Most American soldiers weren't heroes - they deserted by the hundreds. The British troops were extremely courageous, as were the Hessians. The aristocratic British officers weren't pinheads. Mad King George didn't lose the Colonies. I also wanted people to come away from the book with an appreciation for the reality rather than the mythology. Neither knew anything about the military except what they'd read in books.
They think of George Washington with powdered hair in the Gilbert Stuart paintings. I don't think most Americans have any idea how young he was then. What he was was a leader - with a lot to learn. He wasn't a great spellbinding orator the way his fellow Virginian Patrick Henry was. He was not an intellectual like Adams or Jefferson. Q: In some respects this year, 1776, was the education of George Washington as a military commander, wasn't it? He was not a Napoleon out of the starting gate.Ī: No, he was not a Napoleon. I wanted to tell the story of the most important year in the most important conflict in our history. All that we celebrate on the Fourth of July as being the American creed would have come to naught if it hadn't been for a band of people who wouldn't quit, who were fighting the fight.
Q: What did you set out to do in this book?Ī: To tell the story of what was involved in guaranteeing that the noble ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence would amount to something more than words on paper. He discussed 1776 with Chronicle books editor Fritz Lanham. Rider Haggard - he wrote King Solomon's Mines - who said, 'The first duty of a story is to keep him who peruses it awake.' I've never forgotten that." In an interview he said he tries to write the kind of book he himself likes to read, "something that would keep me turning the pages." McCullough was in Houston last week to speak to the Houston Forum. His previous book, John Adams, published in 2001, spent more than a year on the Times best-seller list and won the author his second Pulitzer Prize (his Truman won in 1992). Its immediate success solidifies the 72-year-old McCullough's claim to being the most popular of America's popular historians. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and remains perched there today. Published four weeks ago, 1776 debuted at No. The invading British humiliate the Americans at the Battle of Brooklyn, and Washington must abandon the city.īut at year's end Washington secures a hugely important psychological victory when his tattered force of 2,400 men surprises and routs the Hessians at Trenton. The book opens with the successful dislodging of the British army from Boston.īut when the campaign shifts to New York City, joy turns to ashes. 1776 follows the ups and downs - make that mostly downs - of George Washington's fledgling army as it tried to defend American independence.
0 kommentar(er)
