In Founding Martyr, Christian Di Spigna has produced a gripping biography of one of the American Revolution’s earliest activists. This is no whitewashed version of the Founding. Mr. Di Spigna’s Boston is a rough place, with violence on all sides and a growing suspicion of British rule ... Mr. Di Spigna is especially good at illuminating the importance of Warren’s association with the Masons...as well as his religious congregation and more formal groups such as the Committee of Safety, which coordinated colonial protests ... He came to the cause, Mr. Di Spigna convincingly argues, through a combination of moral conviction and personal motivation ... Founding Martyr helps restore to their proper place Joseph Warren’s important contributions to our nation’s prehistory.
Di Spigna, a Colonial Williamsburg volunteer and enthusiast of the era, sometimes borders on hagiography with an overt mission of boosting Warren's historical prominence ... Still, this concise and accessible primer on a significant but mostly forgotten figure offers a great read for those interested in early American history beyond the usual names.
In this unabashedly admiring biography, Di Spigna strives to restore Warren’s fame ... While Di Spigna’s account verges on hagiography, readers may sense that Warren was a romantic adventurer who preferred fighting to the pursuits of healing and family life. This is a valuable reminder that it takes all types to make a revolution.
...revealing and insightful ... Di Spigna incorporates diligent research, enhanced by analysis of primary sources only he has tracked down (such as medical records Warren maintained for his practice), into a gripping narrative that doesn’t shy away from the darkness in his subject, including Warren’s family’s ownership of slaves. This book will give readers a fuller picture of American leadership before the active engagement of those now called the founding fathers.
A fresh biography of an underappreciated figure in American history ... Di Spigna persuasively argues that Warren was 'a rare combination of statesman and warrior' ... Hopefully, Di Spigna’s insightful biography will rekindle public interest in Warren, a man who deserves to be remembered for more than his death at Bunker Hill.
