Delete comment from: Boston 1775
I stopped reading Rise to Rebellion after checking out its scenes of the Boston Massacre. There were so many inaccuracies and so much presentism in describing a well-documented event that I had no confidence in the author’s research elsewhere.
The little detail about Foutz is relatively minor and understandable. Top experts on Washington had established the picture of Foutz as working in Cambridge and being sent into the ranks. I needed the Library of Congress’s online Washington papers and Google Books to realize that picture was mistaken.
In fictionalizing Foutz’s story, Shaara went beyond the little that historians wrote about the man—as a novelist can do. But the way he did it was also the way he fictionalized the Boston Massacre, treating the American elite and establishment uncritically while sneering at others, such as working-class Americans and foreigners.
Aug 16, 2010, 5:48:55 PM