1776

I've been busy reading David McCullough's latest book, and it took lots of effort to come up for air to do a little light blogging before bedtime. This is a good one, well-deserving of its Pulitzer Prize, in my opinion, despite the objections by a few academic types who like to belittle the kind of "pop-history" that has made McCullough famous.

The book begins just prior to the American siege of Boston in 1775. Tonight, I finally put it down following Washington's nighttime retreat from Brooklyn to Manhattan in August of 1776.

The great thing about McCullough's story-telling is that it comes about as close as humanly possible to making you feel as if you are a contemporary of the people whose lives and struggles he portrays. And, in 1776, the portrait he paints isn't just of generals and politicians. He puts you right there with the soldiers and the civilians - Patriots and Loyalists, rebels, redcoats, and mercenaries.

McCullough says that he wrote the book as a response to the "national despair" following the September 11 attacks. According to the San Francisco Gate:

"1776," he says, was very much a response to the national despair after Sept. 11. "I saw people on television saying, 'This is the darkest, most difficult, perilous time we've ever been through.' Now, that's nonsense. It's the worst day in American history -- I don't think there's much question about that. But it isn't the darkest time, by any means."

Several have been darker, McCullough says, and the darkest was the period he describes in his new book. A companion piece to his 2001 blockbuster "John Adams," "1776" describes a struggle for independence against staggering odds: a 43-year-old commander-in-chief, George Washington, who had never led an army in battle; a majority of Americans who favored the king and fiercely opposed "the horrid crime of rebellion"; and an amateur army, disdained as "peasantry" and "rabble in arms," who lacked uniforms, training and proper food and hygiene.

The big difference is that we know how the struggle for independence turned out. Unfortunately, the outcome of our current struggle still isn't certain. That's one reason why it's so important that the story of 1776 regain its proper place in our national consciousness - in order to stoke the fires of freedom and ensure that America is able to summon the courage and perseverance to face the trials that lie ahead.

Here are a few other reviews of McCullough's book:

Joshua Micah Marshall in the New Yorker

Tony Horowitz in the New York Times

David Hackett Fischer in the Boston Globe

George Will at Town Hall