The Battle of Bunker Hill was the crossing of a line. It was the last moment when matters could conceivably be resolved. This was where it ceased to be a local discontent and became a civil war. This book gives the story of the people who took part in it. On the American side there are heros like Putnam, the bluff and honest frontier soldier, and the saintly Dr. Warren. There are also heros on the British side like Pitcarin with his courtesy and all-to-rare nobblesse oblige toward his men. And Howe, the old-school warrior from an old-school warrior family. We are also shown the nervous bewildered militiamen who that day recieved the baptism of fire that would make them the core of the Continental Army. Including the ironically incompetant artillerymen whom none would have suspected would be the spirtual ancestors of America's great gunners that have been the terror of her foes on many a field. And the infantry hovering on the edge of running, yet somehow managing to stand, and stand, and stand. We also meet the common British soldiery, with their colorful customs and generations-old traditions. They are revealed, not as the red-coated "Imperial Stormtroopers" of the pernecious legend, but as skilled, loyal and brave men who went to their deaths, not for grand theories but because comrades stick together even under the shadow of death. We are also shown the civilans and how it struck them. The new-discovery of the horror of war. And the escalating cycle of hate and malice between Patriot and Loyalist.