>> host: thank you so much, senator. i really enjoyed it. >> guest: appreciate it. ..

>> both of our kids were educated by them and it is great to see you here in brookline. it is wonderful to be in the coolidge cedar with this great bookstore and co-sponsor the massachusetts historical society which has been an institution that has ben is essential to my life as a historian. sometimes i feel like i have taken up residence in the archives in every book i have done has been a central information that has come from their but none more so than "bunker hill" many of the characters that i delve into the papers are there and it is an organization he essential to anyone looking into not only the history of boston but this country.

the genesis for "bunker hill" goes back to the summer of 1984. my wife and i had just moved to boston full-time living on the north end i was a failing journalist at that time but my primary responsibility was to be at home with the average year-old daughter. i would push the stroller through the crowded streets of the north end and it was there and cops hill was a favorite hangout what was it like back then? and i thought of the book i had read in middle school along with many people of my generation, what johnnie tremaine captivated me and what was revolutionary

boston mike? i began to look into the history of boston that year 1984 and on sundays when melissa was at home i would go to the boston public library to look into the history of the city and soon after we would end up on nantucket in a growing interest of the history was to my new adopted home but after writing mayflower which begins with the famous voyage but since with the king philip's war between the english native people of the region and i wanted to continue the story. mayflower ends 1676 and even during the midst of the terrible battle it was amazing the governor of massachusetts insisted from

king charles the second he would be wise to bring more liberties to those in america and their own general court to the laws enacted superseded anything from parliament. it sound like what would be said 100 years later. and with that i began to think at some point* i want to continue the story to do something about the revolution. then i would write a book the battle of little big horn and working on that book with a very complicated battle i began to set my sights on the battle of bunker hill. from the beginning i did not see this as the battle book all of my books are about communities under enormous threats whether on a wailes ship or whaleboat or taking a passage into the unknown new world. those are the kinds of

stories high find of interest and what happened to the people of boston and the revolution? i knew that bunker hill would be the pivot point* and it seemed to make sense i should start after the boston tea party when britain responded with the dumping of three shiploads of tea into boston harbor with the institution of the boston port act that basically shut down the town commercially, sealed off the port and it would begin with the arrival of royal governor thomas gage, a military governor and the four regiments of regulars and it would take this story through the uptick and it became occupied city through these skirmishes of

lexington and concord that bunker hill was the point* that violence turned from a skirmish in to the all out war and that was the turning point* it was realized this would be something more than a dustup to be dealt with it diplomatically this would move into new and terrifying directions. what a lot of people think of outside of boston is when they look at the revolutionary boston as the center of patriot to finance which it originally was. with the arrival of general gage and his growing army of british regulars that would grow to almost 9,000 by the end of occupation, instead of the center of patriot to finance it was turned inside out and the trees began to flee the city particularly after lexington and concord that created a wave of panic

and not just bostonian says says, but people who lived around boston to throw out and they had most of the inhabitants this was truly an island community that has a year-round population of 15,000 you think on nantucket that boston was an island connected by a thin neck of land known as the neck as narrow as 100 yards at high tide it was dominated by three hills of mountainous proportion with a small town of 15,000 people crammed into a group of houses from the north and the south so this was an island after lexington and concord there would be 3,000

nonmilitary people left in the city and most of them loyalist, refugees and a smattering of patriots who decided to stay so they could look after their houses along with 9,000 soldiers. some boston became a city under siege as a patriot militia who was involved of the skirmish of lexington and concord and going into cambridge and roxbury on either side of boston. and literally surrounded the city so boston was now the center of defiance now a garrison under the patriot sees the point* is to cut off the city and start it to death. this would not happen in boston because the english

had the british navy with men of war or other ships throughout the harbor and today the town of boston is now the city of boston and it is almost unrecognizable to the way it was. many of those that once defined the island were shaved down to fill in the back bay it was water. the river came in much closer than what it does now what is now washington, that was the neck from the south into boston and this was an island but one of dozens that occupied gigantic boston harbor. they had the men of war and other ships scattered throughout the harbor in strategic areas and kept them open so they could get

provisions whether from england or from canada and this meant even though they were completely surrounded by land, boston as the british occupied garrison would not starve. it became a stalemate that erupted into violence with the battle of bunker hill june 17, 1775. this was a battle like none other. a terrifying spectator even into not only for those living in boston but for all of the roof were filled with people watching as more than 2,000 british regulars made their way across the harbor, the charles river to begin the assault that would be wrapped into the battle of bunker hill.

