Liberty!: The American Revolution

Thomas Fleming has written a most comprehensive overview of the American revolution. He gives us the causes, the players, the conflict and the outcome. Extremely well organized and very well written. Nicely illustrated. The seperate sidebar articles give the reader ample background on such issues as what America was like and what Americans were like during the period. He tells us about slavery. He tells us about the German soldiers hired out to the British by the varius greedy princes. He tells us about George III who was personally a wonderful human being but a political want to be despot and cunning politician but narrowmindedness ultimately proved his undoing. He really does a great job. Really a great book on the subject. Combined with the video cassets of the same name, this book makes a great and entertaining means for obtaining a basic view of the American revolution.

I have never seen the documentary series on which this book is base. But, who needs to see it on TV when you have high-quality color photographs of war paintings and artifacts, not to mention an in-depth narrative on the history of the American Revolution? The book is enough, and money well spent, especially for the student in your home.

The volume, 'Liberty! The American Revolution' by Thomas Fleming, is a companion volume to the wonderful PBS series by the same name, a six-part treatment of the period leading up to and including the American Revolution in the mid-to-late 1700s. As Fleming shows in his text, the seeds of the American Revolution were planted long before the actual conflicts began. This was not an overnight decision on the part ofthe colonists or the British; intense negotiations and political attempts were made for years prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The colonists largely came from Britain; the leadership certainly looked to Britain for political, moral and cultural guidance, as well as primary trade and security vis-a-vis the Spanish, the French, and the Native Americans. American leaders were, by and large, British leaders too -- George Washington held a commission and fought with the British in the French and Indian War. This was a family break-up in many ways -- Fleming's astute use of the actual words of the people of the time show the emotions that conflict, the love-hate relationship both sides embodied. The first chapter shows the beginnings of discontent on both sides, with the colonists beginning to be stressed over being ignored by the British leadership, and the British leadership, in the form of George III, newly ascended to the throne, and various high-powered ministers, feeling that the colonists were rather ungrateful toward their (so-they-considered-themselves-to-be) rightful lords.Liberty, ironically, was what George III and his first minister, William Pitt, were all about. The Seven-Years War was won as a fight for liberty; the colonies in America and elsewhere were won over to Britain, who had a parliamentary democracy (however poorly enacted) as opposed to absolute monarchy (such as in France). So, the break-up between Britain and the American colonies becomes all the more troublesome -- not only were the opposing sides practically family, but largely believed the same things.Fleming never makes the direct comparison, but one can get the sense of Jonathan Swift here, that the battles are fought over relatively minor things (like which side of the egg to crack) -- in the scheme of world politics then and now, the controversies were relatively slight. However, the issues of taxation, governance and respect were important, not perhaps so much for what they were, but for what they did portend as future treatment, and the colonists did not like being second-class citizens in a British-dominated world, even if, to the British leadership, being second-class British was better than being almost anything else. There was also the spectre of the Irish tyranny, perpetrated by the English, that loomed large as a possibility. Sadly, one cannot say that these fears were unjustified.Fleming's book is intriguing, introducing sides to the conflict that one doesn't recall from grade-school and high-school civics classes -- the conflicts among

One of the most irritating things about studying the Revolution from an American perspective is that it's so totally iconized that you can't connect with it anymore. Everyone involved is seen as perfect gods or devils, and that elevation removes them from the sphere of normal humanity; you can't relate to them anymore. This book brings the Revolution back down to Earth, and doesn't just talk about battles. It focuses on people, on the politics behind the various events, on how people's personalities influenced pivotal decisions, and yes -- on the battle strategy and tactics as well. (Although I still think they iconized Washington a bit much -- nderstandable, I guess). It's the most comprehensive book on the Revolution, the most engaging, and a fabulous jumping-off point for anyone starting an in-depth study of that period in our history. I always hated history in school -- just a bunch of cartoonish propaganda, memorized names and dates. Books like this help to illustrate how living, and vital, and exciting history is. They help to illustrate that when you get right down to it, history is not only one of the most important subjects in the world, but really the only subject in the world. If you're even VAGUELY curious about the Revolution, buy this book. It'll be the first of many.

I was sceptical when I started it; come on, a TV companion? How deep can that be? But I found this book thorough, vivid, and well-paced. Putting it down every night (over the four nights I read it) was very hard. Fleming illustrates how little actually separated the two sides ideologically, and how close we came to losing as a result. He also describes the participants in all thier humanity, from Washington's tirades against incompetent field commanders, to Greene's deliberate attempts to claim credit for Benedict Arnold's victorious actions at Saratoga, to Cornwallis being ordered to Yorktown during a snit by his superior ... and digging in to spite that superior, giving Washington and the French time to trap him. This book is a must have if one is to understand the ideals upon which this country is founded and the people who emplaced those ideals in the Constitution.