The Boston Massacre, by Herbert B. Zobel (Norton, £12.95 in UK)

In our century, the so called Massacre in Boston in 1770 would hardly rate as such; only a small handful of people were killed or wounded, and the English troops who fired on the threatening mob apparently had plenty of provocation. It seems, in any case, that the officer in charge had not told them to fine, but anticolonial, anti British feeling was growing and the deaths provided the lawyer John Adams and other native radicals with fuel for propaganda. A trial ended in a legal whitewash, but the event became a kind of Bloody Sunday in the annals of American nationalism and was a milepost on the road to independence. An Irish peer, Lord Hillsborough, was the local governor at the time and was plainly a pompous, blundering ass. The book is rather densely written.