American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution (Da Capo), by Harlow Giles Unger

The original "Tea Party Patriots" have entered American folklore as defiant rebels against tyranny, striking a blow against taxation without representation. Harlow Giles Unger is not entirely impressed. In American Tempest, the prolific biographer of America's founders finds much to criticize about the Boston merchants who were happy to enjoy the expensive protection of the British military against Indians, pirates and Frenchmen, but refused to pay a penny for it. Many of the Boston Tea Party's ringleaders were driven by greed and personal animosity rather than any great ideals, even if the lofty principles of Jefferson and Madison came in handy as rationalizations for what soon became an orgy of sadistic violence against fellow Americans. The joke was eventually on the Tea Party: "The revolution they had helped ferment had not only failed to end taxation, it forced the new, independent state governments to tax more heavily than the British had proposed or would ever have conceived of proposing."