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Summary: The View from Lake George
Review: As an inveterate history buff who happens to live about 1000 yards from Fort William Henry in Lake George, New York (and, incidentally, dined last evening at The Montcalm Restaurant), I make it my business to read every book about the French and Indian War I can lay my hands on. But having read so many which have proved either repetitious, superficial, or both, I have grown increasingly wary of new and ever more "comprehensive" histories of the war. To this point, the very best to my mind remained Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" which is as fresh and readable today as it was when published over 100 years ago. Then along comes Fred Anderson's "Crucible of War", and I guess I have to start changing my mind. The book excels in three respects. First, Anderson is a superb writer, as close as one will find to the Great Parkman. Second, it abounds with terrific maps and illustrations, many of which I have not seen before, from the Clements Collection at the University of Michigan. Third, and most importantly, Anderson does the best job of anyone I know in justifying the thesis that it was this war, and not the Revolution, which was the most significant conflict of the 18th century from "America's" standpoint because it lay the foundation for the inevtiable schism between the Colonies and the Mother Country. Time and again, Anderson demonstrates how almost every Colonial rejection of British hegemony during this period sowed the seeds which bloomed in April, 1775. An absolutely top-drawer read that herewith becomes a must for every serious student of American history and of this fascinating war.
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Summary: A fine, in-depth historical survey.
Review: This in-depth survey of the Seven Years' War and its effect on the Empire in British orth America from 1754-66 is recommended for history collections at the adult and college levels. Over 800 pages of detail pack a weighty survey which examines the perceptions and encounters between colonists and British. From British efforts to reform the empire and American resistance to riots and the experiences of kings and officers, this provides a fine survey.
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Summary: An excellent example of the best kind of history writing.
Review: When I read Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy, by about page 150 of the first volume, I had become a lifetime Civil War history buff. I now regard that as the most expensive book I ever purchased, because it sparked an interest that resulted in the purchase (and reading) of over 100 other Civil War books. Having just finished Fred Anderson's Crucible of War, I fear that process has begun anew. As Foote's masterpiece created a panoramic portrait of the 1860's, Anderson's work drew me into the 1760's in North America and the Courts of George II and III and painted a vivid and fascinating portrait of the lives of the great and the not-so-great men who fought what probably should be considered the first world war. My interest in the Civil War has always been predominately in battle and campaign studies or in the personalities of great leaders and common soldiers. So when I started Anderson's book, I presumed I would suffer the political stories and enjoy the military content. It is to Anderson's credit as a writer and a story teller that I increasingly found myself rushing through the details of the military encounters and savoring the tales of political combat that truly determined the outcome of this conflict. Anderson's thesis that the Revolutionary War and the events that lead up to it can only be truly appreciated in the context of the Seven Years War is well taken. In what is, unfortunately, an exception in much history publishing, this book is very well appointed with both maps and illustrations. It is one of the few books to pass the test that (as far as I can recall) every location mentioned in the text is located on one of the excellent maps. As an added bonus, the many period maps and fortress plans are not only well reproduced, but helpful and enlightening as well.
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Summary: Setting the standard for French and Indian scholarship!
Review: Fred Anderson returns to the French and Indian War - his first book was a wonderful discussion of individual provincial soldiers in Massaschusetts. This book serves as a tremendous synthesis of current eighteenth century scholarship. He combines the best aspects of ethnohistory in his considerations of the Iroquois' role in the war, and revolutionary scholarship with his discussion of the reasons behind the Stamp Act. All in all, he restores the war to its proper place in American's historical context. The French and Indian was truly one of the seminial events in the history of this country. Anderson succeeds in making it easy to read, while not denegrating the important intellectual contributions of his fellow historians. One of the best features of the book is the lush illustations. I've had the pleasure of spending time in the Clements, and his choice of pictures greatly enhances the reading experience!
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Summary: Superb history & well-written for the general reader.
Review: Fred Anderson has succeeded fabulously in dredging out of the history of America, & the World, a conflict with a profound impact on subsequent US events and frequently symbolic of the ways we operate today in interpersonal & international environments. I hope alot of people read this book.
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Summary: Excellent Reappraisal of a "Forgotten" War
Review: This is less of a book than an event. Probably the most interesting history book since Schama's "Citizens," and for the same reason: it tells you things you'd probably never otherwise have known, and provides context for them. While the Seven Years War has always figured front and center in European minds, it's been overshadowed in the US. But, it was the first real 'world war'. It built the British Empire, and sowed the seeds for the downfall of the western part of it, a mere ten years later. Anderson knits the complex events together with great skill, and follows the stories of the many seedy, greedy and incompetent players (along with the patriots and professionals) as they try to first turn back the tide of the French, and then figure out a way to conquer Canada. The insights into the Indian aspects of the war are remarkable. There's a lot of "battles and generals" writing, but he does not neglect the stories of ordinary soldiers and civilians. A lot of famous folk don't come across too well in Anderson's account. His penetrating comments on Washington and Wolfe won't make him a lot of friends, but, so be it. You'll come away from this knowing far more about the true reasons for the Revolution, which was almost an inevitable sequel to this conflict. I'd recommend reading it in conjunction with Kevin Phillip's "The Cousins' War."
