Description

In the ridealong tradition of Sarah Vowell Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson this insightful history revisits the pivotal figures and key turning points of the American Revolutionary War

Revolutionary Roadstakes readers on a timetraveling adventure through the crucial places American independence was won and might have been lost Youll ride shotgun with Bob Thompson as he puts more than 20000 miles on his car not to mention his legs walks historyshaping battlefields from Georgia to Quebec and hangs out with passionate lovers of revolutionary history whose vivid storytelling and deep knowledge of their subject enrich his own Braiding these elements together into a wonderfully entertaining whole and with a reporters abiding concern for getting the story straight he has written an American Revolution book like no other

The Revolutionary War is one of the greatest stories in all history an eightyear epic filled with selfsacrificing heroes selfinterested villains and more interestingly all the shades of complex humanity in between It boasts largescale gambles that sometimes paid off but usually didnt as well as countless tiny fraught tipping points like a misunderstood order in a South Carolina cow pasture that could have altered the course of the war The drama is magnified when you consider what was at stake the fate of a social and political experiment that would transform the world Yet we dont know this story as well as we should or how easily the ending could have changed