The Minutemen and Their World

The Minutemen and their World is a history of 18th-century Concord, a Massachusetts town located approximately twenty miles west of Boston. The town is famous for the Transcendentalist writers who produced their works there, but it is perhaps even more famous as the site of the first battle of the American Revolution, when the famed “shot heard round the world” was fired at the town’s North Bridge (xvi). The book’s author, Robert A. Gross, describes his book as part of the “new social history,” a trend in historical scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s that investigated the lives of everyday citizens rather than important political figures, often using methods developed in other social sciences. With the Battle of Lexington and Concord as focal points, the author sets out to explain how those events fit into town life in Lexington and Concord.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Concord was a relatively prosperous town whose population was increasing. The fact that “concord” is another word for harmony or agreement was not lost on the people of the town, who strove to create a harmonious, unified community and shied away from divisive issues and regional politics alike. However, the town faced two major challenges in the decades before the American Revolution that created social tensions.