Reddit reviews Paul Revere's Ride

So you get story time spread through out the training and shooting, all the stories are based off of this book

You aren't going to be assaulted by Sean Hannity while there, but there is a pro gun agenda, but I don't think that should be surprising.

Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer is the one that Project Appleseed teaches from, and it's quite good. The main action it follows is the roughly 24 hours leading up to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, concentrating of course on Paul Revere's early-warning ride.

Honestly, they didn't really push anything that I'd consider to be left/right, unless you consider flowery historical accounts to be political. I suppose you could argue that it was Libertarian propaganda, given the political leanings of the founding fathers, since most of the stories were taken from the book Paul Revere's Ride. They also like talking about "Dangerous Old Men" and the instructors were mostly old, white men. They did include a story about a "Dangerous Young Woman" as well, and there's apparently a Ladyseed program for women, which probably has more stories featuring women. The most annoying part was the standard moral decay of society because nobody votes, knows their neighbors, or goes to town council meetings anymore. The typical recounting of a youtube video where every college student they interview doesn't know what year the country was founded, but knows who Brad Pitt is married to. I suppose that's conservative in nature, due to the longing for a return to a supposed past glory, but they also have relevant quotes from the founding fathers about people's disinterest in civics and made note of the third of the country that didn't care either way during the American Revolution. Mostly they just pushed for greater civic involvement, which isn't really something I can fault them for. They didn't tell us to vote a certain way and made no mention of particular politicians or political parties. I actually told the Range Boss a quote that I saw on a protest sign, which he really liked: "We didn't come this far, to only come this far."

I don't read much of the emails and don't listen to the podcasts, although I've read plenty of "Fred" in the past. Don't worry about that. The Appleseed itself is pretty innocuous - you'll get some history from Paul Revere's Ride (an excellent and engaging book, I might add). And some good rifle training. And that's all - at least according to the official curriculum. There's no way to keep an instructor from voicing his/her own opinion, but the program does urge them to refrain from doing so.

It's a good program, I doubt participation is going to put you on any list that you're not on already by virtue of owning a terrorist 10/22...

For the Revolutionary War

• This Glorious Cause. One volume book, so it's not going to cover everything but for a general overview of the Revolutionary War it's great.
  
  
• Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy I'm partial to this one because of the focus on the Navy.
  
  
• Paul Revere's Ride Fischer does a great job in explaining the build up to the Revolution using Revere as a central figure.
  
  
• The First Salute. Barbara Truchman writes here about the vital role the Dutch played in keeping the Revolution alive via trade, and the consequences of that trade for the Dutch. It can sometime lose focus as Truchman goes into great detail about things that probably would be better left to footnotes, but it's still a great read. (Her Guns of August won a Pulitzer, and in my opinion it's a must-read for anyone at all interested in WWI.)
  
  For the Civil War
  
  
• The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. I'm a big fan of this, but it is three volumes so that means it's rather long.
  
  
• Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is also another classic in the field.
  
  
• Grant's Memoirs and Sherman's Memoirs are both must-reads.
  
  I have to recommend Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, both fantastic military fiction.
  
  
  
  

One of the best contemporary books I've read in recent months that gives a nice overview of the events leading up to and through the American Revolution is Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth. It covers a lot of the background (from around 1765ish, I think) all the way through Yorktown.

Another absolutely great book describing the events surrounding the eruption of open hostilities between England and the colonists on 19 April 1775 (Battle of Lexington and Concord) is Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer. This book serves as the basis for the history portion of Project Appleseed, some of the best and most fun rifle marksmanship training out there. If you've never done an Appleseed weekend, I highly recommend it.

A lot of the things I read now tends to be original source material....as a lot of authors can put their own spin or interpretations on events (whether intentional or subconsciously). While slightly more difficult to read, original source material is invaluable in understanding the events as they happenned. For this, I recommend not only the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Federalist/Antifederalist Papers, but Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights is also a fascinating resource.

https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Reveres-David-Hackett-Fischer/dp/0195098315

I'm more of a revolution era guy, but this is a great look at the beginning of the revolution as well as a glimpse into the lives of semi ordinary people in the late 1700s

When I get home I'll post some pictures of my books.

Try to read some primary's like letters and diaries. Just remember that many people edited their writings later in life, especially if they were famous.

Keep at it! Good luck!

If you want to know the set up for your time period read communities of violence. I'll try to post that too!

It isn't the battles which are important. The people and their reasons for what they did are what is important. We're forgetting those people and their reasons.

The Battle of Lexington isn't interesting for a single military reason. The British Regulars under the orders of General Thomas Gage on the morning of April 19, 1775, fired into the backs of the colonist militia, without orders and eight colonists died. Sounds pretty boring and is probably similar to the sentence in those text books describing the events at Lexington that morning. There is quite a lot more to the story.

