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45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Soldiers and Battles of the American Revolution, May 9, 2007
This review is from: Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought (Hardcover)
One would expect to be able to pick up a book on the Revolutionary war and not be lectured to about the war in Iraq, but, there you go. Mr. Stevenson's breezy book is not so much a popular military history of the American Revolution, as it is a basic primer on soldiering in the 18th century and a cursory review of key battles of the war. It concentrates on the tactical while largely ignoring the operational and strategic aspects. He does a good job of describing what life was like for a soldier of this period. The first half of the book discusses the opposing soldiers and armies of the Revolutionary war, written in the modern iconoclastic historical manner. His writing style is a little too chatty for my taste. Washington, we are told, found his militia troops "aggravatingly bolshie", for example. He relies heavily on secondary sources and breaks no new ground. Christopher Duffy's "Military Experience in the Age of Reason" addresses this topic much more fully.
The second half of the book provides brief, and well written, descriptions of key battles of the war, with excellent maps, and is thankfully free of the author's modern political opinions. However, Savas & Dameron's "Guide to Battles of the American Revolution" does it much better (and covers more battles).
If you know nothing about 18th century military history and want a primer on key battles of the Revolution, this book may be a good choice for you, but if you already know the basics, you'll be disappointed.
I really can't recommend this book and regret buying it.
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58 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of information, but tainted, May 8, 2007
This review is from: Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought (Hardcover)
Of all the wars that Americans have fought my knowledge of the War for Independence was most lacking. I looked to this volume to fill that gap for me. It is obvious that there was a lot of research done, almost 20% of the book is notes, bibliography and index. And the information is staggering--everything from rates of pay, types of weaponry, the sort of shoes the contending armies wore, the food, medical care... the list goes on. The first couple of chapters are dry in the extreme but the author does better in the following chapters of the first section. The latter part of the book, with synopses of the various battles and thoughtfully provided maps, was interesting.
But, and it's a major "but" for what was supposed to have been a book on how a past war was fought, the author cannot resist throwing in statements that reflect his personal and modern ideologies. There are gratuitous swipes at the policies in Iraq and Vietnam, right wing talk radio, Christians, and the way Indians were treated by those living in the 1700's and later. Some comparisons might be valid, but this was not a "compare/contrast" book. It was marketed and titled to reflect how something was done in the past, a recitation of facts. The author's asides mean that it is not what good history should be: objective. The comments are not extensive but they are jarring and in context apprear snide. Applying contemporary standards to those living in the past can be instructive in a classroom setting to show how civilization has grown or declined. In books it's more problematic. History books should say simply "here's what happened as best as can be determined." Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Finally, the ending paragraphs are spoiled by poor editing. It's the surrender at Yorktown and a British soldier is bitterly throwing his musket, referred to previously as a "firelock," on the ground. The text says that he threw his "forelock" on the ground. Yet one more casualty to machines editing text rather than giving them a look with the Mark One Mod Zero eyeball of a knowledgeable editor.
Thanks for the information, Mr. Stephenson, but save the commentary for some other venue.
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52 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Dearth of Primary Source Information, June 23, 2007
This review is from: Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought (Hardcover)
This volume is a great disappointment. It had all the promise of an outstanding work that presented a different view of the War of the Revolution However, none of the opportunities available to pursue that approach to the war and the fascinating characters that populate the period on both sides were attempted.
The basic premise and outline are credible: the first half of the book concerns the armies, weapons, and such seldom covered topics as the women who followed the armies and the Indians. The second half covers selected battles more or less competently, but the book seems to be to be trying to combine the approach of two outstanding works on the Revolution: Harold Peterson's indispensable The Book of the Continental Soldier and WJ Wood's outstanding Battles of the Revolutionary War 1775-1781, and doesn't do it as well as either Peterson or Wood, and we are left with a second-rate account of the war.
The text is riddled with errors. Nathaniel Greene is accused of war profiteering with little or no proof. Monmouth is portrayed as an American loss. Numbers throughout the text are suspect-Rochambeau's French Expeditionary force that was sent to North America in 1780 numbered 5,000 French regulars; the author numbers them around 4,000 which is nothing but sloppy research. Lafayette's numbers in Virginia in 1781 are inflated to 5,000, which is again incorrect. The author's portrayal of the Continentals relies heavily on secondary accounts of what social class the rank and file came from instead of what type of soldiers they were and became. The expertise of the British regular is downplayed considerably, as are the military attributes of the assorted German mercenaries hired by the British government and sent to North America starting in 1776. The chapter on artillery is near-useless. Grapeshot is labelled canister, the usual, accurate artillery terms are not employed by the author (such as 'trajectory' instead of 'elevation') which leads to confusion, and siege artillery is not covered at all in the chapter. This is curious as the sieges in the Revolution were significant. The last one, Yorktown, led to the end of the war.
There are few primary sources listed in the bibliography. I found only fifteen entries that were either primary source material or anthologies which held mostly primary materia in ten pages of listed sources. That is less than ten percent of the total. Excellent material wasn't listed and apparently not used, material that is readily available, such as Johann Ewald's excellent Diary of the American War (the Diary is quoted-but from another book with some of Ewald's material in it). Some dubious references are listed and used such as Neimeyer's America Goes to War and Higginbotham's The War of American Independence (which this reviewer had as a text in college in a course taught by the author-it wasn't impressive and only 'enlightening' in the negative sense).
The greatest fault of the book, however, is the parallels which the author attempts to make with the War in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. Whatever the author was attempting to show using this vehicle is irrelevant. The attempted parallels all fail and only appear to be a furthering of the author's political agenda for whatever reason. It detracts from the book and is very annoying historically, as well as being grossly inaccurate. The most egregious is the author attempting to equate President Bush with George III, the reigning British monarch during the Revolution. It is ridiculous and just plain silly. A book on the Revolution which is supposed to be a serious work is no place for present-day political rhetoric, comment, or bias. There are proper venues for that type of writing, but this isn't it.
The author failed in his attempt at a valid book on the War of the Revolution. The potential is there, but it was not acted upon. The book is poorly written, poorly researched, and is fatally flawed by preent-day political comment and invalid historical comparisons. This book is not recommended and cannot be used for research because of its inherent flaws and frequent errors in fact.
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