Ray Raphael (born April 19,
1943) is an American
historian and author of fourteen books. He
is noted for his work on the
American Revolution and the regional
history of
Northern
California.
Books: The American Revolution and the Founding Era
In 2001, Raphael’s
People’s History of the American
Revolution synthesized the “bottom-up” history that grabbed
the attention of scholars in the field since the 1960s. Howard
Zinn, author of
People’s History of the United States,
endorsed the book and used it to initiate his “People’s History”
series, published by The New Press. While both Raphael and Zinn
view common people as significant historical agents, Zinn’s focus
is decidedly more political, focusing on dissent and protest, while
Raphael deals with everyday experiences as well as social
movements.
In 2002, in
The First American Revolution, Raphael
chronicled the overthrow of British authority in the hinterlands of
Massachusetts in 1774, the year before Lexington and Concord. The
dynamics of the buildup to war have been generally overlooked in
American’s core national narrative, but Raphael showed how the
citizens of Massachusetts, in response to being disenfranchised by
the Massachusetts Government Act, seized political and military
power throughout the province in dramatic form. In the town of
Worcester, 4,622 militiamen from 37 towns throughout the county —
half the adult male population — lined both sides of Main Street
and forced the British appointed officials to walk the gauntlet
between them, hats in hand, reciting their resignations 30 times
apiece. Similar takeovers occurred in every county seat outside
Boston, which was garrisoned by British troops. These events, well
documented at the time but dropped from the national narrative
since the mid-nineteenth century, provide fuller context for the
outbreak of war. Raphael demonstrated that the British march on
Lexington and Concord, rather than “starting” the Revolution,
signaled a counteroffensive to regain control of a province that
American patriots had already seized.
Alerted by the disappearance of the 1774 Massachusetts rebellion
from history texts, Raphael explored the underpinnings of our
national storytelling. In 2004, his
Founding Myths
examined thirteen time honored tales — Paul Revere’s Ride, the
Winter at Valley Forge, “Give me liberty or give me death,” etc. —
and detailed their etymology in the nineteenth century, when an
emerging nationalism and narrative demands combined to alter the
historical record.
In 2009, in
Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation,
Raphael culminates his work on the Revolution with an original
synthesis of the Founding Era, from the beginnings of unrest in
1761 to the ratification of the Bill of Rights thirty years later.
Here, Raphael blends his previous bottom-up approach into the
traditional national narrative. His seven lead characters — some
high, some low — include both General George Washington and Private
Joseph Plumb Martin, and both Robert Morris, so rich that he bailed
out the bankrupt nation, and Thomas Young, a peripatetic
revolutionary who spread rebellion in seven states.
Early Books
Northwest California
Raphael’s first books focused primarily on the history and regional
issues of Northern California, where he has lived since the late
1960s. His
Everyday History of Somewhere, an earthy
treatment based on interviews with old-timers that intermingled
natural with human history, won the California Commonwealth Club
award for best book on California for 1774. In
Edges: Human
Ecology of the Backcountry;
Tree Talk: The People and
Politics of Timber (and its sequel,
More Tree Talk: The
People, Politics, and Economics of Timber); and
Cash Crop:
An American Dream?, he explored issues of contemporary local
concern (development, timber, marijuana) in a unique journalistic
style, interweaving Studs Terkel-style interviews with narrative
history and analysis. In 2007, with Freeman House (author of Totem
Salmon), Raphael wrote an in-depth exploration of white-Indian
conflicts of the mid-nineteenth century in Northwest California,
titled
Two Peoples, One Place.
Raphael has also written a book on male initiation rites in
contemporary American culture (
The Men from the Boys), a
study of the careers of teachers (
The Teachers’ Voice),
and with his son Neil, a juvenile mystery (
Comic Cops).
His play on John and Jessie Freemont played to audiences across
Northern California.
Editorial Work
In 2006 Raphael edited an issue on the Founders for Forum magazine
that included original contributions from scholars
Gary Nash,
Alfred
Young,
Gordon Wood,
Pauline Maier,
Richard Beeman,
Woody
Holton,
Carol Berkin, and
Jack Rakove. With
Gary
Nash and
Alfred Young, he is
currently editing
Revolutionary Founders, a collection of
original biographical essays to be published by Alfred A.
Knopf.
Personal life
A native of New York City, Raphael moved west after graduating high
school. He holds BA and MAT degrees from Reed College and an MA
from the University of California at Berkeley. He spent the summer
of 1962 in North Carolina registering black voters and integrating
public facilities and the summer of 1964 with the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s “Freedom Summer” in
Mississippi. His work in the “Movement” of the sixties influenced
his grassroots journalistic style and his bottom-up telling of
history.
Raphael settled in rural Northern California, where he raised two
sons with his wife, Marie. (One of Marie’s brothers, Robert
Guillemin, is Boston’s well-known street artist, Sidewalk Sam,
whose bottom-up approach to art resembles Raphael’s treatment to
history.) Since age 50, Raphael has been a recreational whitewater
kayaker.
For fifteen years Raphael taught all subjects except foreign
language at a one-room public high school in his remote
neighborhood. He also taught at Humboldt State University and
College of the Redwoods. Known for his lucid style, Raphael blends
teaching skills with academic discipline, writing works of
scholarly importance in language accessible to lay readers.
Raphael’s books have been published in the United Kingdom and
translated into German, Portuguese, and Korean.
List of Published Works
References
Notes
External links
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