It's Revolutionary!

Above, Ben Franklin(Historical Commission member Jan Prentice) strikes a pose with a Franklin Stove and other innovations in the themed display at the Franklin Historical Museum on Saturday as part of Ben Franklin Month.

Sunday: The Revolution as You’ve Never Imagined It.

The Second Sunday Speaker at the Franklin Historical Museum today brings a fresh and potent light to the oh-so familiar stories of Greater Boston in the Revolution, Michael Wenzke, who is the creator of the The Revolutionary Story Tour, a popular and award-winning Freedom Trail walking tour, will reground us in what we need to know to better understand the Revolution.

Wenzke explains that he has been inspired especially by the work of the late Bernard Bailyn, an award-winning historian who taught at Harvard for decades and is known for meticulous research and for his fresh interpretations dealing with the causes and effects of the American Revolution. In his most influential work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bailyn analyzed pre-Revolutionary political pamphlets to show that colonists truly believed the British intended to establish a tyrannical state that would abridge their historical British rights.

Wenzke writes: Few subjects have been more studied than The American Revolution. The scholarship that has been produced in the last several decades it brilliant but often narrowly focused and increasingly specialized. The politics that surround it, meanwhile, have become increasingly bitter and overly simplistic. It's possible to say, therefore, that as a whole the country has never known so much and so little about itself at the same time. But how do you create a more informed public? How do you close the gap between expert understanding and popular conception? Where to begin? Who to begin with?

Wenzke has answered that question by creating a ‘tour’ that brings to life the times, characters, and thoughts of some familiar people, including Ben Franklin. And, from this dramatis personae he weaves his compelling tale. The museum, located at 80 West Central St, opens at 1 and the presentation starts at 1.15. There should be ample seating. Those with reservation will be prioritized for the front rows. The event is free but donations are always appreciated.