this was viewed by everyone there then settle into this stalemate to have george washington arrived to change everything and eventually march 17, 1776, the british would be forced to evacuate with the farming of dorchester heights. but that is the art i wanted to tell in this story. with the uptick of tensions with the arrival of the boston port act and the evacuation. so when i began this research almost immediately, i realized the characters i was going to focus on is not what most of us are familiar with. because the continental congress met for the first time in philadelphia in the fall 1774 which meant

leaders such as john adams and sam adams were out of town when all of this was beginning to unleash. tensions were escalating with the boston port act but it was an act that followed one of many the massachusetts government act which robbed of the town and not only of its commercial way of life but of its government the entire province the town meetings were outlawed it is the fundamental way of life also the life led of the patriot movement because of sam adams to really was the presiding presence as tensions built between great britain and the american colonies especially in massachusetts, he had a

problem by 1772 and unsettling call was saddling on boston and the patriot movement was losing steam and it was there that he instituted the boston committee of correspondence and it was a brilliant move because he did was create a network of communication that never existed before in which a 21 member committee in boston would ride up tracks that were then distributed to the 250 towns throughout massachusetts. this is when it included modern maid and this set up transformed town meetings that were devoted to discussing things like repairing roads and bridges to turn them into forums one of the first tracks distributed was an argument

how the natural rights of man superseded anything parliament could determine. they soon got a bunch of responses from towns throughout massachusetts about why we feel this is important and suddenly adams had found a network of communication that was independent of the royal government that allowed people from massachusetts to talk among one another and share ideas. these letters came in from of committees of correspondence and towns throughout massachusetts. if begin to get unusual responses and one of them i would like to read from the book one response was from the town 10 miles inland of portland made and it quickly became clear there were radicals in massachusetts.

not necessarily in boston but in all the towns surrounding them because many people saw current problems not in terms of representation of parliament but of their freedoms that they felt had been earned by their ancestors with the of blood of the indian wars that had preceded all of this. and for the citizens of gore on and now quoting from my book not with the current frustrations of parliament but the tear in danger and violence that went with colonizing this ancient and blood soaked land. our eyes have seen very young children weltering in their gore in our own houses and dearest friends in captivity zero in j ray 7773 now goreham just 16 years before were attacked and a

native frayed and several people had been killed and abducted but it is still fresh in the memories and we're using our daily bread and therefore we cannot be supposed to be fully with policy but let's get those do judges so far concerning rights as men will look with horror and indignation on the violation many women have been used to handle the cartridge to load the muskets and the swords between arab enemies have not grown rusty so so what they had discovered should these tensions ever move in the direction of violence violence, the militiamen and all the 250 towns of massachusetts were there for them and if the words from goreham as early as january 1773 rennie indication these people were willing to fight.

so tensions would uptick of sam adams and john adams and other leaders were a way on their way to philadelphia the end of august and early september 1774 and thomas gage put into impossible situation he might have had a chance at convincing the people to pay for the tea and respects the authority of parliament if they respected the port act but that meant royal appointees were replacing people from their perspective should have spent elected and they went crazy and many were attacked, forced to flee into boston and he decided these tensions it is time to round up as much as the gatt -- gunpowder as he could

because each one legally they were in powerhouses all around the province and cage determined to get the powder out of the powder house that is now a modern so long dash somerville but said he said soldiers in boats up the river and the operation went on without a hitch and they could get the powder to take it to castle william with a stockpiled it and it went off without a hitch except a rumor was spread like wildfire as the british were there as part of cambridge they fired upon militiamen and several people were killed. it had happened with that was the rumor and it spread through towns throughout

massachusetts and suddenly the entire region erupted with a call to arms with hundreds of thousands of militiamen began to stream into cambridge ended began that night and all the next day cambridge began to fill up with thousands of militiamen and learned this was a rumor that there were all these people with their weapons in the middle of cambridge and it was abolished kyle crowd and these were the country people who turned into the rabble-rousers' john adams was and there they needed someone from the boston committee of correspondence to show up to call things down. and in nathaniel adams absence a new person began to re-emerge as the boston revolutionary movement a young doctor named joseph.

