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 winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans.
We get an equally accomplished chronicle of the middle years of this multifront war, so compulsively readable that despite its length—again around 800 pages—it’s difficult to put down ... Enjoyable ... To label this book military history, or even American history, does it a disservice ... Atkinson’s ability to work at this level of detail keeps his depictions fresh. This is great history.
Varying his focus to capture compelling personalities and episodes along with the wider picture, Mr. Atkinson sustains dramatic tension in a detailed, comprehensive account of the Revolution’s pivotal middle years ... He deftly sketches personalities and incidents while stressing the uncertainty all those involved felt about the outcome.
Atkinson writes with tremendous verve and detail. The result is a book that infuses the events and leaders of the war with striking vibrancy, essentially bringing the conflict to life again ... The Fate of the Day is long, but Atkinson shuttles us seamlessly from smoke-clogged battlefields in Upstate New York to the 'symmetrical, bucolic, and wretched' tents of Valley Forge to Parisian parlors and the Houses of Parliament and then back over the Atlantic again in what feels like quick succession, even when it’s not. The author flashes his literary skill throughout ('the August days dwindled and summer slid to a close') but defers to quoting from primary sources whenever it makes more sense for the narrative. Paradoxically, his depth of detail helps the pages fly by ... Explanations of technical subjects, such as the superiority of American rifles, are never boring. It is also welcome that Atkinson, while a rigorous historian, is unafraid to use his sound research as a springboard to occasional witty editorializing ... One of the most distinctive features of Atkinson’s work is how well he encapsulates the people who defined the American Revolution. The extent to which he does so is risky, but the choice pays off, making the leaders of the war appear not simply as names on a page but fully fleshed characters with mighty strengths and flaws, profound aspirations, and deep, intensely personal insecurities. Regular readers of history will have already heard of many of the people Atkinson describes—but after finishing this book, they might feel like they have met them ... To Atkinson’s great credit, he humanizes those on the other side of the conflict as well—from King George to rowdy British parliamentarians to redcoat officers occupying South Carolina. But none benefit (or suffer) more from the author’s attentions than America’s arch-traitor, Benedict Arnold. With remarkable patience across the breadth of his account, Atkinson follows how this onetime hero of the Revolution devolved into villainy ... There will be minor qualms with any book of this size; by Page 500 or so, for instance, the myriad details of the battles become hard for the reader to distinguish and recall ... Despite Atkinson’s admirable humanizing of the Revolution’s characters, he devotes relatively little of this book to exploring their relation to slavery.
