Valley Forge

Starred review from August 27, 2018
This gripping, panoramic account of the Continental Army’s 1777–1778 winter encampment at Valley Forge charts, in lively language, the decisions that allowed the American Revolution to survive. George Washington’s ragtag troops had fled the pursuing Redcoats to Pennsylvania, and the Continental Congress was sheltering in York, Pa., after the British occupied the revolutionary capital, Philadelphia. Vicious budgetary squabbles, corruption, and military rivalries proved almost as dangerous to Washington’s army as the British. Judicious excerpts from the diaries of enlisted men and officers elucidating the squalid misery and deprivation at Valley Forge nearly waft off the page. But, Drury and Clavin recount, Washington turned the Revolution around. The battles, politics, and diplomacy that kept Washington’s troops from faltering—the Battle of the Brandywine and skillful handling of French volunteers—are lucidly recounted. There are valuable insights, too, into the strategic thinking of British general William Howe and admiral Richard Howe, the aristocratic brothers charged with putting down the rebellion. As the authors sketch out the dizzying array of obstacles Washington faced, the reader gains an appreciation for the genuinely heroic role he played in the founding of the United States of America. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber.

While General George Washington's winter encampment at Valley Forge was the grim low point of the American Revolution, this fine audiobook history of those trying months and the pivotal battles that followed will grip listeners as no other chapter in American history can. Jeremy Bobb is a steady, highly skilled narrator who is reminiscent of David McCullough in the straightforwardness of his delivery. His calm steadiness will carry even the most fainthearted listener through passages that are unavoidably bleak while conveying the steely determination that was at the heart of the American Revolution. Most expressive is the character of Washington--a leader of enormous skill, intelligence, and integrity who nearly single-handedly kept the revolution alive. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine