1776 by David McCullough
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Book Reviews of 1776
Book Review: Excellent Read
Summary: 5 Stars
1776 is an excellent piece of literature. From page 1 you are transported back to this most important time in our history. I found this to be a fascinating work, one that should be read by all Americans. Especially during this, an election year. Bravo ! I look forward to reading all of David McCullough's masterpieces. Book Review: Intriguing
Summary: 5 Stars
A very well written book full of life and history. Very few writers can put together a historical moment without making it look like a text book. I felt as though I was living in the moment looking around me, even feeling the temperature. The book draws you in. Great read.Book Review: Fresh Propaganda
Summary: 1 Stars
One can only wonder why it has taken so long for a popular historian to describe even modestly the predominant political position of the British with regards to the American revolution.
One can only wonder why McCullough most conspicuously avoids the psychology of the average American recruit and why he does not delve deeper into the psychology of Tory sympathizers.
I find it preposterous to believe that I am the only reader that observed the extreme shortcoming in the book in that it did not address the psychological differences of Americans in 1776 and those in 2008. How can that revolution have happened? Who financed it? Who organized it? They had the highest stardard of living of any of the British colonies, life was good, land was cheap, an entire vast wilderness awaited their adventure and explortion and yet they chose war over what today seems a trifle of a tax? I'm not buying it.
Most Americans today have silently and seditiously condoned the most heinous terrorist attacks against them. Preponderence of evidence continues to gather that Israel and Zionist forces within the United States orchestrated the cold-blooded murderous attacks of 911 leading to the manipulation of our armed forces into unwinnable Middle Eastern religious wars for Israel. The United States government, its mainstream media and financial institutions have all been taken over by a deceptive, murderous and wicked apartheid abomiNation Israel and yet Americans mostly do nothing. I find it hard to believe that American male character and integrity could have so drastically changed in so little time but McCullough leads us to believe this is so.
Two-hundred and thirty-two years is too short a time for Americans to have degraded from brave Patriots fighting trifling tyranny in the form of a trifling tax to being slave whores cowering in their mortgaged hovels warmed by the steady propaganda streaming from their sludge pump televisions.
Don't judge McCullough's book by the shallow descriptions in it but condemn it for his failure to include the imperative pyschological analysis of Americans it lacks. This is a book for retards desperate for any reinforcement of their childish yearnings for fairlytales.
Book Review: A Fresh Look At 1776
Summary: 4 Stars
Regular readers of this space will recognize that I spend a fair amount of time discussing the lessons of, or looking at specific aspects of, the three great European revolutions- the English, French and the Russian. I have also given a fair amount of space to the grandeur of the American Civil War. I have, in contrast, tended to give short shrift to the virtues of the American Revolution. This is flat out wrong. Thus, over the past couple of years I have tried to rectify that slight by increasing the amount of space given over to various aspects of the American Revolution, mainly biographic sketches. Today I continue that shift with a review of the well-known historian and documentary narrator David McCullough's 1776.
Part of the reason for selecting Mr. McCullough's work is the personal need to go over again the specifics of the revolutionary period. You know, the battle of this or that, or some military operation led by whomever. However, the more pressing reason is that Mr. McCullough has written an important book centered on detailing the creation of the American revolutionary national liberation army, its trials, tribulations and faults. Moreover, McCullough has written his narrative of events in an easy to follow way, including some very insightful commentary about various turning points in the revolutionary experience, like the effect of the issuance of the Declaration of Independence on the morale of the troops in the field.
The key to understanding the eventual success of the American colonial struggle against bloody England was the coalescing of a ragtag, localized basically oversized weekend militia into first a New England- wide then a continent-wide army worthy of the name. Along the way cadres were formed that saw the struggle through to the end. No revolutionary movement can be successful without that accrual. The case of Henry Knox, local Boston bookseller turned military magician, bringing captured cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in order to help `push' the British out of Boston is just the most dramatic case of such cadre development
Equally as important, the names Washington, Gates and Knox and lesser cadre keep coming up repeatedly during this narrative, and rightly so. That points to the decisive question that the narration of events here turn on- leadership at crunch time. A whole school of historians, at one time at least, tended to diminish the role that Washington played in keeping these ragtag forces together. McCullough, rightly I think, challenges that assumption and places the Washington leadership as a key component to success.
McCullough, moreover, intentionally or not, throughout his narrative not only traces the development of Washington as a leader in the abstract but how he fares during the various campaigns. Thus we are treated to the high of his maneuvers in the key fight that led to the evacuation of Boston by the British, and then the low of the shifting of the struggle to the south with the devastating initial colonial defeats in the greater New York area when British imperialism got into high gear and applied its muscle.
Thereafter McCullough details the various retreats down through New Jersey and ends the year with the famous Battle of Trenton that was key to the survival of the revolutionary army in its first year. The narrative breaks off there. Although the opponents slugged it out for several more years the maintenance of a functioning revolutionary army in the field points positively toward the conclusion that victory was possible. Read this book and learn about some of our common revolutionary history.
Book Review: A Treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
David McCullough is a national treasure... and so is this book. You learn just how close we came to losing our battle against the British during this perilous time in our history.
As luck would have it, I had a monthly flying schedule that included trips to New York's La Guardia airport when I was reading this book. The standard arrival from the south (I was flying from Miami) has you descend past the statue of Liberty, north along the Hudson, east around Yonkers and south to land on runway 22. As I made this trip, I often used the imagery provided by McCullough's vivid account to imagine what it would have been like to see all those British ships waiting to invade the city. I also remember his description of the retreat of Washington's Army through what is today Harlem and try to imagine how the two Armies could have been so close to each other and yet not seen each other. I have tried to create the same powerful imagery in my own novel, "Delta 7." Hopefully, I have succeeded.
McCullough also does a masterful job of recreating the turmoil facing Washington and the important leaders of the time as they struggled against meager financing, short-term volunteer fighters, weather, and a well-trained and equipped English Army.
A great read!
John Cathcart
Author, Delta 7