This was my first venture into Dad history, and listen, this didn't win a Pulitzer for nothing. McCullough is skilled at finding and collating fascinating historical details while keeping the storytelling lively. While over time I wasn't that interested in the point-by-point recount of various battles in and around the Northeast, I learned a thing or two about Washington and the Continental Army and early American history.

A wonderful historical look at the fraught first year of conflict during the American Revolutionary War. The book starts on Oct 26, 1775, when His Majesty, King George III, went in front of Parliament to declare the American Colonies were in a state of Rebellion..

MCullough's masterful history shows us the events and the personalities involved in this pivotal time. From the British commanders like Admiral Lord Howe and his brother, General Lord Howe, to the American side like General Washington and General Lee. But we also will hear the story and events told from the view of the Hessian mercenaries, the farmers-turned-rebel American farmers, to ordinary civilians caught in the middle. This is history that reads like a novel.

Superbly written this truly shows the enormous challenges faced by the Americans facing the most powerful military force of the era. From the nearly catastrophic start of the conflict to the massive victories of the final part of the year, the vast scope and danger of the first year of the American Revolution are beautifully told in this excellent history book.

The American Revolution is yet another period about which I know embarrassingly little. And on reflection David McCullough’s book was probably not the best place to start. It’s well written, 70 pages of notes and bibliography say it’s well researched, and although it feels quite biased, his portrayal of Washington is very human and flawed. But McCullough provides absolutely no context, spends almost no time on the reasons for the war, and there are no maps (I’m not including the reproductions of contemporary maps which, while lovely, are unreadable).

In summary this was really enjoyable, but I think I would have enjoyed it so much more if I’d had a basic understanding of the period. It's certainly left me with a hunger for more...

Read this David McCullough novel when it first came out. Enjoy his works immensely!!

“It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”

Colonial farmers were just built different. 100% increase in my appreciation for our fighting forefathers achieved.

This is a well written and researched account of 1776, the early days of the American Revolution.
I was partially interested in learning about the parts that took place on Long Island, where I have lived my whole life. The maps were amazing to see the places and names that still remain today.
I learned so much that was missed in history class.

October 1775, King GeorgeIII declared America in rebellion to the crown. There were Americans followers who were loyal to the King. The British army was powerful.
We meet George Washington, Nathaniel Green and Henry Knox. The American army consisted of farmers schoolteachers and shoemakers. Young boys who became soldiers.
George Washington Commander in Chief never led an army into battle.
We learn of the hardships and failures along the way. Defeat followed defeat. When all hope is gone George Washington proposes a plan.

This book is such an important part of American history and who we are today. It is a compelling read.

Look to our past...could anything make you more aware of the way in which our country's very beginning came to be than a book by the esteemed author David McCullough? He writes with such a clear vision of what had transpired and makes history become not only alive but one in which the blinders are removed and the true story is told.

Such is the case with his book 1776. This is the year that started everything, the year we discovered the grit, the courage, and the valor needed to cast off the country of Great Britain and eventually become a little fledgling nation on its path to glory.

However, the route to freedom was fraught with danger and led by General Washington, who clearly saw exactly the situation we were in. “In truth, the situation was worse than they realized, and no one perceived this as clearly as Washington. Seeing things as they were, and not as he would wish them to be, was one of his salient strengths.” The war was not going well for the Americans. In fact, Jan and I often marveled at how on earth we could ever win. Out flanked, out maneuvered, and met by the greatest army the earth had ever known seemed a recipe for disaster. For many it was exactly that, disaster.

Yet met by the forces of the British General Howe, George Washington, Nathaniel Greene, and Henry Knox became leaders. Young, inexperienced facing insurmountable odds, these men persevered through conditions that were appalling, life threatening, and seemingly impossible. Yet, succeed they did. Although, it did seem that at times the very weather seemed to favor the impoverished army made up of farmers, blacksmiths, store keepers and others who had little or no training, no uniforms, few supplies, and the fate of treason and death hanging over their heads.

Mr McCullough pulls no punches. He doesn't make this history one of glory with bugles blazing and drums pounding. He makes the reader understand the very gritty and horribleness of the war, the fact that the British soldiers plus the mercenaries, the Hessians, looked upon the Americans as rebels, as no accounts, as the figurative dirt beneath their feet. He makes us understand that we were ripe for losing. It was probably something laughed about across the sea in the court of George the Third. We were doomed, failure was the determined outcome, death to those who would dare to challenged England, the master of all they surveyed.

