Author and conservative commentator Eric Metaxas said he wrote his latest bestselling book, Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, to give Americans a comprehensive account of the nation’s founding, arguing that understanding the American Revolution is essential rather than optional.
Metaxas made the remarks during an exclusive sit-down interview with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy at Landmark Booksellers in downtown Franklin.
The 577-page book, published by Skyhorse Publishing in June, has appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. During the interview, Metaxas explained that the project grew out of a suggestion from a friend who had read his earlier book, Seven Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness.
“He said he was so moved by my telling of the story of George Washington, he said, ‘Eric, you should write the whole story of the whole Revolution,'” Metaxas recalled.
While he said he typically dismisses unsolicited book ideas, this one resonated because of the approaching 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“I thought, we have the 250th coming up. I call it the super centennial of America,” Metaxas said. “I thought about it, and I thought about, in a sense, the ambition, the scope of what it would take to tell that whole story. It’s an epic narrative.”
Metaxas said his goal was not to write another narrowly focused history of a single campaign or battle but to provide readers with a complete account of how the United States came into existence.
“I wanna tell the whole story. The whole thing, the Revolution,” he said. “There’s zillions of books on the Revolution, many wonderful books. But there isn’t one book, certainly not recently, that tells the whole story. How did this nation come into being 250 years ago?”
Rather than beginning with the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord in 1775, Metaxas said the book traces the ideological and political developments that preceded the war.
“But John Adams said there was a revolution before the Revolution,” he explained. “The book starts with James Otis Jr. … It really starts, of course, after the French and Indian War is over, when the British decide in 1764, ‘Hey, we gotta tax the colonists.’ And that’s what sets up the conflict.”
He added that understanding those events is critical to understanding the Revolution itself.
“In some ways, that’s my favorite part of the book because it sets up what leads to suddenly the Shot Heard Round the World on April 19, 1775,” Metaxas said.
The author also discussed the intensive writing process behind the nearly 600-page volume, saying he completed it in approximately 18 to 24 months by working with singular focus.
“I write very intensely, and so I get it done much more quickly than you would think,” Metaxas said. “But it’s like I’m working on it night and day like a lunatic.”
Asked by Leahy what he is like during those periods of concentrated work, Metaxas joked, “You’d have to ask my poor wife. I went through three wives on this book. It’s terrible.”
He compared the experience to being chased by a lion.
“It’s like you’re being chased by a lion,” Metaxas said. “You don’t have time to chitchat unless you wanna get eaten. So you just keep going. You keep sprinting, and you hope that the lion doesn’t catch you… It’s a crazy process, especially with something of this scope.”
Metaxas said he intentionally wrote the book as a narrative history to make it accessible to general readers rather than academic specialists.
“My goal was to tell the story of the American Revolution because my thesis in writing it is every single American needs to know this stuff,” he said. “This is not extra credit. This is not for history buffs. This is for Americans. If you’re an American, it’s on the test. You need to know this.”
He said he deliberately limited the material to what he believes every American should understand about the nation’s founding.
“I only put in what I think we need to know. The book could be 1,200 pages. It’s only 600 pages,” Metaxas said.
The response from readers, he added, has been especially gratifying.
“I hope it reads well. That’s the greatest thing, is that so many people have said, ‘It reads like a novel. I couldn’t put it down.’ That’s, as an author, the greatest thing you could hear,” he said.
Metaxas also lamented what he described as a decline in Americans’ knowledge of their own history.
“I also say that, around 1960, if you put a microphone in the face of anybody on Main Street, America, they all knew this stuff,” he said. “We all knew this, but somehow it’s gone out of the culture. That’s very bad.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