The Captain of the Lexington Militia [John Parker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Parker_(captain%29) had tuberculous which is only exasperated by cold, damp conditions. Why did he choose to stand on the green that morning? His orders to his men, "Do not fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here." Those are treasonous words and if the Regulars had caught him he would have been hanging from a tree.

One of the other men on Lexington Green that morning was Jonathan Harrington. Captain Parker, moments before that ragged, unordered volley by the Regulars, had given the order to disperse but to not lay down their arms. Jonathan Harrington heard the orders, turned around and started walking home. His home was on the far side of the green. He was shot in the back by the Regulars while his wife and young son watched from their home. He struggled to get up but could not. He then crawled home to his doorstep and died in his wife's arms.

There were eight sets of fathers and sons on the green that morning amongst the seventy militia. Five of them were separated by death that day. Why in the world did they risk so much? Shouldn't we remember who they were and their reasons for what they did?

There are stories just like those throughout that days' events. Isaac Davis, the first militia officer killed in the war at the Battle of Concord's North Bridge, had four sick children at home. His last words to his wife Hannah were, "Take good care of the children."

I left out the reasons why the people I mentioned above acted as they did that morning. Those reasons are incredibly relevant today but I don't want to push you in a direction. It is best, if you have the interest, to discover those reasons for yourself. They will have more meaning for you then.

If you're interested in learning more I would suggest going to an Appleseed, a Libertyseed or reading David Hackett Fisher's book Paul Revere's Ride. The book reads more like a novel and is difficult to put down.

Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer - one of the best, if not the best, recounts of the events that put in motion The American Revolution.

I recently read Paul Revere's Ride. It's the book that the Appleseed curriculum is based around. The book is a strictly historical account of the beginning of the American revolution written by a prominent historian, not some agenda-pushing screed written by a right-winger (in case you had doubts).

That book, more than anything else, really drilled into me the importance of having an armed population, and thus the reason that the 2nd Amendment was written in the first place. Our country would not exist today if large numbers of American citizens had not been armed and willing to fight in defense of their freedoms against the British overlords.

The mistake a lot of pro-gunners make today is suggesting that we need guns to defend ourselves from our current government. No, we do not. The electoral process is still running well enough, and grievances can still be addressed in ways that are much preferable to taking up arms in open rebellion.

The issue is that this may not always be the case! While things are fine now, if they ever go downhill at some point down the road, we need our citizens to be armed and ready. And if we start disarming everyone now (which is what a lot of gun control bills aim to do), eventually, at some point down the line, the American people will be largely unable to fight off either their own government or some other government, and that's when the bad things will happen. You need look no further than the Middle East in the present day to see where things could potentially go.

In some sense we're like the Americans from 1750. Back then they didn't have a large number of grievances against the British government. It was only after that, with the added taxes and the impressment of Americans into the British armed forces to fight foreign wars that we really didn't care about, that we started wanting to rebel. We are living like Americans from 1750 -- Things are fine now, but who knows what is coming down the road. That is why we need to be ready.

And I'll close with one of my favorite quotes on this matter, spoken by Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II:

> "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

The levels of gun violence we face on an everyday basis are worth it if it ensures the existence of our country against foreign conquest over the long haul.

Paul Revere's Ride https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195098315/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kSYhDb86H9XQZ

Book.

Paul Revere's Ride The first 2 chapters are a bit dry as it delves into Revere himself, his upbringing, etc, but then gets into the action about the build up and basically the 1st day of the Revolutionary War. It's very good. Very well researched. Anyway, I talk for 2-3 hours about this story; dozens of names of the major actors on each side, dates (in the 10-year build up to April 19th, times of significant events on that day, places, casualty sytatistics for half a dozen battles/skirmishes, etc. And I try to do all this in an engaging, story-telling way in hopes to stir some emotion.

But that aside, I'm referring to all casters, arcane & divine. I never liked the 'fire & forget' mechanic in D&D. In 5e they have continued the 'let it ride' concept where if you don't change up your spell list you don't have to rememorize/prepare the spell again.

I'm very cool with the slot system. It represents the amount of magical energy the caster can mentally & physically channel in a given amount of time (a day). As the caster gets more experienced they can channel more and more energy. Cool.

But the whole "prepare" system is... hinky. The idea that a caster knows a spell but simultaneously doesn't know it well enough to cast it unless they spend some time doing something is really weird.

I simply don't like it and wanted to see if/how others may have rationalized it away and what effect on their game it had. Seems that it pretty overwhelmingly remains in most everyone's game so I guess I won't eliminate it from mine.