Good Example Of Book Review On Masterful Telling Of An Important Story

George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware is one of the most iconic images in American history; as such, there has been quite a bit of historiography on the subject itself. This latest entry into the scholarship of the Battle of Trenton, George Washington’s Surprise Attack: A New Look at the Battle that Decided the Fate of America, is a wonderful entry that taught me a lot about this fascinating battle in American history.
At first, I was somewhat daunted by the books 600+ page length – how detailed could a recounting of a single battle of the Revolutionary War be? – but as I started reading I found myself investing more and more of myself into the details. Tucker certainly wants to be comprehensive in his approach to the material; every single detail about the circumstances leading up to and including the battle, as well as its aftermath, is given to you. While some phrases are repetitious, it’s compensated in my mind by some wonderful bits of color, like the female sniper taking potshots at enemy soldiers, the descriptions of Washington’s double envelopment of troops, and so on. I felt that these particular moments were deeply involving.
Instead of focusing on the negatives (which didn’t really bother me too much), I’ll focus on the positives. There’s a lot of stuff about the battle itself that is covered more comprehensively here than in other works, like Washington’s unconventional strategies, which included frontier hit-and-run warfare and unconventional approaches to artillery, and the short biographies of the other players in the battle, such as James Monroe, John Stark and others. It was a really nice reminder of the people, both famous and obscure, who took part in this historic battle, and helped broaden my perspective on the history itself. He also went quite a bit into Colonel Johann Rall’s role in the battle, showing up the myth that his troops were drunk on the day of battle.
Tucker, the author of other works like Exodus at the Alamo, pours that same sense of laborious accounting of historical circumstance into the Battle of Trenton, taking from military history of tactics and conditions to give us the full story of what went on there. The work is not without its flaws, to be sure – there is the aforementioned repetition of phrases, and one could be forgiven for thinking it a slow read or not having an index – but I couldn’t help but find myself fairly involved in the reading of the book itself. The work can best be described as a somewhat romantic narrative account of those events in Trenton, New Jersey, which does reduce its sense of scholarship but not, I felt, its readability.
I appreciate this book’s comprehensive and engrossing nature. The Battle of Trenton itself is sometimes overlooked when looking over the whole of the American Revolution, but reading more about it helps to solidify, in my mind, George Washington’s prowess as a military leader, and the types of warfare and tactics that separated American and British forces. Perhaps this book will make a great start to reading some of the other scholarship on this specific aspect of the Revolutionary War. In reading this work that is a significant contribution to the field, you actually get the feeling that you are with Washington and his men during the crossing and at one of the most important battles in American history. Most significant of all, this is truly an important book for all Americans today.