"Bullen's book is a riveting read, one that sets the story straight on Daniel Shays and the honorable rebellion that carries his name." -- Berkshire Eagle "Bullen's book shows that the actual history is more complicated, but also more interesting. Even the title gives the event more respectability than it usually receives. According to Bullen, what happened in western Massachusetts simply followed the American Revolution playbook. The people were oppressed by damaging taxes and were in danger of losing their rights and livelihoods as a result. Shays and his followers were acting as the militias did in 1775. But the Minute Men have become heroes in the national story, whereas the Shaysites have been seen as nothing more than dangerous insurrectionists. Bullen succeeds in changing that viewpoint.

" -- Journal of the American Revolution "Bullen has crafted an accurate, comprehensive, and carefully researched account of the individuals, their situation, and their actions. He has captured the essence of an important social movement. The rebellion of the Massachusetts farmers against oppressive authority in 1786 has echoes in populist movements in America throughout history and even today. This story is only tangentially military history, but readers can learn much about a pivotal event in national development."-- Journal of America's Military Past "Daniel Shays's famous contemporaries accused him and his fellow 'rebels' of seeking to skate out of their debts or even redistribute the property of the rich. But in this gripping and scrupulously accurate narrative, Daniel Bullen, starting from the plain fact that the Regulators (as they called themselves) did not take a single life, makes a persuasive case that they actually showed remarkable patriotism, economic acumen, and even restraint."-- Woody Holton , author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution "Shays Rebellion, caricatured and trivialized, is known primarily for the reaction it triggered, a precipitating cause of the Constitutional Convention. But Daniel Bullen takes the insurgents seriously: who were these fellows, and what was the cause of their complaints? By exploring them individually and collectively, Bullen discovers a coherent social movement, rooted in a historical tradition.

Twelve years earlier, even before Lexington and Concord, they had managed to overthrow British rule throughout Massachusetts; in 1786, carefully and strategically, they tried to replicate that playbook, but with a very different result. Bullen's vivid prose makes history come alive. We feel the farmers' pain. We understand why they protested inequities, much as people do today."-- Ray Raphael , author of A People's History of the American Revolution.