Michael GreenburgReseñas

I've been aware of the ill-fated Massachusetts expedition to what is now Maine since I was a teenage military history nerd, and that Paul Revere was involved in the debacle, but this blow-by-blow examination of Revere's part in the failure is quite enlightening. Dealing just with Revere one is left with the picture of a man who, while competent in most things in his life, had no real talent as a military officer and lacked the self-insight to admit this reality to himself; though as an ambitious individual he appears well-aware that the real prestige would accrue to those who had borne military rank in the war. As it was Revere was fortunate to survive the debacle in terms of social status, as while he added to his reputation as a difficult man, higher placed officers (particularly Continental naval commander Dudley Saltonstall) received most of the blame. The author has a nice touch in terms of giving you the flavor of the times without trying too hard to read the minds of his subjects; a complaint I have about a lot of popular history.

Thought I had reviewed this months ago... sorry for the delay. My comments really mirror those of torrey23, below. This book added a great deal of detail to my knowledge of Paul Revere, even though I've read quite a bit about him. Thanks to the author for that. This is a fine example of bringing to public a new look at an otherwise overlooked aspect of the American Revolution. I'm sure there are others. I hope there are more of these types of well-researched and well written books available in the future.

I am an avid student of the Revolutionary War. As such, I typically know at least a little bit about any event of the war. I was completely unaware of the Penobscot Expedition, and I was clueless about Paul Revere's military career. I knew him from the events leading up to, and through, Lexington and Concord. After that, he had no real connection to the war; or so I thought. This book is a great account of a little-known military expedition, and a great look at the unknown life of a famous American. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks to learn more about America's founding.
This book is easy to read, engaging, and understandable. Greenburg does an excellent job of telling a story vividly, explaining the important facts of the story, and not getting bogged down in the minutiae that has been the downfall of many an, otherwise, excellent history.½

I guess if you grew up taking Massachusetts or Maine History classes in high school, you might have heard of the Penobscot Expedition, but otherwise, it’s probably nothing that hit your radar. In short, it was a disastrous foray of Americans from Massachusetts into the Penobscot Bay in Maine, the purpose of which was to forcibly remove a British garrison that had established itself on the Majabigwaduce peninsula and had begun building a fort.

The Massachusetts men comprised both an army and a navy and the officer in charge of the artillery was none other than American hero and Son of Liberty, Paul Revere. Despite outnumbering the Redcoats, the Expedition ended in an all-out rout of the Americans and the destruction of the entire Expeditionary Fleet. After the troops’ ignominious return to Boston, the blame game began and many fingers were pointing at Paul Revere, accusing him of disobeying orders, being generally lazy, and being a coward.

Author Michael M. Greenburg has created an altogether readable book on the entire affair beginning with Revere’s famous ride, its aftermath, his part in the Penobscot Expedition, and the court-martial that followed. The book is obviously well-researched but it doesn’t end up reading like a textbook. Instead, it is a gripping account of the doomed siege and its players and paints Revere in a different light than what you might have been brought up to believe.

I enjoyed Revere's story, but I also liked this book because it’s been a long time since I’ve read any history on the Revolutionary War. Greenburg does a really fine job in describing the general events that led to war and then placing the particulars of the Penobscot Expedition in context.

If I could change one thing about this book, I wish there was a good map of the area around Majabigwaduce. Greenburg includes some hand-drawn maps contemporary with the Expedition, but a larger, more readable map would have helped me better place the action he describes.

A well-done history book! Highly recommended!

This was a great history book about Colonial America (with specific focus on Massachusetts), although I do think the title is a little misleading. The first half of the book was more a biography of Paul Revere leading up to the Penobscot Expedition, and the second half detailed the expedition and the aftermath; only the very end specifically concerned Revere's court martial. Regardless, it was wonderful getting insight into Revere's life and his military career. Greenburg writes well and provides connections between aspects of Revere's life that made him the man he was, and I particularly enjoyed learning about a confrontation during the Revolution that I had never heard of before.
The different players during the Penobscot Expedition were interesting in their own right, but they were introduced so sporadically that at times it became hard to keep everyone straight. I also found myself wanting more portraits of those men - probably to help keep them organized in my mind. But the personal battles between all those men was fascinating (and maddening). It reminded me of aspects of the Civil War concerning General McClellan, which I knew more about.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Colonial America, the Revolutionary War, Paul Revere, or military expeditions.½

Paul Revere's midnight ride may be the stuff of legend, taught to every elementary school student in America, but rarely do the textbooks delve deeper into the life of the man or the other circumstances he was involved with during the course of the Revolutionary War. To learn more, one must seek out works such as Michael Greenburg's exhaustively researched The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty and America's Forgotten Military Disaster. Armed with an in-depth familiarity of previously published Revere biographies, Greenburg tackles the wealth of primary source material generated in the aftermath of a conveniently forgotten dark chapter of the American Revolution to offer up a rather contrary view of the man affectionately known as the Messenger of the Revolution.

