"Exciting accounts of the major campaigns [of the American Revolution] . . . a reminder of what history can be when written by a master." —Publishers Weekly"Beginning with a recapitulation of the French and Indian War—which, though ending in British victory, represented the beginning of the end of the British empire in America—[Robert] Leckie briskly recounts the well-known events leading to America''s break with Britain and the military development of the war. In anecdotal biographical sketches, he draws vivid portraits of the war''s principals: George III, George Washington, Thomas Gage, Lord Cornwallis, and Benedict Arnold, among others. Leckie summarizes the principal battles of the war—Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Washington''s disastrous Long Island and Manhattan campaigns, his victories at Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, and Yorktown—in lucid, workmanlike fashion. In superb depictions of the British leaders and of the British home front, he also adds details rarely found in popular American histories, and, unlike some historians, he doesn''t neglect the southern war—the battles of Camden, Cowpens, and King''s Mountain are covered as thoroughly as any." —Kirkus Reviews"Entertaining and enlightening." —Booklist