33 years old, and he had been an acolyte of samuel adams from within a decade and he had gained more and more of a public presence and he was a different type of guy and sam adams almost two decades older had a different approach but just a foreign there was a charisma about him and i would like to read a passage in my book that describes it warrant because it went out that he come to come rate -- cambridge city another committee members led to quiet things down and they were successful but it was a key point* that this young 33 year-old man joseph warren steps to the forefront of the patriot movement and here's a brief description of his background. were samuel adams was part political boss and part ideologue born, a two decades younger had a

swashbuckling personal magnetism born in the nearby town of roxbury across from the boston neck and as a boy he was often seen wandering the streets of boston selling milk from the family farm. the eldest of four brothers he was recognized as the unusually gifted boy. when he was 14 he began his studies at harvard. the fall of that year his father was picking apples from the top of a letter when he fell and broke his neck. his youngest brother john was just two years old at the time of the tragic event and one of the first memories was watching his father's lifeless body being carried away with the financial help with family friends warned could continue at harvard and later served as a surrogate parent for his brother's particularly for john who recently finished medical apprenticeships and was now a doctor in salem. at harvard and is pursuing extra curricular activities

was to ising he had performed a play in his dorm room and he joined the college militia company and classmates told the story of how or responded to being locked out of a meeting of fellow students and instead of pounding at the door he made his way to the roof and shimmy down the rainspout and climbed into the open window just as he was making his entrance the stock collapsed to the ground with the spectacular crash and he shrugged that it had served its purpose for a boy who had lost his father to a fatal fifth fall it was bravado and he dared to do what should have terrified him but having shown an interest in medicine was finding human cadavers for dissection is likely he was the member of the club of medical students that we

know his younger brother john and apprentice were members who regularly rated graveyards, jails and poorhouses in search of bodies illegal but in the name of the higher good this grisly game of capture the corpse was the perfect training ground for the future revolutionary. >> a leader with the difference into would be successful to cool tempers that is known as the powder alarm and instrumental to right the resolve that would make their way down to the first continental congress to be approved in the mower radical direction and they probably would have gone and time continued as a leader in the movement to become a member of the provincial congress that they put together to provide them with organizational force as

they prepare themselves for potential violence. it would be worn on the night of april 19th to give paul revere the famous orators to tell the countryside that the british were headed for concord. he was one of the few patriot leaders and he would cross the river the next morning in to the committee of safety operated as the executive branch to the province at that point* and then along about of rhode with the british to mated to concord and fought their way back toward boston anwr and took such judge, and was right there in the midst of the fighting and a very stylish dresser and had up in the holding up the chorus

on to a curl of his hair and the musket ball passed so close and knocked out the pin this was assigned this is a leader who was willing to put themselves in danger path after lexington and concord and roxbury filled up ward would be elected president of the provincial congress also the leading right of the committee of safety so in effect a leader of the legislative body and the executive body and was way over tax was what he had to do but his standing was so high that people in massachusetts felt there was no one else you could do it. a 33 year-old man. by this time his four children and a new fiancee were managing things in cambridge and during those

60 days he would oversee the creation of the war of the army and as the battle of bunker hill approached he was named a major general. so from the beginning he decided if they should turn to for he wanted to be in the fighting at the battle of bunker hill and he would die at the very end and become a hero and because he died many of us had never heard his story. and just a word on the battle of bunker hill it was a mess. it was not supposed to be that way and named for the wrong hill there was named after what they were supposed to be at the patriots' new the british were planning an attack and it helped to delay that they decided to build an earth

aaron -- earan earth aaron -- earth in fort on bunker hill half a mile away from where the monument is now but for reasons we are unsure of to this day william press got and more than 1,000 people built the fort on breed's hill not bunker hill in boston. and general gage took up the next morning he felt he had no choice but to attack a threat to the shipping and boston and south so of force to the attack provoked and it would unfold causing all sorts of mayhem and it is the bloodiest battle of the revolution more than 2,000 british regulars were involved and suffered casualties close at 50% which is devastating this would be a british victory

technically but as a general who was on the ground with admit, it was bought by too many lies. washington would alive and he was one of the great surprises to me it was a great relief to find out he was not born as a statuesque person that stairs at us from the dollar bill. this was a young washington who arrived from virginia and was appalled at what he found this 30 provincial soldiers none of whom were disciplined or interested in following orders washington decided he had no choice but to attack as soon as he could unfortunately his soldiers were not the best trained and also he did not have the gun powder he needed and his decisions to attack were luckily for all of us, all posed by the

council of war. but he was always pushing, pushing, pushing to provide an electrical force with an army that was in dallas -- disarray and finally with the occupation of dorchester heights that is one of the great stories henry knox going to ticonderoga returning with the cannons that would be placed to force the but the evacuation of the british and that is boston that went from being a city that was occupied to a city that had to pull itself together and this had been a devastating experience for everyone and 9,000 soldiers left along with a thousand loyalist and

bond estonians would filter back and the town was beat up terribly structures had been burned as they tried to keep themselves but bostonian had survived. i would like to end my remarks by quoting a passage from the sermon delivered by reverend samuel cooper on april 7th 1776. his was the community that they have made it through said they deliver this sermon and this'' serves as the epigraph for my book. >> boston has been a division of moses.

it was consumed. thank you very much. if you have questions i would be happy to answer them. [applause] >> you feature a number of characters that are not household names. warren, his fiancee, you did not talk about the wonderfully described in the book joyce, jr. the customs inspector malcolm, a wonderful cast of characters. how did you settle? what was the process to settle on those historical characters as opposed to others?

