THE FIRST CONSPIRACY

Meltzer and Mensch’s melodramatic 2018 account of a plot that would have definitely changed the outcome of the Revolutionary War, reissued in modestly tightened form for younger audiences.

In dozens of short chapters featuring barrages of orotund, present-tense prose, the authors spin a scanty web of evidence into a whirl of conspiracy. First, though, come paeans to George Washington’s sterling character and irreplaceability along with an extended overview of the war’s run-up from the occupation and abandonment of Boston to the British fleet’s arrival in New York harbor. It’s in the stews of New York (“Drinking. Disease. Filth. Secret plots”—but the syphilis and prostitutes to be found there in the adult edition seem to be absent) that ousted Loyalist governor William Tryon hatches a scheme to commit widespread sabotage and, as a hyperventilating contemporary dubs it, “SACRICIDE,” and also there that the conspirators give themselves away just prior to the disastrous Battle of Long Island. Though most escape punishment, one prisoner is hanged on the very day that the Continental Congress sees the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Further chapters on Washington’s own spycraft, on his changing attitude toward allowing free blacks to enlist, and other conspiracies real or drummed up serve to enrich the page count as well as, sometimes, the content. Massive sections of endnotes and scholarly sources are carried over from the original.

Not much to choose between the two editions, for readers adult or otherwise.