The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America

By Kostya Kennedy

Book Overview

USA Today Bestseller

Timed for the 250th anniversary of one of America's most famous founding events: Paul Revere's heroic ride, newly told with fresh research into little-known aspects of the story Americans have heard since childhood but hardly understood

On April 18, 1775, a Boston-based silversmith, engraver, and anti-British political operative named Paul Revere set out on a borrowed horse to fulfill a dangerous but crucial mission: to alert American colonists of advancing British troops, which would seek to crush their nascent revolt.

Revere was not the only rider that night, and indeed, he had completed at least 18 previous rides across New England and other colonies, disseminating intelligence about British movements. But this ride was like no other, and its consequences in the months and years to come--as the American Revolution morphed from isolated skirmishes to a full-fledged war--became one of our founding legends.

In The Ride, Kostya Kennedy presents a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more. Kennedy reveals Revere's ride to be more complex than it is usually portrayed--a loosely coordinated series of rides by numerous men, near-disaster, capture by British forces, and finally success. While Revere was central to the ride and its plotting, Kennedy reveals the other men (and, perhaps, a woman with information about the movement of British forces) who helped to set in motion the events that would lead to America's independence.

Thrillingly written in a dramatic, unstoppable narrative, The Ride re-tells an essential American story for a new generation of readers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 125034137X
• ISBN13: 9781250341372
• Release Date: March 2025
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely worth a read!

I love the American Revolution, but many writers of it tend to get very dry very quickly. Kennedy not only avoids that pitfall, but he manages to make the story of Paul Revere, and the other midnight riders, read like an adventure novel. It is one of those stories that is so widely told, that you’re surprised to realize you actually know jack squat about it. It wasn’t just a ride on a horse with two lanterns in the steeple of the church, it was men and women who left their homes in the middle of the night not knowing if they truly would see their families again. It was a civil war fought in people’s backyards. It was a series of decisions that would set a nation irrevocably on the course to becoming independent. Heck, there is so much about the life of Paul Revere that I didn’t know anything about — like that as a teenager, he was a bell ringer in the Old North Church that would eventually have those lanterns. (If I did have a hold up with the book, it’s that occasionally the author’s writing style could get clunky and sometimes repetitive. Hence the 4 stars.) But still, it was a great read and I would recommend it to anybody trying to get into American Revolution history!