On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The "shot heard round the world" catapulted this sleepy New England town into the midst of revolutionary fervor, and Concord went on to become the intellectual capital of the new republic, and future home to Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. In this winner of the Bancroft Prize, Robert Gross reconstructs the lives and community of this special place, and offers a compelling interpretation of the American Revolution as a social movement.