RaveThe Washington PostAtkinson wastes no time reminding us of his considerable narrative talents. The opening pages of the prologue drip with detail ... Atkinson is not unique in this attention to detail, but to it he adds his well-developed sense of geography and how it shapes every story, not least the story of a military campaign ... It is no small feat to track, and then to convey, how many knee buckles the French smuggled into American ports to help equip the struggling cause. Atkinson is also keenly alive to the British side of the story, and he adeptly shifts the reader from an American to a British perspective ... What The British Are Coming lacks is an argument and a revolution. In one sense this is intentional and acceptable. Atkinson has chosen to tell the story of the war, not the political, ideological and ultimately constitutional shifts that preceded and followed it ... But even \'just\' telling the story of the war demands more on why people kept fighting it ... only one paragraph on the campaign against the Cherokees in 1776. This matters ... For sheer dramatic intensity, however...there are few better places to turn.