Greenburg gives due diligence to the biographical details of Paul Revere's life, his rise to prominence as a silver smith and engraver, and his eventual involvement in the rebellious activities of Boston. Based upon Revere's own letters, and those of his peers and contemporaries, a portrait of a less idealistic and more opportunistic figure emerges as the fledgling nation embarks on a course of war with the world's greatest - at the time - superpower.

The greatest value in Greenburg's work is to be found in the meticulously detailed account of the disastrous Penobscot Expedition, in which a superior colonial force was routed by a token British presence established within a rudimentary outpost on the Maine coast. Clearly their own worst enemy, the American forces - in which Paul Revere led a contingent of artillery - bumbled their way to defeat and humiliation, after which a lengthy and eye-opening inquest took place in Boston's Faneuil Hall. Orbiting the eye of the storm, if not firmly within the eye itself, was Paul Revere.

Delivered as an easy-to-read narrative, the facts of Paul Revere's ride, of his motivations, and of his military misadventures call into question the shining knight of Longfellow's famous work. Definitely a must-read for Revolutionary War aficionados, The Court-Martial of Paul Revere is also an enjoyable page-turner for those with a general interest in one of America's earliest icons of liberty.

This was a pretty good accounting of a forgotten part of the American Revolution. I'll admit to not having any knowledge of this part of our history, and enjoyed reading about it. The only complaint would be that not much is discussed about the court martial - which you would think there would have been more of if you looked at the title. Otherwise I enjoyed reading about this part of our history.

Michael Greenburg's book examines a largely forgotten chapter from the life of Paul Revere, the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779. This book provides biographical details of Revere's life then spends a good amount of time on the events on the Penobscot. This event resulted in the destruction of the largest American fleet assembled during the Revolution and demonstrated tremendous failures on the part of the expedition's leaders. This book characterizes Paul Revere as extremely self-aggrandizing and concerned largely with his own honor over all else. His middling efforts managing Castle Island and his lack of military experience did not impact his efforts to lead a successful and lucrative military career.

The actual court-martial of Paul Revere proved to be a rather minor event in the overall narrative. It was something he requested repeatedly over the course of several years. He seemed to be kind of a nuisance, and my takeaway was that Revere was very concerned with his own image and reputation over all else. The book discussed interesting events but I felt like the main focus of the book was not as earth shattering as depicted. Greenburg does a nice job of a generally unknown chapter in American history, but the story was not as exciting as I would have hoped.

Every American probably knows about the midnight ride of Paul Revere. But how many Americans know about Paul Revere's actions – or rather, his inaction – during the Penobscot Expedition? I didn't. And Michael M. Greenburg's book changed my opinion of Paul Revere.

Paul Revere was many things: a patriot, a silversmith, an engraver, and a dentist. But what he was not was a good soldier. Several officers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, sought to bring charges up against Paul Revere, the most damning being Revere's refusal to obey orders during the Penobscot Fiasco.

I won't tell you about the Penobscot Expedition, what led to Paul Revere's court-martial, or how the court-martial ends. Mr. Greenburg does an excellent job of detailing all of that. You'll just have to read his book to find out.

"The Court-Martial of Paul Revere" is a brief but interesting text describing the little known Penobscot Expedition, which occurred in 1779, during the American Revolution. The author, Michael Greenburg, attempts to examine Paul Revere's character, through his role as Lieutenant Colonel of State Militia, in charge of artillery both before and during the course of this military action.

The description of the actual expedition - an attempt to remove a British outpost from the coast of Maine - is quite detailed and obviously well researched. The reader may be left with a desire for even greater depth of detail, however, such as maps and additional information about actual naval and land operations. There seems to be much remaining to be told about the aftermath, including more specifics about the retreat up the river and the return routes taken to Boston or other home locations. Many details of the expedition remain obscure, but then again, the author's attention was more focused on Paul Revere, himself.

There does appear to be insight into the man, Paul Revere, versus the legend that most of us are more familiar with. Mr. Greenburg illuminates many charges that were made against Lt.-Col. Revere's performance, and given the pattern of the charges, a truer picture of Paul Revere's character seems to be entirely plausible. On the other hand, many of the accusers seem to have personal animosity toward Revere. Furthermore, the authorities themselves had their own reasons for perhaps misrepresenting events. I felt that the result was a somewhat ambiguous picture of Revere, especially since Mr. Greenburg chose not to clearly state his own conclusions. I do appreciate the author's effort though, because he has piqued my interest, and I now have another topic to explore further. Perhaps that was his intention all along.

If you're like most Americans, all you know of Paul Revere is his midnight ride (retold economically here) or his nominal association with copper-bottomed cookware. You probably haven't heard the details of his military service during the Revolutionary War that culminated in his court-martial following the Penobscot Expedition. Briefly, the British wanted to establish military fortifications at the mouth of the Penobscot River off the central coast of Maine, and the colonists were determined to stop them. It should have been an easy victory for the colonists, as they initially outnumbered the British in both ships and guns. Instead, the resulting siege was the worst American naval defeat until Pearl Harbor: the entire Massachusetts fleet of 44 ships was lost and 474 men were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. As commander of the Massachusetts Artillery Train, Revere was not primarily responsible for the defeat (poor planning and infighting among the officers did most of that), but he was no help, either. He disobeyed or ignored orders, carried on long-standing feuds with fellow officers (in fairness to Revere, the bad feelings were mutual), and was disengaged from his duties, often preferring to eat and sleep rather than supervise. His input in war council meetings shows an inclination to retreat rather than to dig in and fight. In short, whatever his other contributions to the cause of liberty, Revere was not a soldier and should never have been placed in the position he was in. Greenburg gives a cursory biography of Revere prior to the expedition; the narrative picks up steam once the action moves to Maine. Recommended for anyone interested in the Revolutionary War and naval history.

This short yet well written book is a quick and fascinating read. Though the focus is on Paul Revere's conduct during a 1779 campaign of Massachusetts land and naval forces against a British post at Penobscot Bay and the inquest that followed. The book gives a good overview on the military operation and its aftermath. The book also includes a brief biography of Paul Revere. The ride for which he is most remembered for is well described in this book which was the inspiration of Longfellow’s famous poem on the subject.

This is a straightforward and compact volume (282 pages) centering on Paul Revere's conduct during a 1779 campaign of Massachusetts land and naval forces against a British post at Penobscot Bay (located in present-day Maine) and its almost three year aftermath. While the text focuses on the military operation and the resulting fallout, the reader will be granted an overall (if necessarily superficial) biography of the man made famous for his midnight riding by Longfellow's poem. While the text might have benefited from a wee bit of editing in spots, for the reader (such as myself) who possesses a more generalized knowledge of the American Revolution, "The Court-Martial of Paul Revere" will be an interesting and authoritative (ample footnotes which will inspire those interested to look further) account of "America's forgotten military disaster" and its participants, specifically one of the original Sons of Liberty. The book concludes with a tasty ironic twist: it's John Hancock who, as governor of Massachusetts, whom Paul Revere had rode through the night to warn that the British were indeed coming (for Hancock's neck, among other things), signs the document of Revere's court-martial verdict.½

From 1940 to 1956 – with time off for World War II – George Metesky waged a one-man war against the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, New York. He’d started with letters, but by the 40′s, he’d escalated to pipe bombs, wrapped in a man’s red woolen sock and stashed at various locations around the city. He eventually confessed to planting more than sixty of the things, although only about thirty-some ever went off. (There is one in the Empire State Building, Greenburg reminds us, that has never been found.)

Greenburg renders the story of the Mad Bomber, as he was known, from a variety of perspectives – from the newspapers who followed his exploits to the police who tracked him to the psychologist who profiled him to, sometimes, Metesky himself. He also does a fine job of including quite a bit of historical context, helpful for those of us who do not have a ready-made mental picture of New York in the 1940s and 50s. (Mine always includes Cary Grant.)

It took me a little while to get into this book, partly because the first few chapters are more than a little confused. They jump backwards and forwards in time – clearly an attempt to start in media res, but since so many of the bomb incidents are so similar, it’s hard to get a grip on exactly when this is happening. Around chapter two or three, though, things settle down and start moving forward at a reasonable pace: Metesky’s personal life, his injury on the job at the Con Ed plant, his escalation from letter-writing to bomb-making, the collaboration of policework and journalism that finally identified the bomber, and Metesky’s long incarceration in the mental hospitals of New York.

