"1776" by David McCullough

"The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in." - George Washington, Jan. 14, 1776

If you asked me, I would tell you that I enjoy history. I am by no means a history buff. However, put history up against math or science, and I love history. I love history very much. More specifically, I enjoy history as it pertains to things I am passionate about. I could have a much better discussion with you about church history, baseball history or music history than I could about the history of thermodynamics.

David McCullough has offered several volumes bringing different aspects of the history of America to an audience of laymen. The appeal of his books such as 1776, John Adams, Truman, and others is that they take these huge larger than life figures and tell their story in a way that doesn't so much read like a textbook. At least, that is the hope.

I'm not an overly patriotic person. I do love the freedom I have in America that others have paid the price for, and I am greatly appreciative of it. I don't have a cynical view towards the US but realize our history and deeds past and present are not rose-colored as we'd like to believe. I'm far more interested in the Kingdom I belong to that has no borders. That being said, I'm not very well versed in American military campaigns, which this book made abundantly clear to me as it chronicles the eventful year of 1776.

I was constantly amazed through the book how the whole effort for an independent nation was on the brink of collapse on so many occasions and final defeat was a forgone conclusion for so many. The American forces were completely outnumbered and and outclassed. According to many of the accounts in this book, it often seemed like disorganized groups of farmers (most being far too young or too old for fighting) with zero experience and without any discipline or code of conduct, up against the most experienced well trained army in the world. The book leaves you amazed that we even have a United States of America at all.

1776 also has given me much more knowledge and appreciation for George Washington. He is the central figure of the book and occupies most of it's pages. At the end you got a real sense of what made Washington tick, and what his greatest strengths and weaknesses were. He was by no means the perfect man or the qualified man, but he was the right man for the job given to him.

The shortcomings of the book were that it did read much like a textbook at times. Though there were some great pictures of the men whose lives were detailed in the book, there were no maps that were of any use at all. It was impossible to follow what was going on in the book without any usable map, and that was a shame. So much of the book dealt with places and armies moving and capturing one place or another and the importance of such and such place. Without knowing anything of the land, all these facts run together and don't make much sense. If you lost your page, it would be very hard to find it again because so much of it read like the rest, due to the inability to keep a running narrative in your head.

That being said, I would like to someday read another book by McCullough. Perhaps Truman or John Adams wouldn't rely so heavily on the need for detailed maps.