Winner of the George Washington Prize
Winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History
Winner of the Excellence in American History Book Award
Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award
Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America’s violent war for independence.
From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.
Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.
Praise for The British Are Coming
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“To say that Atkinson can tell a story is like saying Sinatra can sing. . . . Historians of the American Revolution take note. Atkinson is coming. He brings with him a Tolstoyan view of war; that is, he presumes war can be understood only by recovering the experience of ordinary men and women caught in the crucible of orchestrated violence beyond their control or comprehension.”
―Joseph J. Ellis, The New York Times Book Review
“Mr. Atkinson’s book . . . is chock full of momentous events and larger-than-life characters. Perfect material for a storyteller as masterly as Mr. Atkinson. . . . Mr. Atkinson commands great powers of description.” ―Mark Spencer, The Wall Street Journal
“[Atkinson has a] felicity for turning history into literature. . . . One lesson of The British Are Coming is the history-shaping power of individuals exercising their agency together: the volition of those who shouldered muskets in opposition to an empire. . . . The more that Americans are reminded by Atkinson and other supreme practitioners of the historians’ craft that their nation was not made by flimsy people, the less likely it is to be flimsy.” ―George F. Will, The Washington Post
“Atkinson…wastes no time reminding us of his considerable narrative talents. . . . His knowledge of military affairs shines in his reading of the sources. . . . For sheer dramatic intensity, swinging from the American catastrophes at Quebec and Fort Washington to the resounding and surprising successes at Trenton and Princeton, all told in a way equally deeply informed about British planning and responses, there are few better places to turn.” ―The Washington Post
“An epic tale, epically told. Atkinson excels at deftly summarizing personalities. . . . He moves effortlessly from the plans of commanders to the campfires of troops. The extraordinary scholarship involved―his meticulous endnotes cover 133 pages―is testament to a historian at the very top of his game…. The writing [is] incisive, humane, humorous, and often scintillating. . . . Anyone reading The British Are Coming will finish it looking forward impatiently to the next two. The trilogy looks fair to become the standard account of the war that brought the American Republic into being.”
―Andrew Roberts, Claremont Review of Books
Resources for The British Are Coming
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George Washington, A Novice General
At the start of the Revolutionary War, it had been seventeen years since General George Washington last wore a military uniform and he was only a provincial officer with limited experience in frontier combat. But it quickly became clear, Washington was instinctively, brilliantly, a political general.
Rick Atkinson on Writing the American Revolution
The American Revolution is a creation story that accounts for who we are, where we came from, what we believe, and what our forebears were willing to die for. Rick Atkinson’s new trilogy shows the war as soldiers and militiamen saw it—terrifying, bestial, and occasionally grand—and as generals fought it, sometimes well, often badly.
King George III and the American Revolution
King George III was shrewder, more complex, and more intriguing than we often acknowledge. He was king for sixty years, from 1760 to 1820. He was frugal in an age of excess, pious at a time of impiety. He despised disorder and loathed disobedience.
Britain, the greatest empire the world had seen since ancient Rome, found itself bottled up in the small provincial town of Boston, and then, after months of misery, was forcibly evicted from that place by a ragged mob of rebels.
The American Revolution nearly came to a bad end barely a year after it began. New York was set in an archipelago with almost eight hundred miles of waterfront, and the British commanded the sea. Then more than 20,000 British and Hessian troops landed and all of Long Island was lost. The rest of the New York campaign didn’t go much better for the Americans.
The Crucial Revolutionary War Battles Of Princeton and Trenton
Chased out of New York and across New Jersey by a large, vengeful British army, the Americans took refuge in Pennsylvania, where Washington conjured up a plan to cross the Delaware on Christmas night. Desperation had driven him to this perilous moment, and the assault on Trenton shows Washington’s generalship at its finest.
Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Refuge of Tranquility
Mount Vernon was not only George Washington’s home, it was his sanctuary. The estate symbolized tranquility, security, and personal achievement. Even when Washington was leading his troops on battlefields far from Virginia, he thought often of his beloved Mount Vernon.
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Maps for The British Are Coming
Maps created by Gene Thorp, Cartographic Concepts, Inc ©2019 Rick Atkinson/Gene Thorp
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