"[A] lucid and lively work that will engage both Revolutionary War bores and general readers who have avoided the subject since their school days....McCullough deftly sketches characters with a few quotations and details, humanizing a cast of thousands....A stirring and timely work, reminding us its soldiers rather than 'tavern patriots and windy politicians' who have always paid the price of American idealism and determined its successes." "This is history at the ground level, sometimes even a few inches below. There is squishing mud for soldiers to trudge through, letters about absent loved ones and heartbreaking deaths, driving snow, and battlefields tipped with sun-gleaming bayonets like so many teeth grasping for prey. The prose is vibrant, and there is a telling insight into each character....But the book is essentially a portrait of the Continental Army's commander." "David McCullough writes with confidence, panache and authority, deftly mingling high strategy and low politics, with gripes and grumbles of redcoat and rebel alike. Although written with a natural American bias, his book strives (and it usually succeeds) to be fair to both sides. I recommend it unreservedly." "[W]hereas many academic historians find it difficult to manage the elusive transmutation of raw archival material into compelling stories peopled by vivid, realistic personalities, McCullough has the imaginative capacity to reconstitute the inner lives of the long dead." "McCullough recounts the events of 1776 as if they had never been told before, with a freshness that brings home the drama and the sheer improbability of the events on which the U.S. is founded." "1776 is vintage McCullough; colorful, eloquent and illuminating. In reconstructing that epic year in the life of the American Revolution, he has given us a fresh portrait of Washington himself." "Simply put, this is history writing at its best from one of its top practitioners."