War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier

This is one of the best history books I ever read. I couldn't put it down. The detail and description of the areas where Roberts underwent his campaigns was simply marvelous. This book is a masterpiece.

I am acquainted with Lake George, and the terrain around Fort Ticonderoga. Robert Rogers is a familiar name, but I knew precious little about the rest of his career. This fascinating tale, covering his early life struggles in New Hampshire, to his continental Lewis & Clark-like ambitions, to his eventual post-Revolutionary War demise in London, provides a comprehensive, unabashedly adoring review of the father of the US Army Rangers. I was particularly impressed with the author's descriptions of Rogers' mid-winter sorties up and down a hazardous Lake George. Ross's topographical description of the Battle on Snowshoes is spot on. (I have lost many golf balls on the fourth hole precisely where the conflict hit its full stride.) Ross puts the reader into a true three-dimensional realm whereby we vividly feel the terrain, the weather, and the battle raging around us. The savagery of the times comes through from battles at Fort William Henry, Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point to the impressive raid on St. Francois and subsequent weeks of staggering retreat. Dismemberment, scalping, cannibalism, and other grotesquery shocks the modern reader, but interestingly proved valuable content for a nascent newspaper industry in colonial America. Indeed, Rogers' star was fully ascendant during the French & Indian wars, and during the global seven years war between Great Britain and France, Ross makes the case that no other soldier did more to tip the outcome in favor of the English. Through backwoods cunning, outdoors skill, Yankee daring, and true American enterprise, Robert Rogers rose from country bumpkin to the rank of British officer, a feat accomplished by no other, even George Washington. He is a world-class celebrity, a tall six-foot giant who successfully manages the ever-perilous issues brought by North American Native Indians. He travels to London, where he flouts his accomplishments, writing memoirs, a play and attracting investors to whom he pitches his next great plan - seeking the Northwest Passage. As quickly as his star rises, it fades away even faster with changing geo-political winds. We follow Rogers' downward spiral into indebtedness, prison, failing marriage, drunkenness and debauchery. In the end, the decisive Ranger leader fails to decide a proper course during the American Revolution. He gets caught up in his own financial troubles, and he sides with the Crown...an unfortunate gambit. Nevertheless, we are amazed how he finds himself at the center of all that is important - he captures famed American spy Nathan Hale, turning him over to his British masters. Ross puts his man on a pretty high pedestal. But in a balanced recounting of his tale, he depicts the full fall of this colonial hero. The research is impeccable, and the appendix includes fascinating letters from George Washington about Rogers, Rogers' own 28 Rules of Rangering, and never-before-seen maps of the raid on St. Francois. After returnin

This is a well researched and vividly written book about one of the most colorful and complex characters in colonial America. I highly recommend it. The author, apparently an outdoorsman as well as an historian, brings to bear insights on Rogers's accomplishments and presents a vastly entertaining and enlightening read in the tradition of Francis Parkman. This formative period of American history deserves much more attention, and Mr. Ross has done it justice with a book that every father should like to receive this Father's Day-- or any day.

In my own book -- and I apologize for the self-serving plug, but it's pertinent -- Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, I devoted part of a chapter to Robert Rogers, one of the most remarkable killing gentlemen of Colonial (and Revolutionary) America. I always, however, wanted to know more about this bewitching, wild creature, and so I'm glad that John Ross has undertaken the burden of excavating his life and times from the murk of the past. Good, narrative-driven history-writing is tricky to pull off, but, having blazed through the book, I think Ross has done a sterling job introducing Rogers to a modern audience. Ross is particularly skilled at evoking the frightening nature of the wilderness and the unique exigencies of frontier fighting. The vast, unexplored backcountry was densely thicketed by forests, rumpled by towering mountain ranges, and watered by unbridgeable rivers -- and Rogers was master of it all. Small wonder his enemies (and friends) were terrified of him; small wonder that they (in Ross's words) "could not get their imagination around the man, this master of nature and humans who could lead unimpressionable New Englanders to the edge of death over and over." Now, while I had once foolishly assumed that Rogers was merely a rough-hewn, if cunning, ranger with an eye for the main chance, I'm happy to admit that War on the Run set me straight. Rogers, in truth, was an immensely complex individual, being both the most famed (or notorious) frontiersman in the world -- a kind of Davy Crockett/Daniel Boone twofer -- as well as a literate and entertaining American who, through his books and a play, illuminated to his fellow colonists the amazing potential of what would become their own country come 1783. Production-wise, the photos have been chosen with great care, and his footnotes (or rather, endnotes) are rock solid. A useful list of "Dramatis Personae" -- to help us keep track of the dozens of colorful characters stalking the early frontier -- and no fewer than 14 maps make War on the Run a worthwhile purchase. This is a very fine biography of one of America's early Greats, and it's certainly one of the most interesting books I've read all year. Recommended for anyone interested in early America and military history (especially insurgency, Special Forces, and the evolution of tactics). [...]