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First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom
by Bruce Chadwick
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc. (2005-10-01)
ISBN: 1402205066
EAN: 9781402205064
Dewy Decimal #: 973.34
Hardcover: 416 pages
SKU: 08030492
Condition: Like New Like New
Comments: Hardcover. Like new cover and text. Like new dust jacket with very minor shelfwear. Near Fine condition. Beautiful book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
This is the first book that offers a you-are-there look at the American Revolution through the eyes of the enlisted men. Through searing portraits of individual soldiers, Bruce Chadwick, author of George Washington's War, brings alive what it was like to serve then in the American army.
With interlocking stories of ordinary Americans, he evokes what it meant to face brutal winters, starvation, terrible homesickness and to go into battle against the much-vaunted British regulars and their deadly Hessian mercenaries.
The reader lives through the experiences of those terrible and heroic times when a fifteen-year-old fifer survived the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Private Josiah Atkins escaped unscathed from the bloody battles in New York and when a doctor and a minister shared the misery of the wounded and dying. These intertwining stories are drawn from their letters and never-before-quoted journals found in the libraries belonging to the camps where Washington quartered his troops during those desperate years.
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Customer Reviews
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A 1776 follow-up
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-10-24
0 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
If you loved the book "1776" you will love this book. It is written much the same way. The author mixes first hand accounts with explanations of events and strategic implications. He also focuses on things most authors forget. This book is an excellent way to tell the story of the American Revolution.
The author tells the story of George Washington's Army through the eyes of those who fought it. He does intermingle some background history to help the reader better understand what the soldier writes about. Where as his history isn't comprehensive it is enriching. He does talk about certain campaigns of the American Army like our attempt to capture Canada which most people forget about. Through the eyes of the soldiers you get a true idea of the kinds of sacrifices the first soldiers endured to bring about our freedom. The descriptions are good in the soldiers writings makes you personnally feel these sacrifices. The writing makes the issues facing the Army like disease outbreaks like small pox, walking around in snow without shoes, hunger and other things come alive almost like you are experiencing it. You will understand the Revolution better than anything else by reading this book.
I highly recommend this book for any history lover no matter what your level of history knowledge is.
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Good Despite Some Oddly Jarring Inaccuracies
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-08-15
1 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I found this book both informative and in many ways refreshing. There are too many narrative accounts that tend to slide past what it meant to be a member of the Continental Army on a day-to-day basis--and what fighting the war meant to the individual soldiers who did it.
On the other hand, there were more than a few oddly jarring notes in a work which purports to break new ground. Early on, Chadwick exclaims that "Hundreds of residents of Charlestown [Mass]...raced out into nearby streets and meadows to watch the fighting...." Maybe so, but since the town was being burned down to the ground, more likely they were fleeing for their lives.
A few pages later, in describing the battle on Breed's (misnamed Bunker's) Hill, Chadwick declares that "...throaty cheers from the Americans despite cannonballs exploding around them." Well, eighteenth century cannonballs did not explode. Common shells did, but field guns fired solid shot and canister which did not include explosive properties.
There are not very many of these sloppy errors, fortunately, but the fact that some are present suggests a certain carelessness with detail. In a book that hopes to open a new and somewhat revisionist approach to studying the war, this can be a problem.
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Ordinary people make history, too
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-07-14
3 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I really enjoyed this book. It brought to life in vivid detail the deprivations and tribulations faced by the ordinary soldier in the Revolutionary Army. There have been so many books written about the leaders of the Revolution (some good, some pretty boring), but so few volumes about the ordinary men who made up the colonial troops. These people were the foundation of the new country and they deserve to be documented. The author chooses to give us their stories in an interesting way and paints word pictures that let the reader see exactly what conditions were like for the common soldiers. I was fascinated and could hardly put the book down. If all history was presented in this easy to understand and interesting way, more students would love it as much as I do.
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Enjoyable to read, but not really much new information...
Rating  (3)
Date: 2006-04-22
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a generally well-written and enjoyable to read book, but it doesn't quit live up to its sub-title: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom. The book is foremost a retelling of the Battles of the Revolution. It does present viewpoints from the soldiers and others who fought, but I didn't really find a great deal that hasn't been written before, although the portion devoted to Blacks in the Revolution was interesting. Interesting also is how many soldiers died from poor conditions and disease. But I didn't come away feeling that I really got to know the "Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom." As I said before, the book is mainly a retelling of the story of the battles of the War and secondly, a telling of the battles from the perspective of the common soldier.
For those who haven't read a great deal on the Revolutionary War, this would be a good book to start with. It is enjoyable, easy to read, presents an overview of the history of the War, and gives a perspective on the War from both the commanders and the common soldier. However, if the reader is one who has read a great deal on the Revolutionary War, there isn't really a great deal that is new here. It is a good book, but not one I would put on my top-ten list of Revolutionary War books.
The one thing I found irritating about the book is that several times it left some loose ends dangling. For example, one point in the book tells of George Washington's sometimes leniency toward those who were being disciplined. The author goes on to tell of a group of men sentenced to death for desertion and re-enlisting in order to collect another sign-on bonus. Washington, however decides the punishment is too harsh and so asks "...their officers if there was some mitigating circumstance that he could use...to spare them." Then the author states that Washington pardons them all. Okay, but what did the officers present to Washington to enable him to pardon them? I don't know and apparently neither did the author because we are never told in the book. This same lack of relevant information appears several times in the book.
If it were me and I really wanted to look at the war from a soldiers viewpoint, I would read a book such as "Private Yankee Doodle" by J.P. Martin. Martin's story has been described as "One of the best first-hand accounts of war as seen by a private soldier ever written." In my opinion, the Martin book is much better at describing the life of the soldier in the Revolutionary War. "The First American Army" does, in fact, use the Martin book as source of information.
All in all, "The First American Army" is an enjoyable to read book that presents a decent view of the War from the viewpoint or the soldier. It isn't a great book however. And it doesn't present a great deal of new information. This book would probably be more enjoyed by those with only a general knowledge of the War, not by those who already have read a great deal on the subject. To sum up, this is a good, enjoyable to read book that gives an overview of the battles of the Revolution while at the same time giving us some insight into the lives of the common soldier.
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The Book Name is Misleading
Rating (3)
Date: 2005-12-30
3 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
From the book name I would expect it to be more about the organization and tactics of the first United States Army. My objective in reading the book was to understand more of the experiences of my ancestors who lived during the era and participated in the Revolution. I was disappointed from a genealogist point of view in that facts were pretty scarce. The life and tribulation of the common soldier held my interest and I finished the book. I found myself wondering as I read the book if the author's primary objective was to promote his particular political views or to get one more item to list on his "publish or perish" list.
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