The first of what will be many books on the American Revolution that I read because of Hamilton rekindling my middle school obsession with this period in history. Breen examines the role that "middling sorts" played leading up to and during the Revolution. Primarily, they got really angry, really religious, and really motivated, and they spent a lot of time terrorizing Tory sympathizers. Fun! Things I found especially interesting: lots of colonial publishers were women; public opinion was often ahead of the Founding Fathers; people thought the British had destroyed Boston and lost their collective shit; a guy who was not Benjamin Franklin (Goddard) had the idea for a colonial postal service independent of the British-run one that already existed, but it didn't work out and Franklin was given administration of the postal service after.