Battle
your way through Philbrick’s ‘Bunker Hill’
By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY
Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick
April 29, 2013
Best-selling author and
historian Nathaniel Philbrick has a well-deserved reputation as a meticulous
researcher and captivating storyteller. His In the Heart of the Sea won
the National Book Award for non-fiction and his Mayflower was a Pulitzer
Prize finalist. His last book, The Last Stand, brought the
ever-fascinating Gen. George Custer back to life on the haunting landscape of
Little Big Horn.
Now he's back with
Bunker Hill, an exhaustive three-year effort that takes the reader to
pre-Revolutionary Boston and its famed hill where a turning point in American
history unfolded. In typical Philbrick style, it's all there, right down to how
the cast of characters looked. George Washington on a horse? "No one
looked better." John Hancock? "Handsome, with the stubble of a beard
on his clean-shaven cheeks."
There are almost 100 pages
of notes and bibliography to back up all such claims.
Philbrick, as is often his
way, once again reveals that things aren't always as they appear to be in our
history books. Little-known names, like Dr. Joseph Warren, come forth as
leaders of the patriots thanks to Philbrick's reporting, staking their claim to
a rightful place in history alongside the Sam and John Adams of the world.
Warren, for instance, was the man who gave Paul Revere the orders to sound the
alarm. Who knew?
That said, be prepared for
perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about the American Revolution and
Bunker Hill, how Boston turned from an occupied city to a siege site, and the
looks of Washington's thigh muscles while on a horse. If you are really,
really, really interested in this sliver of American history, you will
delight in the story and the multitude of details Philbrick offers up.
If you have only a passing
interest, however, Bunker Hill will prove a long slog. A very long slog.
It's almost as if Philbrick did too good a job researching his newest subject,
his editors too poor a job tightening up the tale.
Summer soldiers and
sunshine patriots be warned. This is not for the dilettante daytripper.
http://books.usatoday.com/book/battle-your-way-through-philbricks-%E2%80%98bunker-hill/r851259
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário