In conversation with Grant Stanton; 12:10 – 1:00 pm, St. Peter’s Parish Hall
Kostya Kennedy
Kostya Kennedy is the Editor in Chief of Premium Publishing at Dotdash Meredith. A former senior writer and editor at Sports Illustrated, he is the author of True: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson as well as the New York Times bestsellers 56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports and Pete Rose: An American Dilemma. All three books won the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year. He has taught at Columbia and New York University, and he lives with his family in Westchester County, New York.
MFOB featured book: The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America
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: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America, 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.
