The leadership and sheer will of George Washington looms large in Atkinson’s narrative, leaving no doubt how indispensable he was to keeping a somewhat ragtag army together in trying circumstances and wresting victory from what on more than one occasion appeared to be certain defeat.
Equally so does the fact that morale was not always high in the American army as the setbacks accumulated. Their endurance of privation, struggle against the odds, and determination in the face of setbacks stand out as key themes throughout the book. Atkinson places great emphasis on the experience of the men in the ranks and the uncertainty of the venture in which they were engaged. In the pages of The British Are Coming (I listened to the audiobook version), Atkinson combines smooth, gripping prose with a depth of knowledge on the people and events of the war to produce one of the more compelling and insightful accounts of the first years of the Revolutionary War. It is a pretty safe bet that his effort at telling the story of America’s birth on the battlefields of the Revolution will soon be receiving the same praise. His acclaimed “Liberation Trilogy” on World War II ( An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, The Guns at Last Light) have been hailed as masterpieces on their subjects. The book is the first of a planned three-volume series on the Revolutionary War from Atkinson, a former journalist who has established himself as among the foremost American writers of non-fiction. Here with a much anticipated account of those pivotal years in the struggle for American independence is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson with The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777.
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