The Battle Of Bunker Hill By David Mccullough

In a companion volume to his best-selling biography John Adams (2001), David McCullough closely examines a year of near-mythic status in the American collective memory: 1776. It was the year that the Continental Congress, meeting in steamy Philadelphia, decided, “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.” It was also the year that the American Revolution began in earnest and was nearly lost. With his strong sense of narrative and his gift for capturing the humanity of his subjects, McCullough leads readers through a well-known story with both style and grace.

McCullough structures the book into three large subdivisions. The story opens in England, October 26, 1775, with King George III of England addressing

After the opening Battles of Lexington and Concord in April, 1775, the colonials had engaged the British in what was commonly known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Although technically a British victory, there were one thousand British casualties in the skirmish. In July, 1775, when George Washington arrived to take charge of the colonial troops, the British soldiers were under siege in the city, with supplies and food running dangerously

He was just thirty-three years old. Although he had little formal schooling, he educated himself through reading. His correspondence is rich with description of Washington, the war, and the meaning of life. Some of McCullough’s most memorable passages in 1776 are from Greene’s pen. Likewise, Greene’s friend Knox, a well-known Boston bookseller, had a damaged hand, a Loyalist wife, and no experience as a soldier. Yet Knox proved to be one of the most ingenious and intrepid among Washington’s force, bringing cannons from the captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York across many miles and in terrible weather to the battle at