john adams by david mccullough sparknotes

I was never taught about the importance of New York or the loss after loss of battles. I never knew about George Washington's siege of Boston (and I lived there) that drove out the British or the horrendous conditions of the continental army.

Having grown up outside Boston, our history classes only covered the more famous events - Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's ride, and Bunker Hill. It's special to have the Pulitzer Prize author read his own book. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.ġ776 was the first Audible book I have ever purchased and it raises the bar upon which all other books will be compared. Especially in our own tumultuous time, 1776 is powerful testimony to how much is owed to a rare few in that brave founding epoch, and what a miracle it was that things turned out as they did. The darkest hours of that tumultuous year were as dark as any Americans have known. But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost: Washington, who had never before led an army in battle.

And it is the story of the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats, who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. In this stirring audiobook, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.īased on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers.

John adams by david mccullough sparknotes