A month ago this long-awaited book from Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, author, and historian Rick Atkinson came in to my mailbox. I’ve waited for it so long it feels I ordered it in 1960. Pictured, it is called The British Are Coming and boy howdy, are they ever.

The time is the mid-1770s and, if you recall, it was a tricky time. The Colonists and Patriots, which are us, were wearing silk stockings and buckled shoes. And unfortunately, those were all the guys.

And somehow, that contingent thought it could win a revolution.

More on that in a sec, but first, let me say that Atkinson is a stud. Please, if you have not enjoyed his Liberation Trilogy, his three books about WWII, do that. He is a wonderful historian but maybe a better writer. It reads like fiction, full of color and intensity.

So, for a long time we have waited for his American Revolution trilogy. And The British Are Coming is the first of three.

Glory.

I was and am on page 60. I have loaned it to a friend because I love him, because it is his 60-ish wedding anniversary today, and because he was looking forward to it even more than I was. Also he is retired recently and has more time to read so he’ll have her knocked out within the week. Meanwhile I am grinding The Pioneers by David McCullough, another stud historian who is not the writer Atkinson is but who is still a major league dude.

But back to The British Are Coming. I am on page 60, as mentioned afore, and will not give anything away. I will say that King George, an otherwise pleasant guy by all accounts, has become pretty upset over some tea incident in Boston and over the colonists’ refusal to believe that no taxation without representation is a good deal. Right now everyone is a little uptight. I don’t know how it’s going to end and if I did I wouldn’t tell you. But it appears there will be fisticuffs.

I hope if there’s a fight that we win.. If we don’t, what will we do — and it’s right around the corner — July 4?

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