>> from dr. samuel for men biography was a huge help to me. so thank you. that was a real contribution to all of us. [applause] thank you for the question but it was a story that was full of surprises for me. i kept discovering these characters and this choice in junior character who appears with nathaniel hawthorne short story in a fictional form but of vigilante addresses and a costume and organizes patriots with tar and feather with the chair person of committee of tar and feather and in my first chapter i describe the tar and feather of a customs agent john malcolm and it

was a horrifying affairs january 17741 of the coldest days of that winter and they would put the hot tar on his naked flesh commonplace the others on him and drag him around the streets of boston on vacation beating him up for hours until finally they dumped him at his house on the north end to be in bet recovering six weeks. but he would live but his younger brother daniel -- danielle was a foremost hatred and they're in an alcove family use the a civil war it was we think of it against the british but the vast audience were deeply divided as these issues began to bubble up and it was truly a traumatic occurrence.

>> i still have not read "moby dick." [laughter] i will one of these days. thanks to dr. forman but i am routine for the knicks tonight. but to talk about the battle of bunker hill i learned of the gentleman joseph warren and i have never heard of him. bryce sisters lived here in boston for years and i visited every historical site in new england and several times and never heard of the man. and i was convinced this was one unique human being and

since then i have talked to a number of native bostonian said i am amazed at how few of them have ever heard of joseph warren. >>. >> thanks to your book that i did not get the advance copy of. >> my apologies. >> you said it talks about to charismatic men one from massachusetts and one from virginia and i assume the one is just a foreign but why isn't there a bridge named after joseph warren? in reading further and your books there was. what happened to it? >> and my history of boston past 1776 is very thin. i will not go into that but

joseph warren was a hero of his day. could have been a founding father of his day if he lived but what is interesting, and loyalists that did not necessarily appreciate joseph warren efforts probably gave him some of the greatest praise where years after his death death, much at an attempt to take it to george washington he said it just of war and had lived in stead of died washington would have been an obscurity which just gives a sense of how highly respected he was and how pivotal he was to the events that created the country in

this city and he is largely unappreciated. >> did new york we rename the triborough bridge with jfk and there is a bridge here in washington i think should be named after him. >> go talk to our congress people right? >> can i have one more brief question? >> to the jay. >> you know, where the famous statement was made, do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes? >> we have all heard that. it may never have been said there is no documented that so-and-so's said the one reference i saw that it was documented with someone saying don't fire until you see the whites of their half skaters that doesn't have quite the same ring. [laughter]

but it was a phrase that was used before the battle and after so it easily could so if you talk about firing until the whites of their eyes that is very close and what is interesting with my account of the battle is that was the basic tactic that the patriots were using they did not have a lot of gun powder so those provincial shall soldiers knew they had to make every shot count so the officers told them they had to wait and a low and they listen to the orders with devastating results.

>> i want to say i enjoy your book in the hearts of the sea and secondly, i ian very familiar with joe said foreign -- joseph warren and my question is about your description of 9,000 troops and i am wondering before people left were there more than 9,000 boston residents who were surrounded or less than 9,000 surrounded? >> what happened was this city got turned inside out so there was an army that approached 9,000 and then there were 3,000 civilians

in the city at the time. so they have this city the population pretty close to what it had been so they had taken up residence in houses and tear into the old south meeting house in to a riding school to spread the maneuver around the ultimate indignity, the green dragon in the tattered that was a patriot under center turned into a hospital and the city was and beat up of military occupation and it was a trauma for all involved.

>> when you have 9,000 british troops that is how i understand coming from nova scotia why did they stay? they could have gone up to the north shore or the south shore or around why did they stay in place? >> that is a good question and one the british asked immediately after bunker hill. water redoing your? boston is not a strategically placed city when it comes to carrying on what is a war. so very quickly gauge made the suggestion we should reform and relaunched the invitation of america to the

south, perhaps new york and that is where they would go that summer. and their british ministry agreed and so by the end of that summer at the decision had been made they would evacuate boston in any way and that is one of the great irony is that the british had decided to leave. there was no need to attack but of course, the americans did not know this. so prior to all this the british had made an attempt to show their might to and had berndt the town that is now for lin to making and instead of striking fear into the hearts of the new englanders, it entered them to such a point* made it clear this is not helping our cause at all and what they are finding is what happens to any empire it is

hard to feel good about those kinds of wars and that is what the british found themselves not at a situation that they enjoyed. and would become the graveyard of the officer's career. >> i have a question about the primary sources that you used you bring

