This first volume, “The British Are Coming,” covers the well-trod territory of the Revolution’s beginnings, and all such accounts - from Henry Beebe Carrington’s military narrative published in 1881 to Thomas Fleming’s surprise 1960 Bunker Hill bestseller Now We Are Enemies to Robert Middlekauff’s seminal 1982 book The Glorious Cause, the first volume in the Oxford History of the United States. The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 is the first installment in the Revolution Trilogy, promising an in-depth look at the battles and campaigns that won American independence. Anyone with an interest in American history will enjoy this stellar volume, and will eagerly await the next two in the series.Readers who loved Rick Atkinson’s bestselling Liberation Trilogy will have a good idea what to expect from the author’s new book. But the flare Atkinson brings to the task is remarkable, and it is easy to see why it has already become one of the most celebrated books on its subject ever written. It is obvious that the British Are Coming tells a story that few historians will find unfamiliar.

The leadership and sheer will of George Washington looms large in Atkinson’s narrative, leaving no doubt how indispensable he was to keeping a somewhat ragtag army together in trying circumstances and wresting victory from what on more than one occasion appeared to be certain defeat. Equally so does the fact that morale was not always high in the American army as the setbacks accumulated. Their endurance of privation, struggle against the odds, and determination in the face of setbacks stand out as key themes throughout the book. Atkinson places great emphasis on the experience of the men in the ranks and the uncertainty of the venture in which they were engaged. In the pages of The British Are Coming (I listened to the audiobook version), Atkinson combines smooth, gripping prose with a depth of knowledge on the people and events of the war to produce one of the more compelling and insightful accounts of the first years of the Revolutionary War.

It is a pretty safe bet that his effort at telling the story of America’s birth on the battlefields of the Revolution will soon be receiving the same praise. His acclaimed “Liberation Trilogy” on World War II ( An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, The Guns at Last Light) have been hailed as masterpieces on their subjects. The book is the first of a planned three-volume series on the Revolutionary War from Atkinson, a former journalist who has established himself as among the foremost American writers of non-fiction. Here with a much anticipated account of those pivotal years in the struggle for American independence is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson with The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777.

The british are coming by rick atkinson