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Among the big events in history that we study are wars such as World War II or the American Revolution. After we absorb the overall picture, it really helps our understanding to look at the human-level details, the fascinating stories that lie behind the great sweep of events. This is where history comes alive for me. Often this is the domain of historical fiction, where we can learn historical details and get a feel for what the war was like for people like ourselves. C. Brian Kelly, a journalist, historian, and editor, shows us a different way to learn about these local stories by collecting, from many different sources, true stories about little parts of large parts of history. In particular, his book Best Little Stories from the American Revolution does this for the American War of Independence from Great Britain. These are fascinating and true “little stories” that are probably not known to most readers. Kelly re-tells them well in an interesting fashion, little but not unimportant things that don’t fit into a one volume overview of an historical period. He often gives some background material to help the reader understand the setting of the story. Our ancestors were real people, with real feelings and real thoughts – these little stories help reinforce that assertion. Sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, sometimes dramatic, this is a good high school book to give a human background to the American Revolution. You don’t need to read all of it but you can select stories of interest – there is an excellent index and the stories are arranged in chronological order.