The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 - Rick Atkinson

Written by Rick Atkinson
Read by George Newbern
Format: M4B
Unabridged

From the best-selling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes this extraordinary history of the American Revolution.

Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories.

Now, he turns his attention to a new war, and in this book about the American Revolution recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force.

It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.

Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson marries the classical traditions of history with a voice that is fundamentally modernist, that is ironic and skeptical, while observing the most rigorous conventions of scholarship. With the support of previously unused materials and extensive original research from the US as well as Germany, France and England, Rick Atkinson writes an epic narrative of this forgotten yet pivotal time in history.