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Summary: outstanding
Review: This I the best book I have read on the French and Indian War. A must read for fans of History
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Summary: American Revolution in perspective
Review: Amazon introduced an extremely helpful feature with the "Look Inside this Book" function. Unfortunately, the "Introduction" to Fred Anderson's "The Crucible of War" isn't among the pages prospective buyers can peruse online. Reading this book is a delightful, but substantial undertaking. Before starting this 750-page tome, do yourself a favor and carefully read the nine-page introduction to determine if this is really the book you want to read.
First, let's be clear: this is NOT a military history of the French & Indian War. Many of the tepid reviews below express frustration that Anderson didn't write the book they wanted or thought they were getting. In fairness, the cover featuring Wolfe's heroic and idealized death on the Plains of Abraham and the quote from John Keegan claiming that Anderson's work compares favorably with Parkman's classic makes the issue more confusing for the potential reader. But Anderson clearly lays out the primary motivation and objective in writing this book in the introduction - and it certainly isn't to write the definitive military history of the French & Indian War, let alone the larger Seven Years War, of which North America was but one (albeit central) battlefield.
Rather, Anderson's objective is to place the events of the Seven Years' War in their proper historical perspective and, above all, to trace the enduring legacy of the wartime interaction between colonists and their ostensible countrymen: the British regular army, their officers and the Crown-appointed officials serving there. The author notes that there has long been a vigorous debate in academia over the central motivation of the participants in the American Revolution (i.e. was it purely class-based materialism as argued by those of the so-called "progressive" school, or more idealism and commitment to republican principles at maintained by "neo-Whig" scholars?), but striking (and misleading) agreement on the Stamp Act of 1763 as the fundamental point of departure. Anderson argues that this has obscured the importance and centrality of the Seven Years War in shaping the thoughts and actions of the colonies and Whitehall, alike, and ultimately leading to a war of independence that neither side originally sought nor wanted. The 1760s were thus not the pre-revolutionary years that Americans think of them as, but rather "post-war" years.
Anderson is a gifted historian and an enviable writer. Few people could have written a history this rich, this authoritative and yet accessible. If you approach the book as it was intended - a penetrating history of the seminal event of the eighteenth century and the social and economic consequences it wrought in America and England - you are sure to be more than satisfied.
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Summary: Great one volume history of the 7 yrs war
Review: I'm not a colonial historian by any means but by my reading I thought this was a well put together, comprehensive, and clarifying history of the Seven Years War. I think its most important component is the degree to which it goes to explain the importance of inter-tribe relations as well as Euro-Indian relations as factors in the war's development and outcome. The quick snippets about Frederick's campaigns throughout Prussia were very well written and terrific to read. One criticism is that it that there is not as much contextual information about the pre-war French empire in North America and the Caribbean, as well as background on the war policy deliberations of the French court, as I would have liked.
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Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: I have to say that, while I am addicted to reading history, I've rarely found military history very interesting. Although it is dramatic in its tales of horror, brilliant gambles, cold calculation, inhuman cruelty, and heartbreaking self-sacrifice, military events nonetheless seem to me to be more often a symptom, rather than a cause, of human history. I feel the explanatory potential of military history is limited, sort of like the "sports pages" of history: wars usually confirm and rarely obstruct (and then only briefly) deeper demographic, economic, technological, social, political, cultural and even epidemiological processes. I have recently been prompted to reassess this bias of mine--Gabriel Kolko's eloquent description of modern war as history's fast-forward button, "telescoping" several decades' worth of social change into a few dozen months, first got me thinking that war might have a life of its own, especially when it unleashes events that neither side contemplated let alone predicted. Similarly, Niall Ferguson's location of the origins of modern public finance in the need for governments to quickly and massively finance wars is most intriguing. And then this massive tome comes along and storms another rampart of my prejudice against the relevance of war to the broad course of history. To be sure, despite what some have expected, this book is not a military history--even though much of its superbly frictionless writing is invested in detailed accounts of logistics, maneuvers, strategies, battles and generals. It is instead an examination of a war's effects on an imperial system, and Professor Anderson argues compellingly that this particular war (the Seven Years' War) was the decisive factor in the collapse of the British empire in North America. Thus, the French side of the war is virtually unexamined: while whole chapters are devoted to the intricacies and dynamics of Whitehall decision-making factions, there is not a single paragraph on French aims, the structure of the French political elite, or even Louis XV. But these would be distractions from the point of the book: that one must view Britain's loss of thirteen of its American colonies (what Americans call "the Revolution") from the vantage of an empire bloated, exhausted and strained by an unexpectedly long and expensive global war. Yes, the Stamp Act is given a great deal of attention compared to items of purely military interest. But that is precisely where Anderson wants us to focus, to see how the war's aftermath (economic depression, imperial financial crisis, conflicting expectations of the rewards and duties of 'empire', the sudden shriveling of Indian power west of the Appalachians) fostered irreconciliable trans-Atlantic differences culminating in rebellion.
I have a lot of books I'd like to read. Normally, when I acquire a new book, I read the introduction to get a good idea what the book is like, and then put it on my list of books to get around to (its position on the list determined by how intrigued I am by the introduction). This one, however, refused to be relegated to the list, and I read its entire 850 or so pages (including the fascinating notes on, for example, the barbarity of British military discipline, or Boston's traditional Pope Day gangster brawls) in one long go. It never once even came close to bogging down.
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