Synopses & Reviews
The Peoples War is the story of one of historys great events, the American Revolutionary War, told almost entirely in the words of the soldiers who fought it and the civilians who endured it. Drawing on thousands of original sources—diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, pension applications—Noel Rae has culled the most colorful and vivid passages and woven them into a vibrant, eyewitness narrative that takes us from the peaceful days before the Stamp Act, through all the wars major events, and ends with farewell accounts of what happened in later life to the people we have come to know along the way.
Some of these figures, like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, and King George III, are familiar figures, but most were ordinary people, little known to history, but here briefly emerging from obscurity: a farm boy who ran away to sea at the age of twelve, a pretty young widow roughed up by Tory ruffians, and a slave who escaped to the British after witnessing his mother being flogged. These are but a few of those whose collective voices, drawn from all sides of the conflict, bring the Revolution truly to life—in a history at its most entertaining and authoritative, for who better qualified to tell what happened than the people who were there?
Synopsis
This is the story of one of historys great events, the Revolutionary War, told almost entirely in the words of the soldiers and sailors who fought it and the civilians who endured it. Drawing on thousands of original sources---diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers, pension applications---the author has culled the most colorful and vivid passages and then woven them into a vibrant, eye-witness narrative that takes the reader from the peaceful days before the Stamp Act, through all the major events of the war, and ends with farewell accounts of what happened in later life to the people we have come to know along the way.
Synopsis
The outcome was one of historys great, surprising events, David slaying Goliath. At the beginning of the war, which cast the worlds most powerful nation against a shaky collection of its wildly independent colonies, no such outcome was conceivable. But as the upstarts slowly welded themselves into an effective force, step by step the Americans whipped the mighty British to found the worlds most enduring democracy.
See the war through the frank and vivid diaries and letters, reflective memoirs, lurid and sensational newspaper accounts, and sober official documents of the American Revolution. Hear the voices of the farmers and merchants, tradesmen and housewives, who joined with the generals and the countrys new leaders to wage The Peoples War.
About the Author
Noel Rae graduated with honors in history from Oxford University. He is the author of Witnessing America: the Library of Congress Book of Firsthand Accounts of Life in America 1600-1900, which was #1 on the Washington Posts political bestseller list.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction i
Chapter One: The Mother Country
Chapter Two: Boston & New England
Chapter Three: New York & Saratoga
Chapter Four: Pennsylvania & The Frontier
Chapter Five: At Sea & Overseas
Chapter Six: The South & Yorktown
Chapter Seven: Aftermath
Appendix Brief Outline of The Revolutionary War