Rating: 
Summary: George Washington but much much more!
Review: This book is an informative and entertaining work covering the Revolutionary War but much more too? Leckie combines an overview of virtually every major battle during the War with hundreds of facts and backgrounds of interesting stories woven into this tapestry of the conflict. I loved the way he introduces you to the principal players on all sides (including British, American, and French) in each event and then shares with you the background of their ancestors, their upbringing, and the circumstances surrounding how they came to take the stage. Since I'm a big fan of General Gilbert Lafayette I especially enjoyed Leckie's well deserved recognition of the General's substantial contribution to our fight for independence. You've heard about the many highpoints of the conflict like, Paul Revere's ride, Nathan Hale's words before he was hanged, and John Paul Jone's comment in the heat of battle. For example, I had no idea the substantial contribution as a military commander that Benedict Arnold made prior to becoming a trader to our cause. Leckie puts these and numerous other events in a clear and concise context of this Nation's struggle for freedom. Washington's place is not at all slighted but rather serves as the major thread of each of the engagements. At the conclusion of the book the reader feels like they have been afforded an inner look at Washington's demeanor and thought process (both good and bad) upon the battlefield. As my good friend, Karl, said when he recommended the book to me, "It's one of those books that keeps you turning the pages and disappointed that it's over at the conclusion."
Rating: 
Summary: Leckie The Iconoclast
Review: This history is both written to keep you continually interested in the subject matter... as all good narrative, non-scholarly histories should be. Leckie is a master story teller and here he uses biography as his canvas for the American Revolution. While weaving through the broad history he will digress as participants emerge from either side of the conflict to describe in interesting, flavourful biography, the personages and how they come to enter on the particular piece of canvas. If you know about the American Revolution it is unlikely that you will learn much new in this text. It is made for people who are looking for an interesting primer or useful if you just want to review the war in active prose. Still Leckie is a serious and iconoclastic historian. He, by and large, eschews the visceral, nationalistic interpretation of the era, and has no real time for arguments that the American revolution had anything to do about a struggle between Good and Evil: the relative moralism between the two countries had little to do with things like Liberty or Rights -- though those would emerge as the slogans of the time. America was essentially in conflict with one of the most advanced (though not so by our present standards) democracies in the world -- Britain. People were treated worse by some theocratic govts of the colonies than they were by Britain. Also Britain's parliamentary protection of the rights of French Catholics in Canada actually raised the ire and intolerance of Americans who found the Catholic religion a peril to be feared just to the North. Even at this time, Britain was also at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement --- a movement that they somewhat effectively used against the colonists. No, as Leckie states, the tyranny that some Americans fought against was a particular variety, uniquely American -- it was TAXATION without reprentation. As Leckie points out, it would not have been a definition of tyranny from any other country in the world but for America. One would find it hard to see many countries in Europe, where tyranny was seen more in terms of arbitrary seizure of property and the right to life, fighting against such a tyranny. Other traditional beliefs are also shredded: the Boston massacre was not a massacre ( an American Jury acquitted the British soldiers); the majority of the American population did not support the revolution (about 1/3 being active participants, 1/3 being Tories, and 1/3 indifferent); the British were the best trained soldiers in the world and not just defeated by superior Yankee "injun tactics" but a combination of American perseverance, and political bungling of the British, but, by and large, French and Spanish material help --- long before Saratoga. Leckie seems to tell history really like it is and holds no punches. For an American he finds British valour and Yankee vanity (Franklin being a prima donna) equally easy to relate to the reader. At the end of this book one is in even more in marvel of the US experiment and the US personality, how in the face of circumstances determined to make themselves a nation, to stamp into history their idea of Liberty. As Leckie points out the US won but not all Americans won: many Loyalists eventually were driven out of the US and found their liberty back in England, or went on to found a country equally as free and tolerant under the English Crown in Canada.
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