Massively detailed account of the middle period of the Revolutionary War. Atkinson writes military history, but here he also includes long discussions of the political dimensions of the war, especially American relations with France. He also has a gift for brisk, colorful character sketches, and there is no shortage of amazing characters in this war. George Washington is at the center of the story, as he should be, but the British generals come in for many pages of persistent, obvious mistakes, not merely military errors, but also errors in assessing the nature of the American resistance, which is far angrier and more determined than the British ever understand. A great work of history.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington's army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.
“This is great history . . . compulsively readable . . . There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize–winning Atkinson.”—The New York Times (Editors' Choice)
The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution—which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton—was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the…
I should have read this book years ago----an utter delight. The stream of anecdotes, by turn hilarious and poignant, brings Picasso, Stein herself, Hemingway and all the other luminaries of the 1920s strutting and slinking across the page. I already knew a lot about this period, from art history and other sources, but much of this was new and in every way fresh. If you love Paris, don't delay as I did----jump right in!
The book starts with a brilliant fictional account of the flooding of Miami, thanks to global warming. But it won't be fictional for long. This is a sober, sobering discussion of the rising sea levels across the world and the nearly unsolvable problems it will bring. One of the most important----and least discussed ----consequences is the looming refugee crisis: the vast number of people living in low-lying areas along the seas who will be driven from their homes by the rising water. The culprit, of course, is the burning of fossil fuels. No matter how much "conservatives" deny it, fossil fuel consumption will soon bring catastrophic events to the the planet, not in one big disaster, but in hundreds of smaller, multiplying ones. You cannot read this book without shaking your fist at Washington and weeping for your grandchildren.
By century's end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world's shores. Nuclear reactors will be decommissioned. The greatest cities in human history, abandoned. This is the story of our rising seas.
In a shocking cover story for Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell predicted that within the lifetime of many of the readers of this book, Miami as we know it today will vanish.
This is not a reckless hypothesis. From island nations to the world's major metropolises, our coasts will drown in the rising waters, which will soon inundate and transform our landscapes. There is no simple…
"Shooting the Sun" is my historical novel about a band of astronomers traveling the Santa Fe Trail in the early 19th century, in search of the perfect place to photograph an eclipse. Like all my historical novels, it's based on real events and as much hands on research as I could manage. In this case, I drove the Trail several times, followed a Navajo guide on a horseback tour of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, and attended a Bring-Your-Own Horse buffalo feast in the desert. Students of 19th-century eccentrics will recognize Charles Babbage from my account of his role in creating perhaps the first working computer, his famous "Difference Engine." Needless to say, they are not always happy trails for the adventurers.
