A really smart, really convincing New Left history showing that ordinary laborers in New York (and elsewhere) had a lot to do with starting the American Revolution. Lemisch was one of the early captains of the “people’s history” movement that helped Americans focus on the historical significance of people who weren’t necessarily rich, white, male, or in the habit of saving their letters—and this book, Lemisch’s 1962 Ph.D. dissertation from Yale, is everything that movement still strives to produce.