John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial

Look for Dan Abrams and David Fisher’s new book, Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby.

*NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

“An expert, extremely detailed account of John Adams’ finest hour.”—Kirkus Reviews

Honoring the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre

The New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln’s Last Trial and host of LivePD Dan Abrams and David Fisher tell the story of a trial that would change history.

History remembers John Adams as a Founding Father and our country’s second president. But in the tense years before the American Revolution, he was still just a lawyer, fighting for justice in one of the most explosive murder trials of the era.

On the night of March 5, 1770, shots were fired by British soldiers on the streets of Boston, killing five civilians. The Boston Massacre has often been called the first shots of the American Revolution. As John Adams would later remember, “On that night the formation of American independence was born.” Yet when the British soldiers faced trial, the young lawyer Adams was determined that they receive a fair one. He volunteered to represent them, keeping the peace in a powder keg of a colony, and in the process created some of the foundations of what would become United States law.

In this book, New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher draw on the trial transcript, using Adams’s own words to transport readers to colonial Boston, a city roiling with rebellion, where British military forces and American colonists lived side by side, waiting for the spark that would start a war.

David Fisher is the author of almost one hundred books, of which twenty-five are New York Times bestsellers. He lives in New York with his wife, Laura.

Dan Abrams is the chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News and CEO and founder of Abrams Media. He is also the host of top-rated Live PD on A&E Network and The Dan Abrams Show: Where Politics Meets the Law on SiriusXM. A graduate of Columbia University Law School, he is the author of the Washington Post bestseller Man Down and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Yale Law & Policy Review, among many others. He lives in New York.