In this week’s episode, Nikki sits down with J.D. Dickey to discuss his new book Boston, 1776: A Rogue Tour of Revolution City. Written as a historical travel guide, Boston, 1776 positions the reader as a visitor to Boston in July 1776. You’ll navigate the turbulent streets, tub-thumping taverns, and radical strongholds of a town at war with an empire. From the harbor wharves and seedy brothels to renowned assembly halls like Old South Meetinghouse and Faneuil Hall, Boston, 1776 leads us on a vivid tour of the vital hub of the Revolutionary War. At every stop along the way, we encounter iconic names like Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, but also the forgotten men and women who bled and brawled for freedom in every corner of Boston. B…and still needed to get out of the house at night. We’ll follow in their footsteps into the taverns and dram shops of revolutionary Boston to learn the day’s news, strategize for survival, and of course let off some steam.

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Revolutionary Nightlife in Boston 1776

Published in February by Diversion Books, Boston, 1776: A Rogue Tour of Revolution City explores the heritage of Boston street by street, as if the reader is taking a present-day journey into the heart of the Revolution in 1776. It’s an up-close, grassroots view of the early days of independence, one in which common artisans, citizens and laborers feature prominently as the true architects of social change. In this interview, we explore one theme from the book: the role of nightlife in Boston before and during the Revolution. Surprisingly for a town built by Puritans, there were more avenues for amusement than we might expect — everything from lively music performances at Concert Hall, to country dances and reels at outlying taverns, to oddball entertainment like displays of exotic birds and “learned pigs and horses,” to evening soirees at the mansions of the wealthy. Ultimately, even during the Siege and other crises, Bostonians found ways to distract and entertain themselves, despite the ongoing hardship and deprivation.

J.D. Dickey is a writer of narrative nonfiction about American history, society and culture. Of his book, Rising in Flames, Harold Holzer in the Wall Street Journal wrote, “No one interested in Sherman’s March should be deprived of his lively narrative. Absolutely spellbinding.” His earlier book, Empire of Mud, was a New York Times bestseller and described the troubled landscape of Washington, D.C., in the nineteenth century. He has also written articles on a broad range of historical, political and travel-related topics for newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, TIME and LitHub, and appeared in media from C-SPAN’s Book TV to PBS NewsHour to Public Radio International’s program The Takeaway. In support of his work, he has lectured for the New-York Historical Society, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, the Atlanta History Center, and the U.S. Army War College, among other organizations.

Revolutionary Nightlife in Boston 1776

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