You may never have heard of Dr. Joseph Warren. This is a look at the life and influence of an unsung founding father involved in some of the most significant events leading up to the Revolution.

I knew Warren's name, having grown up in the Boston area, but I didn't know much more about him. I found this book to be an easy read, but a little thin on detail. There's a fair amount of speculation and surmise and not a lot of primary information to be found here. I can't address the details brought up in the previous review, since I don't know the history for myself, but I was also left with the impression that there's an agenda to inflate Warren's importance here. That wasn't the biggest takeaway I had here, however. I was most strongly struck by the loss here, and the sense that Warren might have had more importance had he lived longer. This really isn't applicable only to him - so many nameless people have died before their time, and before they had a chance to make the impact they were capable of making. Warren was well educated, well placed in the revolution, and certainly could have done much more, had he not died at Bunker Hill. ( )

I received an advanced copy of the book for a review at the Journal of the American Revolution. See the full review at http://allthingsliberty.com/2018/08/founding-martyr-the-life-and-death-of-dr-jos...

A summary of that review:

As a fan of Dr. Joseph Warren and having researched him thoroughly for my own two Revolutionary War books (available on Amazon), I was interested to see what new research there could yet be. The book’s introduction repeatedly declares this is Warren’s “untold story”, that “Warren has largely escaped attention”, and the back cover proclaims that “Little has been known about… Warren.” In fact, much is known. Di Spigna’s book is the now the fifth Warren bio. (My books also include extensive details about Warren.)

While there are a few eyebrow-raising claims in the short introduction, the book is overall well written. The book flows chronologically and runs through Warren’s life as you would expect: from boyhood, to Harvard student, to his rise as a successful Boston physician, and then to influential political and Revolutionary leader. A few episodes are glossed over, such as Warren’s possible struggle with money prior to the Revolution, and his suspected engagement to Mercy Scollay. Yet the book also adds a few new minor details to Warren’s life, based on new research. For example, there is new scholarship on that argues Warren’s house in Boston was not where other books have claimed.

The book therefore does a good job giving a survey of Warren’s life. It flows nicely and presents a narrative style better than other biographies on the subject. But the problems with this book are not readability. The real issue is that it suffers from major problems that can be broken down into the following categories: 1) falsely bolstering of Warren’s importance (Di Spigna repeatedly conflates Warren’s roles with those of George Washington); 2) undeserved bias against the British (making them one-dimensional villains and cherry-picking evidence to do so); 3) lack of scholarly judiciousness (example below); 4) academic dishonesty (example below).

Without repeating my entire review here, examples of the two most important problems are as follows.

Lack of scholarly judiciousness (p. 188 ff.): Di Spigna writes that after Warren was killed in battle, “a small group of seething redcoats circled the body of the ‘murdered worthy … Doctr. Warren’… His Majesty’s executioners repeatedly bayoneted his corpse in a violent butchering. Lt. James Drew of the Royal Navy, it was later claimed, returned to the redoubt, walked over to Warren’s body, and spat in his face before cutting ‘off his head and commit[ing] every act of violence upon his Body.’” Di Spigna adds that Warren’s body was continuously mutilated for some time thereafter.

Here we see bias against the British tied with lack of scholarly judiciousness. The above description likely never happened (or if it did, Di Spigna has the burden of proof but fails to deliver). Di Spigna provides only one source for this sensationalized story: a rumor reported by Abigail Adams a month and half later. However, Di Spigna conveniently ignores a part of this source which is known to be false. That false part is that Warren's head, according to the rumor, was taken in triumph into Boston. Except, it wasn't, and Warren's body was identified by his teeth after the British evacuated Massachusetts. If half of a piece of evidence is known to be false, the entire piece of evidence becomes suspect and must be doubted without further supporting information. Instead, Di Spigna cherry-picked the rumor and claimed it as truth, and ignores evidence to the contrary.

Academic dishonesty: Di Spigna’s introduction concludes (p. 8) that his is “the first completely nonfiction book writing about Dr. Joseph Warren in almost sixty years.” He repeats similar claims in various places. But it is false. He knows it too, and made an overt decision to dismiss Samuel A. Forman's “Dr. Joseph Warren” (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2011). Note Di Spigna’s words: “first completely nonfiction book.” His argument is that Forman’s book, which has a fictional account (that Forman twice explicitly notes as hypothetical), is therefore not a biography. Yet Forman’s book remains the best researched to date.

Beyond this dismissal, there is quite a bit of overlap between Di Spigna’s book and that of Forman. I am certain of it in one case (p. 273-274), where Di Spigna writes at length about Sally Edwards, a possible mistress of Warren’s. This mistress idea is really first put forth by Forman and soon after another author (Nathaniel Philbrick, who repeatedly cites Forman), but while Di Spigna spends a page refuting the mistress idea, he refuses to cite Forman as the source of the material he is refuting. The conscious attempt to ignore a biography that is at least in some part used by the author is suspicious to say the least.

Bottom line, there seems to be an overt effort to make Warren more important, more the hero, and then make his death more tragic than it was. And this is done by use of false or dubious information and by dismissing the recent scholarship on the subject. This is not the definitive book on Warren, though it still has some value, as does the previous biography by Forman. Perhaps the ideal telling of Warren is somewhere in between, and the definitive book has yet to be written. ( )

The goal of Christian Di Spigna in writing this book is to restore the memory of Joseph Warren in the American consciousness. Anyone reading this book will likely agree that the author has been successful. Di Spigna has written a memorable portrait of Warren and has vividly described the leading role Warren played in fomenting the rebellion of American colonists against British rule. The facts in the book are well documented and the text is written in a readable style. Di Spigna traces Warren’s life from birth to death. The primary focus, though, is on Warren’s role as a revolutionary living in Boston. This volume gives the reader a feel for what was happening in Boston during the decades leading up to the outbreak of the American Revolution. More importantly, Di Spigna brings to life an incredible individual who deserves to be remembered as one of America’s great founders. ( )