not run out of American history epochs about which to write, because he is doing all of us a favor in bringing these folks to life. We need lving, breathing people to admire, not icons who seem to be inaccessible. A good basic overview of events leading to the Revolutionary War from both sides of the Atlantic. Particularly unique had been Benjamin Franklin's presence in England as the situation in America and England ignited, bringing a fresh perspective as we follow his point of view and his exposure to parliamentary arrogance.Unfortunately, all others characters did not appear to me to have been as well-developed and never quite came to life, nor did the times they lived in. Franklin's character alone keeps the first half of the book alive, until the war begins, then Shaara's narrative picks up. Some of the battle seens are truly descriptive and moving. As history it's a great read; but for history, great characterization and narrative style, I have to recommend Citizen Washington by William Martin. Shaara's novel about the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence is interesting, educational and entertaining. I found particularly insightful the description of Franklin recognizing the future of the colonies under British rule in the face of oppressed Ireland. Also, Shaara's description of the Battle of Bunker Hill is excellent. Immediately after the Bunker Hill section, Shaara gets bogged down in his description of the private thoughts of Franklin and Gage - and he loses the momentum that he so diligently built up to that point. While lost in Franklin and Gage, he misses a great opportunity to exploit the great story of Henry Knox and the movement of the captured cannons from Ticonderoga to Boston. Finally, Shaara provides a satisfactory depiction of the writing of the Declaration of Independence. I would like to have had the full text of the Declaration provided, not just excerpts. After all, the Declaration is not just one of the most powerful and elegant documents in history, it is the climax of this book. Historians will, no doubt, find some of Shaara's choices frustrating as I did, but on balance this is a very good, fun book. Definitely set some time aside for it.

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