A more unlikely Founding Father it would be hard to imagine. Samuel Adams, in appearance, was an extraordinarily ordinary man, a man unskillfully put together.

Thus begins Donald Barr Chidsey’s extraordinarily readable biography of the man he describes as the grandfather of his country, the man who laid the foundation. Adams, he tells us, was America’s first machine politician, but he made independence a word to be respected.

Here is the story of how Adams did it. It is also the story of a city, Boston, in those years between the end of the French and Indian War and the Second Continental Congress, a time when the docile English colonies turned into a nest of seething rebellion, a time when that bainfull weed, tea, assumed outrageous importance, a time when the Sons of Liberty intimidated those who disagreed with them with the threat of tar and feathers.

Adams and his contemperporaries step off these pages as large as life: Sam’s cousin John, the pugnacious second President of the United states, who burned with indignation at all times ; William Pitt, adored in the American colonies, but a leader who led nobody in England; John Hancock, the richest man in New England, a peacock who strutted and swished, iridescent, admiring himself ; Benjamin Franklin, a man with a twinkle in his eye; Sam Gray, whose rude remark to a soldier eventually led to the Boston Massacre; Captain Thomas Preston, who tried to prevent it.

Told with honesty and wit, this book presents a biting picture of a turbulent time, with an affectionate portrait of Samuel Adams as its center, and a cast of characters important in early American life, who made up his world.