. >> am i correct to say that name comes from joseph foreign? >> i can vouch for that certainly but that might actually be the case. it is almost like archeology in terms that warren was such a popular name in the early 19th century that it was passed on and it is a part of people's genealogy. where that came from was the individual case but his younger brother john founded mass general and this was an extraordinarily capable family that would spawn generations of leading doctors. so this was a person with talent that went way beyond any one thing it did many

ways he was a victim of his tremendous talent doing everything in those final 60 days of his life running from one crisis to another and it is interesting to see washington as a leader in a leadership vacuum and to do things firmly in a way that settles they close down because times have changed it has gone from a growing revolution into a stalemate that will ultimately turn into the eight year war and that takes a different kind of skill set. if he had survived but washington and had real trouble when it came to improvement at the end of the year. he lost most of the army as

an englanders were not used to taking orders and then they would go home. washington did not have the effective go-between in they would have been perfect with that appealing to the better nature that that is the what if that is not a part of history. thank you very much. [applause] >> there tends to be a denigration of the military that when one battalion foster one regiment that the

germans tended to be tactically superior. that they were the better military and i think it is nonsense because it is pointless. global war is a clash of systems that can produce the wherewithal to project power from the atlantic and the pacific and indian ocean, a south east asia, which system can produce the civilian leadership to create the transportation system that is able to produce 96,000 airplanes in 1944.

>> in 2002 iran working with us secretly to quiet the afghan situation, walk up one morning to find out they were part of the axis of evil. they were quite puzzled having fought a war with iraq over 10 years and had nothing to do with north korea. why were they part of the axis of evil? so the chance we had to do something to improve u.s. iranian relationship was undermined with that speech and we have been going back and forth over the last 10 years but then 2003 you have the iraq war one of the two

unwinnable american wars the united states felt it had to engage in. obama unfortunately comes in with very little background in foreign policy and never paid much attention, served in washington only two years and i was a very enthusiastic supporter of the obama and remain, but those of us who have looked at him new national security could be a problem and when he appointed secretary of state for domestic reasons and a retired marine general to be the national security adviser he lasted about one year and put leon panetta i know he is one of your neighbors but he was captured by the operational mentality of the cia when he was in there more than a month this was the extremely weak national security team.

obama was also ruled by the military that is how you got the search. i think he realizes he was had by the military and that is very important in one of the reasons i am a little more optimistic for the second term that this is a wiser man with foreign policy be looked at the fact he ended the war in iraq, he is meandering toward ending the war in afghanistan and allowing them for of the pentagon that is the institution of the fine motor skills of a dinosaur it takes a long time to put something together such as a timetable for withdrawal. all obama has to do is have a look at the gorbachev experience coming in 1985 with his secret speech in 1986 denouncing afghanistan

to his colleagues and had the nazis tell them that the military would get one your than they would not be able to, they announce the time table then work on. we need to do something similar the military had its chances we had 11 commanders in afghanistan in 11 years take a look at the books the general's that is not a war where we can be successful that is not the military we have there's not one that has ever ben successful and not only do they have a sanctuary but an ally in pakistan that we have and makes it confusing have you

disengage for the situation of vertically integrated enterprises that is called the car's side government. we are finding our way to some resolution but again i don't know how many years this will take. >> my optimism is the team better to good appointments and i wonder why obama wasted so much time with susan rise to i don't think is qualified to be secretary as if on page secretary of state other than john kerry to have spent his whole career and chuck kaye goal is a wonderful nomination and the criticism of him

frankly is silly and the anti-semitism? people are really throwing fat around so loosely it is embarrassing. because once he said jewish lobby instead of israeli lobby if you go back to the book he said israeli lobby on many occasions. it is a jewish lobby so i don't understand what the debate is all about. and i think it doesn't make sense he is a sound man with the qualifications that you would need. i was very disappointed when abominate petraeus the cia director but he took care of that himself and took themselves out of the game to give adultery a bad name. [laughter] but what was the bomber's thinking when he took the active duty four-star

general was strong policy provisions with key intelligence officers? i cannot think of a better scenario of politicalization of intelligence than to have petraeus at the cia that is not what truman had in mind when he created it. he did not want to put it in the hands of policymakers and certainly not in the hands of military but it was created to challenge military intelligence and when the cia does its job correctly, that is what they have done such as arms control or be a non.

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