George Washington's War The Saga of the American Revolution

A lively narrative history of the Revolutionary War covers the conflict from its root causes and initial battles to the British surrender at Yorktown. By the author of Delivered from Evil. National ad/promo.

This fast-paced, vivid narrative enhances Leckie's reputation as a popular military historian ( Delivered from Evil ; None Died in Vain ). A storyteller in the tradition of Bruce Catton, he perceives the origins of the American Revolution in the colonists' increasingly pervasive drive for independence and describes the revolution's success as the consequence of American victories in battle. Leckie has high praise for the fighting men on both sides. The British adapted unfamiliar kinds of warfare; the Americans developed the endurance and discipline they needed to make good on their defiance of the crown. The work's principal strength, however, is its juxtaposition of colorful depictions of the war's principal figures with exciting accounts of the major campaigns. The book is a reminder of what history can be when written by a master.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Leckie (None Died in Vain, 1990, etc.) retreads familiar terrain in lively style--in this retelling of the story of the American Revolution. Beginning with a recapitulation of the French and Indian War- -which, though ending in British victory, represented the beginning of the end of the British empire in America--Leckie briskly recounts the well-known events leading to America's break with Britain and the military development of the war. In anecdotal biographical sketches, he draws vivid portraits of the war's principals: George III, George Washington, Thomas Gage, Lord Cornwallis, and Benedict Arnold, among others. Leckie summarizes the principal battles of the war--Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Washington's disastrous Long Island and Manhattan campaigns, his victories at Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, and Yorktown--in lucid, workmanlike fashion. In superb depictions of the British leaders and of the British home front, he also adds details rarely found in popular American histories, and, unlike some historians, he doesn't neglect the southern war--the battles of Camden, Cowpens, and King's Mountain are covered as thoroughly as any. But although Leckie is a superior narrator of military and personal dramas, he offers no particularly interesting interpretations of the war's events, and he limits his reflections on its aftermath to praising our constitutional government as ``an ideal of perfection in representative government.'' Short on analysis, but, still, an enjoyable popular history. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Leckie, who has written popular histories of the American Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, and others, now offers a fife-and-drum account of the American Revolution. This book, like his others, is long on anecdote and short on analysis. Leckie drags out many tired commonplaces, casting the patriots as heroes and the British as villains, and he focuses on kings and generals rather than common soldiers or a people at war. Leckie's deft vignettes of leaders and his belief that "right" won in the end give his account energy and conviction, but his old-school reading of the causes and conduct of the war and his total neglect of its consequences limit the book's worth.
-Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.