A largely untold, engrossing history of our nation’s fraught, and unlikely, path to liberty.
European allies supplied arms, ammunition, uniforms, savvy commanders, engineers, and soldiers to aid the American Revolution.
The newly proclaimed United States was not the only nation that wanted Great Britain out of North America in 1776. After being defeated by Britain in the Seven Years’ War, France and Spain were eager to show their strength against their adversary. Ferreiro (History and Engineering/George Mason Univ., Stevens Institute of Technology; Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped Our World, 2011) mounts a deeply informed, authoritative, and compelling argument for the importance of two major European powers to American independence. “Instead of the myth of heroic self-sufficiency,” he writes, “the real story is that the American nation was born as the centerpiece of an international coalition.” At the time, America’s militia was “ill-equipped” and undisciplined. In July 1775, George Washington became commander in chief with no military training and quickly crammed by studying translations of European military books. When he needed engineers and artillerists, he looked to France, which reputedly had the best. He came to rely most on Louis Lebégue Duportail, an engineer whom he promoted to major general. It was Duportail who persuaded Washington to set up a camp at Valley Forge, strategically located 20 miles from British forces in Philadelphia. The encampment, speedily built by soldiers, with more than 1,000 huts, “became America’s fourth-largest city” within six weeks. Besides offering a vivid chronicle of combat, the author traces the tense negotiations between American emissaries in Europe—notably Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane—and their French and Spanish counterparts. Other nations were involved, too: Dutch merchants were part of a long supply chain providing arms and “some of the finest gunpowder in the world”; the Prussian Baron von Steuben carried out relentless drills to professionalize the continental soldiers. But as Ferreiro shows, French aid was foremost: Franklin did not exaggerate when he called France’s King Louis XVI America’s “friend and father.”
A largely untold, engrossing history of our nation’s fraught, and unlikely, path to liberty.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87524-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
HISTORY | MILITARY | UNITED STATES | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
