Saratoga
Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War
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- ¥1,400
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
Historian Richard M. Ketchum's Saratoga vividly details the turning point in America's Revolutionary War.
In the summer of 1777 (twelve months after the Declaration of Independence) the British launched an invasion from Canada under General John Burgoyne. It was the campaign that was supposed to the rebellion, but it resulted in a series of battles that changed America's history and that of the world. Stirring narrative history, skillfully told through the perspective of those who fought in the campaign, Saratoga brings to life as never before the inspiring story of Americans who did their utmost in what seemed a lost cause, achieving what proved to be the crucial victory of the Revolution.
A New York Times Notable Book, 1997
Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Award, 1997
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1777, the British government mounted an invasion from Canada with the objective of splitting the rebellious American colonies into manageable fractions. On a map the task seemed easy. But on the ground, Ketchum shows, Sir John Burgoyne's route was dominated by rugged terrain, creating insoluble logistics problems. Even had Sir William Howe advanced toward Albany instead of turning south to Philadelphia, Burgoyne, Ketchum convincingly argues, was unlikely to have gone much farther. The American northern army, Continentals and militiamen effectively delayed the British until enough reinforcements could be concentrated to offer battle around Saratoga. While rehabilitating the reputation of the conflict's initial commanders, Philip Schuyler and Arthur St. Claire, Ketchum also provides a balanced account of the feud between eventual commander Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold--a subject often clouded by the former's subsequent incompetence and the latter's subsequent treason. Arnold's energy and coup d'oeil proved the tactical mainsprings of victory. Gates was the organizer, the "chairman of the board" able to weld the disparate elements of his army into the sword that Arnold wielded with such devastating effect on October 7, 1777. Moving beyond the generals and battles, Ketchum puts his readers alongside the enlisted men and the regimental officers who did the fighting and dying, the women who followed them and the civilians who got in war's way. His fast-paced popular history relies on their experiences, recorded in letters, diaries and memoirs, to tell the human side of the American Revolution's galvanizing turning point. Illustrations not seen by PW. History Book Club alternate; first serial to Military History Quarterly.
