In 1775, Concord was not a quiet rural town waiting for history to arrive. It was an important Massachusetts community already under strain—shaped by class divisions, religious tensions, and an eighteenth-century “affordability crisis” that had been building for years before "the shot heard 'round the world". Dr. Robert A. Gross is Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Connecticut (UConn). He joins us from Concord, Massachusetts—the central setting of this interview—which examines the town’s social and political tensions before the Revolution, as well as events in Lexington and western Massachusetts on the eve of April 19, 1775 HERE.