The British Are Coming

Rick Atkinson's argument, built from exhaustive archival research including previously inaccessible papers from King George III's own reign, is that the American Revolution's early course, from Lexington and Concord in 1775 through Trenton and Princeton in early 1777, was far less a story of destined patriot triumph than of near-catastrophic improvisation on both sides. A ragged, underfed, poorly supplied colonial militia and Continental Army repeatedly came close to total collapse — most dramatically during the disastrous 1776 New York campaign — and survived less through strategic brilliance than through British hesitation, sheer endurance, and a handful of daring gambles, especially Washington's Christmas-night crossing of the Delaware, that could easily have failed.

Why this matters, in Atkinson's telling, is that treating the Revolution as inevitable flattens both its genuine improbability and the human cost paid by ordinary soldiers on both sides, who suffered as much from disease, starvation, and logistical breakdown as from combat itself. By presenting the British perspective with equal narrative weight — including a more textured, less caricatured portrait of King George III — Atkinson insists the war be understood as a mutual tragedy between two peoples sharing a common heritage, not a simple morality tale.

Who should read it

Readers of narrative military history who want vivid, ground-level detail rather than textbook summary will find this immersive and rewarding, as will anyone who assumes the Revolution's outcome was more certain at the time than it actually was.

About the author

Rick Atkinson is an American journalist and historian, a Pulitzer Prize winner for both journalism and history, best known for his Liberation Trilogy on the European theater of World War II; this book is the first volume of his Revolution Trilogy.