Booklist Reviews
Historian Philbrick (Valiant Ambition, 2016) is one of the most prominent popular-history writers in print today, and he will have another hit with this chronicle of the events that led to the French navy joining in to achieve a decisive victory for the newly coalescing United States in its War of Independence from Great Britain in 1781. The war dragged on for several years before French warships came to Washington's aid in the Battle of the Chesapeake, a naval showdown that made the subsequent Siege of Yorktown possible. Philbrick depicts George Washington as a flawed yet effective leader, while bringing other essential figures to light, including Nathanael Greene, a decisive major general. Philbrick makes clear the importance of France's role in the American victory, as troop morale was often low due to poor weather conditions and little or no pay. All readers interested in the Revolutionary War, and especially fans of naval history, will find Philbrick's fresh account rewarding, right through the epilogue describing what happened to many of the key figures going forward. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
In the Hurricane's Eye
Bestselling author and National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick subtitles his latest history "The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown." But it could just as accurately be, "the frustrations of George Washington." Six years into the Revolutionary War, it was still a toss-up as to whether the American rebels or the British crown would prevail.
General Washington, still quartered in New York in 1781, realized that the revolutionaries' success depended on the difficult task of coordinating with the French navy and persuading them to heed his strategies. But French intransigence wasn't the totality of Washington's worries. His troops were resentful at going unpaid, and the colonies were notoriously parsimonious in funding the larger war effort. Then there were the abiding distractions of the general's inflamed gums, rotting teeth and failing eyesight.
Drawing on letters, journals and sea logs, Philbrick manages to impart the immediacy of breaking news to his descriptions of marches, skirmishes and battles. From describing crucial shifts in the wind during naval conflicts to detailing the unimaginable horror of war wounds, he places the reader in the midst of the fray. The successful three-week siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in the fall of 1781 effectively won the war for Washington and humbled his tenacious adversary Lord Cornwallis.
The most tragic figures, however, were the slaves who joined the British in a bid to ensure their own liberation. As the siege tightened, Cornwallis decided that "despite having promised the former slaves their freedom, dwindling provisions required that he jettison them from the fortress" and into the hands of their former masters.
In the Hurricane's Eye is illustrated with an array of useful maps and a section that reveals what happened to the principal American, French and British players after the war.
This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.Kirkus Reviews
In 1781, discouraged after five years of war, George Washington finally saw the tide turn.National Book Award winner Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, 2016, etc.) reprises the protagonists of his last history of the War of Independence in a meticulously researched recounting of the events leading up to the colonists' victory at the Battle of Yorktown. Focusing on naval and military strategy, Philbrick—like Tom Shachtman in How the French Saved America (2017)—reveals the critical contributions made by the French navy, a fleet that had improved substantially since its defeat by Britain in the Seven Years' War. In France's Académie de Marine, students were taught "to think of a naval battle in terms of a chess game rather than a brawl," inciting, "for the first time in centuries, a whisper of doubt" in the "collective psyche of the British navy." Although British commanders were determined t o win, they were faced with passionate French military men, such as the young Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Grasse, and the Comte de Rochambeau, as well as recalcitrant colonists. British successes emboldened, rather than intimidated, patriots. "Broken up into thirteen largely self-sufficient entities," the author asserts, "the United States was a segmented political organism that was almost impossible for the British army to kill." However, American soldiers were in a weakened state, starving and unpaid. Washington, who had recently learned of Benedict Arnold's betrayal, feared mutiny. But, Philbrick argues persuasively, Arnold's treason actually strengthened the patriots' resolve "by serving as a cautionary tale during one of the darkest periods of the war." The author portrays Washington as an aggressive, undaunted leader—even when facing distressing personal problems—who emitted a "charismatic force field." One British officer reported feeling "awestruck as if he was before something supernatural" in Washington's presence. Philbrick, a sailor himself, recounts the strategic maneuvering involved in the many naval encounters: ships' positions, wind direction and strength, and the "disorienting cloud of fire and smoke" that often imperiled the fleet. A tense, richly detailed narrative of the American Revolution. Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
Chronicling the final, fateful year of the Revolutionary War, National Book Award winner Philbrick highlights Gen. George Washington's military mastery in understanding that he couldn't win the war without French naval power and shows how the Battle of the Chesapeake—fought without a single American ship—made the victory at Yorktown possible.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal.Library Journal Reviews
National Book Award winner Philbrick (
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Philbrick follows up his previous popular history illuminating lesser-known aspects of the Revolutionary War (