Rose's Reviews > 1776

David McCullough certainly brings history alive as he narrates a year in the American Revolutionary War from both American and British perspectives. About all I remembered of the Revolution were the Boston Tea party, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the army's wintering at Valley Forge, of which only the signing occurred in 1776. In that year of battles, Washington's indecisiveness and Howe's hesitation prolonged the opportunities for the British to triumph. At last, however, Washington acts decisively, and 1776 ends in hope with the American victory at the Battle of Trenton. Considering how out-numbered, how out-equipped, and how out-experienced the ragtag individual volunteers and colonial militias who made up the Continental Army were by the British Army and Navy and the hired Hessian troops; having agonized through the losses of Brooklyn and Harlem Heights; and multiple marches of retreat in miserable weather; as well as becoming aware of the massive desertions and almost complete lack of reliable intelligence; the reader comes closer to "understand[ing] or sufficiently appreciat[ing] the lengthy, "arduous, [. . .] painful struggle" that was the American Revolutionary War and agrees with McCullough that "the outcome [of victory and independence] seemed little short of a miracle" (294).