The British Are Coming

 The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1776 by Rick Atkinson is the first volume in his Revolution Trilogy. It's a big, weighty read. I had heard of some of these great figures and battles: Bunker Hill, General Cornwallis, Ticonderoga, Thomas Paine, and so on. This book gave context to these names and many more. Atkinson is a thorough historian and a gifted writer, and he was able to zoom out to larger geopolitical issues and then zoom in on, say, a militiaman's letter to his wife. This often happened in the same paragraph, and it made for a dense, but enjoyable, reading experience. Many historical figures were fleshed out into round, complicated characters. The most interesting--not surprisingly--was Benedict Arnold. The British Are Coming skillfully laid groundwork and built tension in its narrative, and I was often surprised by the outcome of events. Atkinson won a Pulitzer Prize (for another work), and his writing goes down easy, the literary equivalent of a Ken Burns documentary.

Deep now into my middle age, I've taken to listening to Dad Rock like the National and the Allman Brothers, and now I'm reading war histories. This is all very clichéd, but another function of my age is that I don't care. I found The British Are Coming fascinating, and I look forward to the next installments of his trilogy. History is compelling, and it changes my understanding of the world. One shift in my perspective came about halfway through the text. I have long thought that of all American Wars, the conflict in Vietnam would have been the most hellish. My perspective is a product of the great war films of the 70s and 80s, as well as the hippie music I grew up listening to. But given the technology, smallpox, weather, clothing, typhus, bayonets, dysentery, sanitation . . . I think the Revolutionary War would have been pretty rough. Of course, I have no firsthand experience with any military conflict, so this is all academic.