DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Written by a West Point graduate and former army officer, this volume, a companion place to the author's Decisive Battles of the Civil War, presents a tabloid history of the American Revolutionary War, with fifteen ""decisive"" battles forming the backbone of the narrative. The book, copiously illustrated with maps, is one of campaigns as well as battles. Beginning with a brief sketch of the causes of the Revolution, the author leads his readers from Lexington, in April, 1775, to Bunker or Breed's Hill the following July, and through the Long Island campaigns and Washington's retreat to White Plains and across the Hudson to New Jersey. Writing concisely of Washington's crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Eve, 1776, he tells of the fighting around Philadelphia, of Burgoyne's campaign and surrender of the battle of Bennington and of Arnold's later treachery. Some of the battles included are, important rather than decisive, and not all of them are American victories: there is the defeat at Germantown in 1777, at Charleston in 1780, and that of the inept Gates at Camden, N.C., the same year, ""the worst defeat ever suffered by an American army in battle"". Camden, however, led to Daniel Morgan's victory at Cowpens, to Nathanael Greene's Guilfoni Courthouse campaign, and at last, in 1781, to Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis. Unbiased in its appraisal of leaders on both sides, this book, factual rather than exciting, is not intended for research historians; it will, however, form an excellent introductory volume for beginning students in Revolutionary War history.