Product Description

From the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy comes the extraordinary first volume of his new trilogy about the American Revolution

Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other superb books about World War II, has long been admired for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he recounts the first twenty-one months of America's violent war for independence.

From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world's most formidable fighting force. It is a gripping saga alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels all the more compelling.

Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country's creation drama.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rick Atkinson is the bestselling author of the Liberation Trilogy An Army at Dawn (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history), The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light as well as The Long Gray Line and other books. His many additional awards include a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, the George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award. A former staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post, he lives in Washington, D.C.

REVIEWS:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

To say that Atkinson can tell a story is like saying Sinatra can sing. Historians of the American Revolution take note. Atkinson is coming. He brings with him a Tolstoyan view of war; that is, he presumes war can be understood only by recovering the experience of ordinary men and women caught in the crucible of orchestrated violence beyond their control or comprehension.
Joseph J. Ellis, The New York Times Book Review

Mr. Atkinson's bookis chock full of momentous events and larger-than-life characters. Perfect material for a storyteller as masterly as Mr. Atkinson. Mr. Atkinson commands great powers of description.
The Wall Street Journal

[Atkinson has a] felicity for turning history into literature. One lesson of The British Are Coming is the history-shaping power of individuals exercising their agency together: the volition of those who shouldered muskets in opposition to an empire. The more that Americans are reminded by Atkinson and other supreme practitioners of the historians' craft that their nation was not made by flimsy people, the less likely it is to be flimsy.
George F. Will, The Washington Post

Atkinsonwastes no time reminding us of his considerable narrative talents. His knowledge of military affairs shines in his reading of the sources. For sheer dramatic intensity, swinging from the American catastrophes at Quebec and Fort Washington to the resounding and surprising successes at Trenton and Princeton, all told in a way equally deeply informed about British planning and responses, there are few better places to turn.
The Washington Post

Atkinson takes his time, but there's delight in all that detail.... Atkinson is a superb researcher, but more importantly a sublime writer. On occasion I reread sentences simply to feast on their elegance.... This is volume one of a planned trilogy. Atkinson will be a superb guide through the terrible years of killing ahead.
The Times (London)

The British Are Coming [is] a sweeping narrative which captures the spirit and the savagery of the times. Based on exhaustive research on both sides of the Atlantic, Atkinson displays a mastery of the English language as well as military tactics which puts him in a class of his own as a writer.
Lionel Barber, Editor, Financial Times

[Atkinson's] account promises to be as detailed a military history of the war as we will see in our lifetimes upon its completion. . . . Atkinson makes good use of information from letters and journals to give his reader a sense of what it would have been like to walk in the shoes of both the war's illustrious and lesser known participants. . . . Atkinson's accounts of battles are among the most lucid I've read. . . . Readers who enjoy richly detailed military history will be greatly anticipating his second volume.
Journal of the American Revolution