The Fate of the Day

Starred review from March 1, 2025
The Revolutionary War enters its most desperate phase in the second volume of Atkinson's trilogy. To read this book by prolific military historian Atkinson is to see the Revolutionary War as both a civil war--loyalists against rebels, with a sizable number of uncommitted colonists in between--and an international war involving numerous European powers. Indeed, Atkinson's book opens in France, where two nobles, Baron Johann de Kalb and Gilbert du Motier, a.k.a. the Marquis de Lafayette, are surreptitiously making their way to a boat to America, where both have been recruited to join the Continental Army at high rank. Atkinson then shifts the scene to the frontier: to Ticonderoga, where Continentals were routed twice, and to a farm settlement where British-allied Indians infamously scalped a young woman--ironically, engaged to a loyalist officer--while she was still alive, whipping up a furiously vengeful response: "Newspaper accounts of the atrocity, published over the coming weeks...fueled American contempt for the British and rage at the Indians." Atkinson thoughtfully appraises some of the principal figures in the conflict, including British General John Burgoyne, immensely popular with his troops and insistent on recruiting Irish Catholics, "traditionally excluded from the army." (Toward the close of his book, Atkinson writes of anti-Catholic riots in London that in the end were quashed with military force.) As for George Washington, having survived disastrous defeats and the hard winter at Valley Forge, Atkinson concludes that "in an era of great men, he already was in the front rank." Between vivid accounts of engagements such as the crushing Continental defeat at Charleston, Atkinson looks at the practical facts of the war, including the heavy casualty rate the British suffered in trying to retain their colonies for an adamant King George III--for, as Atkinson rightly asks, "Without America, would Britain even have an empire?" As ever with Atkinson, an exemplary work of narrative history.

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March 1, 2025
In The Fate of the Day, the second volume of a trilogy covering the fledgling nation's quest for independence, acclaimed author Atkinson (The British Are Coming, 2019) provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the American Revolution. In typical Atkinson fashion, this work provides a vast amount of substance supported by an equal amount of research to provide an exhaustive chronicle of the years that helped shape the Revolution. The American-British fight for the Americas was influenced by a wide array of characters often overlooked in the vast amount of historical works, including personalities like Charles Gravier, Count of Vergennes; John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich; and scholar Edward Gibbon, coupled with the likes of better-known participants like Lafayette, Washington, Howe, and Franklin. This work is not only an entertaining story, but more importantly, a comprehensive addition to a well-studied period of history. For readers of American history, this is a must-have volume to complete an already vast library covering the fight for democracy some 250 years in the past.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 21, 2025

Multi-Pulitzer Prize winner Atkinson (An Army at Dawn) returns with this second in his "American Revolutionary" trilogy (after The British Are Coming), this time focused on the middle years of the Revolution, the period when George Washington had just barely kept the army fighting, the battle of Brandywine, and the winter at Valley Forge. Prepub Alert.

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