While Ethan Allen embodied the virtues and vices of the nation's Founding Fathers more colorfully than any of his more venerated and aristocratic counterparts, he is often defined by a single night in 1775, when he led a daring predawn attack on Fort Ticonderoga. However, as the man who almost single-handedly brought the state of Vermont into the Union, Allen was an enigmatic product of the American frontier, blessed with an extraordinary intellect and hot-tempered propensity for action. Unlocking a trove of new source material, including previously ignored evidence of Allen's inhuman treatment as a prisoner of war, Pulitzer Prize finalist Willard Sterne Randall gives us the first comprehensive portrait of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys in half a century. He masterfully evokes the upward struggle from childhood poverty to command of the largest American paramilitary force on the eve of the Revolution. This is the seminal biography of a man whose "come out of there, you damned old rat" determination helped define a nation.