1776

1776 – by David McCullough

I found myself going against the grain with this one.  Reading Amazon reviews, I discovered that most loved this book. I really did not. I think it’s because of my expectations. When one sees or says “1776”, images appear in one’s mind of the American Revolution, the birth of our country, the Declaration of Independence, and all the names associated with these events.

True, the entire story of the American Revolution didn’t occur only over one year.  So one could cautiously state that one shouldn’t expect the whole story in these pages.  I’ll concede that.  So what actually did happen in this pivotal year?  Well, the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence, and lots of skirmishes with England.  The former gets almost no mention in this book (sadly). Instead, it’s filled with the latter.  So part of my problem is, I don’t really enjoy reading books (or chapters within books) that deal exclusively with meticulous detail of what happens within battles in a war.  Any battle in any war. It’s just too much for me.

So this is what we have here. There were three main battles during the Revolutionary War in 1776, and McCullough goes into plenty of detail.  I simply lost interest. In fact, this is one of those books that I had to make myself pick up, and force myself to read, say, at least 10 pages per day so I could finally finish the thing.

If I tried to scrape some sort of theme or continuity out of this thing, I guess you could say that the author does a good job of showing us the evolution of George Washington as a general.  If I’m not mistaken, he’s part of every battle in this book, and seems to turn the tide by the year’s end in favor of the Continental army.

Now that I think of it, McCullough’s books are a bit of a mixed bag for me. I’ve loved his books where he focuses on people (John Adams, Harry Truman), but am not that engrossed when he writes about actual events.  I’m probably in the minority here, however.  Again, Amazon reviews show that most really liked this book. So please don’t take my word for it.