Revolution road.

• Position: Up Front

Every school kid knows the story of Paul Revere. He was the silversmith who tore out of Boston on horseback at midnight to warn folks in nearby Lexington and Concord that British troops were on the way. Thanks to him, the militia was ready.

I was sure I knew the tale. Or I thought I did until I visited Boston in March. I was there to meet a friend's parents, who live in Bedford. From Boston, you drive out the Battle Road, where British troops and American militia skirmished, and hang a right at Meriam's Corner, site of an American ambush. Rough stone walls still line the road, as they did 227 years ago.

My friend's dad told me the best account of the battle was Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer, which I bought the next day. From the first page, Fischer starts pulling away two centuries of cobwebs. Revere, for example, never said, "The British are coming," as the legend has it. Back then, people in Massachusetts considered themselves British. Revere would've called them "regulars" or "redcoats."

And he wasn't the Colonial equivalent of a bicycle messenger -- a mouthpiece for more important men. He held no key political posts. He wrote no great papers and commanded no troops. But Paul Revere, Fischer says, "had an uncanny genius for being at the center of events." He was Forrest Gump with a high IQ. He also happened to be "highly skilled at the practical art of getting things done."

Consider his capture by the British on the night of his famous ride. With a major's pistol pointed at his head, Revere laid out the truth: He'd alerted Lexington to the British mission. Militiamen there were ready to fight, and they outnumbered the king's soldiers. He was trying to steer the redcoats away from the town because he knew Revolutionary leaders John Hancock and Sam Adams were holed up there. He didn't mention he'd also alerted...