Ray Raphael on "The Spirit of ’74: How the American Revolution Began"

Host Gene Bradley speaks with renowned historian Ray Raphael about the book, The Spirit of ’74: How the American Revolution Began, co-authored with his wife Marie Raphael. In the book the Raphael's shift the spotlight from such well-known historical moments as "one if by land, two if by sea,” to some lesser-known but equally consequential events that traditionally don’t make it into our history books. 

We live in a culture obsessed with larger-than-life personalities and iconic moments. But much of what happens between those momentous events, of course, gets done not by celebrities or the ultra-rich, but everyday people committed to a shared vision. And the American Revolution was no exception to that rule.

This period of American history was filled with drama, resistance and the seeds of what came later, including:
that it wasn't Britain's closing of the port of Boston that incensed locals, but the Crown's encroachment on their self-governance; how activity during this period ushered in a more class-blind notion of democracy; and that the first 'declaration of independence' came from Worcester, Massachusetts, some twenty-one months prior to July 4, 1776.

Real people made the Revolution. Raphael argues that the animating force and organizational lessons of that era have much to teach us as we face our own political challenges today as well.

Ray Raphael’s seventeen books include A People’s History of the American Revolution, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get It Right, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, as well as The Spirit of 74: How the American Revolution Began (co-authored with Marie Raphael), all published by The New Press. He has taught at a one-room public high school, Humboldt State University, and College of the Redwoods and is currently a senior research fellow at Humboldt State University and associate editor of Journal of the American Revolution. 

Marie Raphael, author of two historical novels, has taught literature and writing at Boston University, College of the Redwoods, and Humboldt State University. 

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In the later part of the hour we hear an excerpt from Radio Ecoshock as Alex Smith looks at Climate Catastrophe in Indonesia. He speaks with Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso, at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor Indonesia about Massive fires have been burning in Indonesia. In satellite images, large parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are buried under smoke. Red dots of fires and hot spots want to cover the whole map of the islands.

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