Rating: 
Summary: the real first world war
Review: "first salute" is one of tuchman's best...it just seems impossible that she could offer us such intricate details and insight based on information that is over two centuries old.
the real heroes, the hidden agendas, the personal informaiton that governed governments...it is all here.
i got the feeling that i was not reading history but that tuchman was in my living room, telling me her story (notice that history is not herstory?).
i was amused by the irony in the book: americans usually view themselves as the centre of their universe and i remember that when i learned about the american revolution it was a story about young adealistic revolutionaries succeeding over old imperialistic buffoons. "first salute" puts america's view of itself into a global perspective of probaly the first world war in which america was on the winning side, quite by accident!
a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely great book about the revolutionary war.
Review: Absolutely great! A very different look at the events and
people that led our country to freedom. Very interesting
in its discussion of Dutch and French involvement in our
cause. Also mentions the first official foreign recognition
of our country's flag!!
Rating:
Summary: another excellent Tuchman book
Review: After I started reading this book, I realized how little I actually knew about the american revolution and how different it was from the history I learned in school. Tuchman has an uncanny gift for making the reader relive the history she is writing about.
Rating: 
Summary: A world wide look at the bid for independence.
Review: As with all Tuchman histories it's readable placing the struggle of the colonies in its historical world wide perspective, telling us of the history never taught with special emphasis on the French contribution. It's alerts us to how close New York came to becoming the London of the 19th century.
Rating:
Summary: Not Tuchman's best, but still an excellent book
Review: Barabra Tuchman's last book is not her best (cannot be compared to the Guns of August or The March of Folly) but it definitely has the Tuchman magic touch and unique historic sense of seeing and conveying the portrayed events in the scope of long term historical affect on mankind.
Rating:
Summary: Fills in the Details Left Out in School
Review: Barbara Tuchman's book mainly focuses on the influence of naval forces on the emergence of the U.S. during the 18th century. She connects the few events that we all know with many of the people who were involved in a way that allows the reader to understand that era in a realistic feeling way. In the process of describing day-to-day decisions, events and conditions she removes the gloss of great victories and allows us to see "behind the curtain" and view the American Revolution and many preceding events through 18th century eyes. Travel and communication were very slow, logistics that we take for granted today were very difficult to manage, living conditions were harsh, and war was more brutal than most of us understand. Military and naval tactics evolved slowly and many of the captains and admirals of the day turned out to be petty, largely uneducated and unsophisticated with the British being among the worst. Reading between the lines, there is an implication that randomness had a much larger influence on the birth of our nation than we are taught in our public schools.Ms Tuchman's style is just right for this presentation of the subject matter. It is very readable but also very detailed. I highly recommend this book for its perspectives on the Revolutionary War era, especially if it is read in concert with books such as the recent and very popular John Adams biography that provided another first person account of this period.
Rating: 
Summary: About everything BUT the American Revolution
Review: Call me a traditionalist, but I think it is reasonable to assume that a book promising to be about the American Revolution, even one claiming a "fresh approach", should have more than a passing reference to the battle for American independence. Instead, Barbare Tuchman has given us a very scholarly and well-researched discourse on the Dutch and British navies, with an occasional mention of the conflict in the colonies. Ms. Tuchman wants to demonstrate the importance of the Dutch navy, the Dutch's recognition of American vessels, and their willingness to trade with the colonies despite Britain's embargo, on the overall outcome of the war. That is all well and good, but she gets so hopelessly bogged down in detail that the average reader loses focus as she meticulously explores topics such as the history of the "ship of the line" method of naval warfare, complete with irrelevant digressions on earlier British court martials of admirals from the 1740's who deviated from the rigid rules of naval warfare. If you have a unique interest in the conflict between the British and Dutch navies, and the historical context of the American Revolution to that European conflict, than this is the book for you. Otherwise, stick with an excellent book like Robert Leckie's George Washington's War for a gripping, historical, chronological description of the American Revolution, including its major and minor players both here and in England.
Rating:
Summary: About everything BUT the American Revolution
Review: Call me a traditionalist, but I think it is reasonable to assume that a book promising to be about the American Revolution, even one claiming a "fresh approach", should have more than a passing reference to the battle for American independence. Instead, Barbare Tuchman has given us a very scholarly and well-researched discourse on the Dutch and British navies, with an occasional mention of the conflict in the colonies. Ms. Tuchman wants to demonstrate the importance of the Dutch navy, the Dutch's recognition of American vessels, and their willingness to trade with the colonies despite Britain's embargo, on the overall outcome of the war. That is all well and good, but she gets so hopelessly bogged down in detail that the average reader loses focus as she meticulously explores topics such as the history of the "ship of the line" method of naval warfare, complete with irrelevant digressions on earlier British court martials of admirals from the 1740's who deviated from the rigid rules of naval warfare. If you have a unique interest in the conflict between the British and Dutch navies, and the historical context of the American Revolution to that European conflict, than this is the book for you. Otherwise, stick with an excellent book like Robert Leckie's George Washington's War for a gripping, historical, chronological description of the American Revolution, including its major and minor players both here and in England.
Rating:
Summary: Great story.
Review: Characters of the revolution live in this book. Especially informative about some I've never heard of, like the various admirals who botched the war for the Brits. You get to admire George Washington more than ever--how did we ever produce such a man? Tuchman takes you to places you never knew were part of the story, like the various United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the crucial island of St. Eustace where much of the supplies came through. A great story.
Rating:
Summary: Some good information, but terribly written
Review: From reading the notes on the cover, I bought the book thinking that it would cover a European perspective on the American Revolution, showing how the war tied into a greater world conflict. While some of that is done, it is not the focus of the book. In fact, I would say that there is little focus, but there are many flaws, which was disappointing given the reputation of the author that is trumpeted on the cover.
There is some focus on the greater naval and colonizing competition between France and Britain surrounding the period of the war, as well as some initial information about conditions in Holland leading up to and surrounding the period. This in itself would be an interesting subject for a book, as long as it was better written than this one. (One note, to me, there was not nearly as much coverage of Dutch involvement, after the first couple of chapters, as another review seemed to imply.)
She, somewhat bizarrely, dedicates a lot of text praising, and defending the honor of Admiral Rodney of the British navy. This includes a chapter of 50 out of the 300 total pages dedicated to the story of his life before the war. This chapter was so boring I pledged to quit the book twice while trying to get through it, when my levels of frustration and boredom surpassed my naturally strong urge to finish any book that I start, only to twice come back to the book after a couple of days, vowing to fight through the muddle.
She includes many of her own, seemingly suspect conclusions, and a lot of information that is almost unrelated to the stated subject of the book. For example, the vagaries of rigging and directing a square-rigger could be an interesting subject, but it's not what I want to read about at length in a book about the American Revolution.
Perhaps the most galling is the total lack of respect given to time. I think that a perceptible timeline is rather important in a book about historical events, but the author's habit of constantly jumping forwards and backwards in time, along with her maddening penchant for stating and then later restating facts and stories, combine to make the timeline practically impossible to discern.
I am not familiar with any of her other books, two of which have apparently won Pulitzer Prizes, but I would honestly expect better written presentation from a decent high school student. I gave it as many as 2 stars only because there is some good information in the book, though it takes a lot of effort to find it all.
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