On December 16, 1773, men dressed as Indians boarded three ships anchored in Boston Harbor. Working quickly and efficiently, they brought up from the holds 342 chests containing 92,586 pounds of tea, and dumped the contents overboard into Boston Harbor. In his concise narrative history of the event we now call The Boston Tea Party, Robert J. Allison demonstrates how this moonlit drama effectively led to the American Revolution sixteen months later. He begins by explaining the political and mercantile background of the event contemporaries referred to as “the destruction of the tea.” (It was not called a “party” until years later, when it had ripened into a legend of American independence.) Boston was not the only seaboard city to which tea was shipped in that autumn of 1773. But for reasons that Allison clearly explains, Boston was the city that made the stand that led to the war that created the United States of America. The important players are all here—from King George and the Loyalist governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, to heroes of the Revolution like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and his cousin John. And so is the city of Boston in the 1770s, itself a key player in this exciting narrative. Allison again shows his flair for giving us our American history clearly, succinctly, and dramatically.