The 8th Virginia Regiment
  • Home
  • Blog
  • The Regiment
  • The Soldiers
  • Family
  • Living History
  • Learn More
  • Contact

A Revolutionary War Dream Team

10/19/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution
Edward G. Lengel, ed. (Washington, D.C: Regnery, 2020)
Picture
Edward Lengel begins this book with a remarkable claim. He writes, “The American War for Independence remains—now, nearly 250 years since its onset—a relatively new field of study.” This will initially strike many readers as a wild assertion. How can this be true when, by one estimate, nine hundred books have been written about George Washington alone? Lengel explains, simply, that “Shocking as it may seem, many of the war’s campaigns and battles have become the subjects of book-length treatments only over the past several years.”

This is indisputably true. In important ways, recent books have also corrected and clarified our understanding of even the most famous campaigns, events, and personalities. It seems that historians were, for a long time, more interested in critiquing and analyzing the Founding Era than in nailing down the Revolution’s actual course of its events. 
Several histories have appeared in this century that have broken significant new ground in this regard. In The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution, Lengel pulls together a Dream Team of these writers to provide a fresh, top-level overview of the war. Each of the ten authors takes a chapter, providing an authoritative and readable account of a campaign.

​
For those already steeped in the subject matter, the book offers an opportunity to step back from the trees and look again at the forest. For those who are new to the military history of the founding era, it is an excellent primer. Best of all, it is a book filled with good stories. Who doesn’t love the drama of the Ten Crucial Days and King’s Mountain? Admittedly, there is something odd about writers who know so much about their subjects writing so briefly on them. How on Earth, one must ask, did Michael Harris manage to tell the story of Brandywine and Germantown in a mere eighteen pages? Yet, each of them does it quite well: providing very readable narratives that feature new or recent insights and well-colored characters. Some of the contributors ask and answer difficult questions. Washington and Lafayette, two of the war’s great heroes, are brought down a peg. History has been kinder to Benedict Arnold for some time. Now Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler are also given more sympathetic treatments.

Continue to ...The Journal of the American Revolution

More from The 8th Virginia Regiment

Picture
Picture
Picture
1 Comment
Cody link
5/27/2022 04:18:04 am

Thanks for thiss blog post

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Gabriel Neville

    is researching the history of the Revolutionary War's 8th Virginia Regiment. Its ten companies formed on the frontier, from the Cumberland Gap to Pittsburgh.

    Categories

    All
    Artifacts & Memorials
    Book Reviews
    Brandywine & Germantown
    Charleston & Sunbury
    Disease
    Frontier
    Generals
    Organization
    Other Revolutionary War
    Race
    Religion
    Trenton & Princeton
    Valley Forge & Monmouth
    Veterans

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    © 2015-2022 Gabriel Neville

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • The Regiment
  • The Soldiers
  • Family
  • Living History
  • Learn More
  • Contact