Winner of the George Washington Prize
Winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History
Winner of the Excellence in American History Book Award
Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award
The paperback edition of the New York Times bestseller that the Wall Street Journal said was "chock full of momentous events and larger-than-life characters."
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 the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one 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 has given stirring new life to the first act of our country's creation drama.
Rick Atkinson is featured in THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt on PBS
"To say that Atkinson can tell a story is like saying Sinatra can sing. . . . Historians of the American Revolution take note. Atkinson is coming. He brings with him a Tolstoyan view of war; that is, he presumes war can be understood only by recovering the experience of ordinary men and women caught in the crucible of orchestrated violence beyond their control or comprehension." --Joseph J. Ellis, The New York Times Book Review
"Mr. Atkinson's book . . . is chock full of momentous events and larger-than-life characters. Perfect material for a storyteller as masterly as Mr. Atkinson. . . . Mr. Atkinson commands great powers of description." -- Mark Spencer, The Wall Street Journal
"[Atkinson has a] felicity for turning history into literature. . . . One lesson of The British Are Coming is the history-shaping power of individuals exercising their agency together: the volition of those who shouldered muskets in opposition to an empire. . . . The more that Americans are reminded by Atkinson and other supreme practitioners of the historians' craft that their nation was not made by flimsy people, the less likely it is to be flimsy." --George F. Will, The Washington Post
"Atkinson...wastes no time reminding us of his considerable narrative talents. . . . His knowledge of military affairs shines in his reading of the sources. . . . For sheer dramatic intensity, swinging from the American catastrophes at Quebec and Fort Washington to the resounding and surprising successes at Trenton and Princeton, all told in a way equally deeply informed about British planning and responses, there are few better places to turn." --The Washington Post
"An epic tale, epically told. Atkinson excels at deftly summarizing personalities. . . . He moves effortlessly from the plans of commanders to the campfires of troops. The extraordinary scholarship involved--his meticulous endnotes cover 133 pages--is testament to a historian at the very top of his game.... The writing [is] incisive, humane, humorous, and often scintillating. . . . Anyone reading The British Are Coming will finish it looking forward impatiently to the next two. The trilogy looks fair to become the standard account of the war that brought the American Republic into being." --Andrew Roberts, Claremont Review of Books
Table of Contents:
LIST OF MAPS
MAP LEGEND
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PROLOGUE, -England, June 1773--March 1775
1. Inspecting the Fleet
2. Avenging the Tea
3. Preparing for War
PART ONE
1. GOD HIMSELF OUR CAPTAIN
Boston, March 6--April 17, 1775
2. MEN CAME DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS
Lexington and Concord, April 18-19, 1775
3. I WISH THIS CURSED PLACE WAS BURNED
Boston and Charlestown, May--June 1775
4. WHAT -SHALL WE SAY OF -HUMAN NATURE?
Cambridge Camp, July--October 1775
5. I -SHALL TRY TO RETARD THE EVIL HOUR
Into Canada, October--November 1775
6. AMER-I-CA IS AN UGLY JOB
London, October--November 1775
7. THEY FOUGHT, BLED, AND DIED LIKE EN-GLISHMEN
Norfolk, -Virginia, December 1775
8. THE PATHS OF GLORY
Quebec, December 3, 1775--January 1, 1776
PART TWO
9. THE WAYS OF HEAVEN ARE DARK AND INTRICATE
Boston, January--February 1776
10. THE WHIPPING SNAKE
Cork, Ireland, and Moore's Creek, North Carolina, January--March 1776
11. CITY OF OUR SOLEMNITIES
Boston, March 1776
12. A STRANGE REVERSE OF FORTUNE
Quebec, April--June 1776
13. SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES, OPEN AND CONCEALED
New York, June 1776
14. A DOG IN A DANCING SCHOOL
Charleston, South Carolina, June 1776
15. A FIGHT AMONG WOLVES
New York, July--August 1776
16. A SENTIMENTAL MANNER OF MAKING WAR
New York, September 1776
PART THREE
17. MASTER OF THE LAKES
Lake Champlain, October 1776
18. THE RETROGRADE MOTION OF -THINGS
New York, October--November 1776
19. A QUAKER IN PARIS
France, November--December 1776
20. FIRE--AND--SWORD MEN
New Jersey, December 1776
21. THE SMILES OF PROVIDENCE
Trenton, December 24-26, 1776
22. THE DAY IS OUR OWN
Trenton and Prince-ton, January 1777
EPILOGUE, -England and Amer-i-ca, 1777
AUTHOR'S NOTE
NOTES
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX
Rick Atkinson is the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy-- An Army at Dawn (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History), The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light--as well as The Long Gray Line and other books. His many additional awards include a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, a George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. A former staff writer and senior editor at t he Washington Post, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Holt Paperbacks
Pub Date: April 07, 2020
ISBN: 9781250231321
800 pages
paperback