The American Revolution

Listen, I know you don’t need MDK to tell you that Ken Burns has an epic new documentary on the American Revolution. You’re probably aware, you’ve probably even watched it.

But you do count on me to tell you if you can knit to something, and I’m here to report: yes, you can knit to The American Revolution. And enjoy it.

But just like the patriots, your path will be strewn with daunting obstacles such as lots of maps, detailed battle reenactments, and lyrical camera work that you don’t want to miss; you will need to look up from your knitting often. Just like the British, you’ll be irritated by the rebels—can’t they let you get to the end of your row? Must they interfere with your stitch count? No they can’t, and yes they must.

My solution to these challenges was to watch it all the way through the first time, and leave my knitting untouched in my lap for most of it. The American Revolution is like school—to get the most out of it, you have to pay attention. For me that attention was repaid with a rush of new-to-me information and a wholesale reframing of the war that resulted in the independence of thirteen British colonies in North America.

Hamilton it’s not. The revolution’s leaders’ motives were complex, and self-interest ranked right up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That does not detract from their achievement, in fact it makes it all the more remarkable and worthy of preservation. Humans, disappointing and wrongheaded as we may be, can get it together and do great things. We can live to fight another day, wiser the next time.

My second watching involved very little watching. I treated it as a podcast and mostly just listened. By listening as I knit, I absorbed a lot of information that I missed on the first run-through, and I also came to appreciate how well written The American Revolution is. It’s an excellent listen.

I’m not ready to let Ken Burns go, so now I’m halfway through 1994’s Baseball, a glaring gap in my education. Boy oh boy, it’s good, full of wild humanity and picaresque storytelling. It also proves that Burns’s themes in The American Revolution are not some new wokeness on his part. He’s been digging away, correcting what we thought we knew and giving us a fuller picture for a very long time.