The Mad Bomber was a landmark case in a lot of ways, from the way newspaper articles drew out the bomber by inviting him to communicate with them to the impact it had on sentencing and dealing with mentally ill criminals, and Greenburg touches at least a little bit on each of them. He devotes a whole chapter to the profile of Metesky created by Dr. James Brussel and how this widely-publicized tool impacted the later development of criminal profiling as we know it today, which I found fascinating, Criminal Minds fangirl that I am. The passages comparing profiling to Pliny’s descriptions of the physical characteristics of the criminal type seem to indicate a certain disdain for profiling on Greenburg’s part, which I can’t entirely disagree with. In just a few short sections he provides a perspective on the field I haven’t seen before, and for that alone the book was worth it.

Although a little thin at times, and drawing more conclusions about various actors’ internal thoughts than I generally like in my nonfiction, I found this a good overview of an interesting and complex case. Greenburg does an excellent job of situating the Mad Bomber case in its historical and cultural context, and draws attention to all of the wide-ranging influences it had. I enjoyed this quite a bit, and I would recommend it as a good summer read, if you’re inclined to find this sort of thing as fun as I do.

The only thing bigger than Edward West "Daddy" Browning’s wallet was his publicity-seeking ridiculousness. He made his money in Manhattan real estate in the early 1900s as the city was growing by leaps and bounds. By 1915, he was the city’s most eligible bachelor. That year he wed a file clerk named Adele, and they later adopted two daughters by placing advertisements in the newspapers. However, Adele ran off with her dentist to Paris in 1923. The older daughter, Marjorie, was sent to live with Adele’s parents while Dorothy, the younger daughter, stayed with Daddy, and Adele was nowhere to be found. Eventually she turned up, and the ensuing legal battles were widely publicized in both American and French tabloid papers. She claimed that Browning was interested in women much younger than her.

After the divorce, Browning and his daughter became lonely. He placed another ad to adopt a daughter as a playmate for Dorothy. His request was for a girl of about 14 years of age, but when he saw Mary Spas among the other prospects waiting in his office, he was smitten at once. She was older than he hoped at 16, but he had to have her. Almost immediately, reporters began to question the adoption and the girl’s age. Mary’s parents were interrogated and admitted that she was really 21. Browning took Mary to court to annul the adoption. Mind you, like everything else concerning Daddy Browning, all of this was highly reported and publicized in the papers. Indeed, the back and forth accusations between Daddy and Mary received much public attention. In fact, Dorothy’s first adoptive mother, upon learning of the Spas affair, made attempts to remove the girl from Browning’s care.

Daddy Browning met Frances Heenan at a dance in 1926 when she was 15. They began dating, and he nicknamed her Peaches. They were in the papers constantly from the start. Soon Vincent Pisarra of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children caught wind of the relationship and tried to end it by way of the courts. They were married later that year, just after Peaches’ sixteenth birthday, partly in an effort to fend off critics and the law. From the start of their relationship, they were in the limelight constantly. Whether on shopping trips or outings with an African Honking Gander, they were available for photographers.

Peaches began having fits from what she claimed to be distress. She and her mother Carolyn, who was also living with Peaches and Daddy, abandoned the home. Peaches claimed that Daddy desired unnatural acts. Thus began a farcical separation trial that the newspapers couldn’t get enough of. In the end, Peaches did not fare well. The judge was convinced that Peaches’ credibility was questionable at the least. Of course, the aftermath of the trial was widely reported. Peaches later sought a divorce and payment of legal fees while Daddy sought to rehabilitate his image.

There is much more to the story that I fail to mention but all of it includes dramatic happenings and a great reliance on the press. In addition to the Peaches and Daddy story, interspersed throughout are segments describing the history of tabloid journalism. The story of Peaches and Daddy Browning serve as an intimate and explicit illustration of how journalistic ethics were created and why ethics continue to play such a vital role in media. The sensationalism that followed Edward West Browning throughout his life was only a peephole through which we continue to view public figures. Browning’s taste for the limelight was encouragement in the burgeoning field of tabloid journalism, and he knew just what it took to game the media.

This is an excellent piece of "creative nonfiction." George Metesky's reign of terror was world-famous at the time, but nearly forgotten today, and this is the only full-length book I've found on his case. The author covers Metesky's life, the development of mental illness, his dispute with Con. Ed. and his resulting crimes, as well as the police effort, criminal profiling and journalist/police cooperation that lead to his capture.

In spite of his dangerousness and lack of remorse I had to feel sorry for Metesky -- he was so pathetic. And I felt even sorrier knowing that, had he committed the bomb spree today, he would not have been judged insane but would have been thrown into a prison cell for life, which was not the best place for him.

Anyone interested in historical true crime, or New York City history, would enjoy this book. It might be a good vocab builder too, with lines like: "The early dusk of winter had cast its tenebrous veil upon the office, though the men had seemingly failed to notice."

OK, this guy was a creep and she was a prize manipulator.