Yet, here we are, a nation founded on the will of people who did what needed to be done. “There are no people on earth in whom a spirit of enthusiastic zeal is so readily kindled, and burns so remarkably, as Americans” Perhaps in all the history of the world, there is no more a valiant story than the one Mr McCullough relates to us. We can be proud of what transpired before us, of the bravery, the very fearlessness, fortitude, and heroism that proceeded us. Perhaps in every way, we can find within ourselves the very mettle our ancestors had to face the multiple challenges of an America we currently live in. I hope and pray that we do.

Is there anyone who is not troubled by the times we live in? We face each day unrest, violent protests, looting, the loss of respect for values, attacks against opinions unacceptable to some, and if that isn't enough we also face the up and down onslaught of a virus no one seems to understand. Jan and I both decided it was time to take a look to our past and how we started as a nation, a country, a land that we love. In answer to the feelings and despicable behavior we view nightly on the news, we picked up David McCullough's 1776 and were transported to a time where people truly fought for a new nation, for the values of freedom, and made the ultimate sacrifice.
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In 1776 David McCullough captures the importance of that year's quintessential struggle for our country.

By focusing on this single year, as opposed to the entire war, McCullough is able to dissect more minutely the individual battles, turning points, specific leaders, and the result is one of the most humanistic depictions of George Washington I've ever read. Here he becomes more than mythic god of the American past, but rather a living, breathing, flawed man.

Telescoping in on actions like The Battle of Long Island, oft overlooked in American Revolution text with a broader view, gives the reader a chance to appreciate the ebb and flow of the war, as the retreating Patriots fled the rushing sweep of the oncoming British force and turned what might have been their ultimate defeat into an amazing escape during the almost magical midnight evacuation of New York. Conjuring up such exciting scenes is McCullough's bread and butter.

While the American Revolution was not fought entirely on moralistic principles about freedom (many a "founding father" had a financial stake in this idea of independence), in view of the trials and deprivations suffered by those who fought in 1776, who's valor helped coin the phrase "The Spirit of '76", who can deny their pure motives? Even if you can't stomach such patriotism, you can at least admire the courage it must of taken to face such odds.

I've read McCullough before. His The Johnstown Flood swept me away. Thus far he has impressed and entertained, so much so that by the end of 1776 I was yearning for 1777.

A British ship’s surgeon who used the privileges of his profession to visit some of the rebel camps, described roads crowded with carts and wagons hauling mostly provisions, but also, he noted, inordinate quantities of rum — “for without New England rum, a New England army could not be kept together.” The rebels, he calculated, were consuming a bottle a day per man.

One late night foray led me to finish this book hours after beginning. It is no great shame, but it was the musical Hamilton which inclined me to approach the work. My days of matriculation were often obscured to such narrative histories. 25 years ago at university I was an aspiring Marxist and I saw the American Revolution as between two slave owning factions of the same burning house. I now regard that approach as painfully naïve.

1776 chronicles more or less of the famed year in American Independence when Washington's cobbled forces stumbled about. The vastly superior Royal forces didn't appear to appreciate the significance of the stakes. Few do in the moment.

I started this because I needed a nonfiction book for my morning reading, and at the time, I was reading a novel set during the American Revolution. Since my knowledge about the American Revolution was pretty much at a Schoolhouse Rock level, I learned a lot from reading this book. His final lines perfectly sum up the overall feel of the book.

Especially for those who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning—how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities of strength of individual character had made the difference—the outcome seemed little short of a miracle.

McCullough's research included previous scholarship on the war, letters, diaries, newspaper articles and other documents of the time. I'm astounded by the amount of reading he must have done to write this book—his bibliography is 24 pages long. He brought it all together into a fascinating narrative of the year, focusing on Washington and his inner circle. My favorite part was the account of Henry Knox, bookseller turned soldier, and his men's heroics and stamina in retrieving artillery from Ticonderoga in time for the Americans to take Dorchester Heights.
This book sparked an interest in learning more about this time period and in reading more books by McCullough. As a novice to this kind of writing, I found it to be accessible and extremely interesting.

I made it 100 pages in. It was an excellent and thorough look at the start of the Revolutionary War. I just don't currently have the mental capacity. For now I'll just keep learning through picture books as my early elementary kids and I read together.