From Publishers Weekly
The author of the award-winning, scholarly account of the French and Indian War
Crucible of War (2000) offers a scaled-down, popular version of that history in this companion volume to the January 2006 PBS documentary. It is an excellent introduction to a conflict that most Americans know little about, and that Winston Churchill called the first worldwide war. Anderson focuses on the North American theater, the outcome of which he claims "transformed the colonists' world forever" and, in effect, "made America." He shows how the conflict encouraged colonials "to conceive of themselves as equal partners in the [British] empire," a concept that Britain did not share and that led inexorably to postwar strife and revolution. In a departure from earlier accounts, Anderson gives unprecedented coverage to the role of Native Americans in the struggle and demonstrates how the war paved the way for the American government's eventual "destruction or subjugation of native societies." Like the best popular historians, Anderson combines exhaustive research and an accessible prose style in a volume that should help rescue the French and Indian War from historical obscurity.
(Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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By the 1763 British victory in the Seven Years War (referred to as the French and Indian War in North America), Britain reigned supreme over the eastern half of North America. Yet, a mere 13 years later, a group of lawyers, merchants, and planters would demand, and eventually win, independence for a huge slice of that American empire. Anderson presents a concise, engrossing narrative of this seminal conflict, convincingly illustrating how it led directly to tensions and eventually warfare between the British government and her subjects along the Atlantic coast. Anderson's explanations of the origins of the struggle are particularly insightful; he also provides a great service by restoring the role of various Native American groups to an essential place in the war. This is an outstanding account of a frequently misunderstood war that will be especially appealing to general readers with an interest in American history. It is a companion book to the four-part PBS documentary scheduled to air in January 2006.
Jay FreemanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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