TOM PAINE'S WAR: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time, cursory look at a moment in history

TOM PAINE'S WAR: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time
JACK KELLY
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1776, one man's words—and the determination of American patriots—allowed our nation to survive its first crisis.

We think of the "Declaration of Independence" as the Revolution's defining document. But two essays appealed even more directly to Americans' feelings in 1776. Thomas Paine—a recent immigrant and self-taught writer—saw that America's rebellion was not simply about taxes and representation. It was a true revolution that could upend the fraud of monarchy and dismantle the aristocratic privilege that had dominated the world for centuries. His pamphlet "Common Sense" convinced Americans that the king had no divine right to rule them—they could rule themselves.

Having inspired patriots to declare their independence, Paine enlisted as a private in the militia. He saw Washington's army suffer defeats. He slogged through the mud with retreating troops to Pennsylvania. There, he wrote "The American Crisis," the most stirring rallying cry in our history. It began: "These are the times that try men's souls . . ." Washington and his men took heart, crossed the Delaware River, and prevailed to fight another day.

A tribute to the Revolution's 250th anniversary, Tom Paine's War is a riveting exploration of the earliest days of our nation's birth. This is a story of the power of words—and the power of belief—and how both speak as well to America's current crisis.

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My Review: I was eager to see how much I could add to my existing store of facts and ideas about the 1776 Revolution, particularly about Paine's role in both crystallizing its justification and fomenting its passions. I got enough interesting analysis regarding the impact, and the centrality, of Paine's expressive writing to find the read involving. Paine himself has left a small footprint in the records we know to exist. There could be others yet undiscovered. Adding new facts to the narrative, then, wasn't on the cards.

This is in no way the author's responsibility, and factors in my rating only very slightly as a tinge of disappointment. I'm not able to offer a higher rating because I found the read felt disorganized, with Paine's words mostly sidelined by accounts of ordinary soldiers' opinions. It's not uninteresting, it's quite involving to see the early days of the Revolution through their eyes. But why say it's "Tom Paine's war" when he's a small part of the larger picture? Is the author attempting to demonstrate that Paine's words ignited revolutionary fervor sufficient to cause the war? In that case, many more examples, or a much deeper dive on the examples included...which frankly feels impossible to me given the paucity of records about ordinary people in eighteenth-century America...would be necessary.

While interesting, this is a shorter, better monograph (honestly, the Author's Note and the Prologue say it all) lurking in a padded read. It would be ideal for a reader new to the topic of the Revolution discussed, or unfamiliar with mass-media's role in igniting war. I think it serves as a decent jumping-off point for other readers, as there are carefully attributed notes throughout as one would expect from this author.

It was not my most successful read, but I can't complain about the prose or the idea animating the book. It's just not quite the book I expected given the title and synopsis.

JACK KELLY'S PAGE: VALCOUR: The 1776 Campaign That Saved the Cause of Liberty; GOD SAVE BENEDICT AROLD: The True Story of America's Most Hated Man

VALCOUR: The 1776 Campaign That Saved the Cause of Liberty
JACK KELLY
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The wild and suspenseful story of one of the most crucial and least known campaigns of the Revolutionary War

During the summer of 1776, a British incursion from Canada loomed. In response, citizen soldiers of the newly independent nation mounted a heroic defense. Patriots constructed a small fleet of gunboats on Lake Champlain in northern New York and confronted the Royal Navy in a desperate three-day battle near Valcour Island. Their effort surprised the arrogant British and forced the enemy to call off their invasion.

Jack Kelly's Valcour is a story of people. The northern campaign of 1776 was led by the underrated general Philip Schuyler (Hamilton's father-in-law), the ambitious former British officer Horatio Gates, and the notorious Benedict Arnold. An experienced sea captain, Arnold devised a brilliant strategy that confounded his slow-witted opponents.

America’s independence hung in the balance during 1776. Patriots endured one defeat after another. But two events turned the tide: Washington’s bold attack on Trenton and the equally audacious fight at Valcour Island. Together, they stunned the enemy and helped preserve the cause of liberty.

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My Review: I've never really understood how very much the existence of the USA is contingent on the deep stupidity of the British before reading this book. It's shocking just how little we're taught about Arnold's real contribution to the existence of the US. Valcourt, without exaggeration, was central to the success of the war effort as it denied the British possession of an extremely strategic fort.

So why is the name of the battle only a dim clang of a memory-bell in my history-loving brain? Because Arnold won it. And the reputation-destroying politicos in the Continental Congress who feared the success of anyone not named "Washington" would result in disruption of their narrative...and threaten their power...knew it. What they did after Valcourt was inexcusable, but only the first of many such slapdowns issued by politicians to military men. (They were all men; History is not satirized as "his story" for no reason.) Denying Arnold a richly merited promotion was pusillanimous.

This story of Valcourt is heavily slanted towards the naval parts of the story, with mountains of details I never knew I didn't know about ships, their functioning, their strengths and weaknesses in battle, their command structures...it's a lot to take in. I wasn't always sure I cared, while being unwilling to skip over the data because the author's sneaky and uses these facts to good effect in battle anecdotes. An old didactic trick that never fails to trip up the facile reader/student. (In college I had an entire letter knocked off my essay grade because I knew the material, but skipped class the day it was applied to a specific place so did not relate it to that place despite that being clearly stated as part of the requirement.)

Author Kelly is clearly setting a course into microhistory, prioritizing deep-but-narrow slices of the giant, continent-spanning contests facing the British and the French in the wake of their first-ever world war (The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763). If Valcour had not stopped the British from failing at Saratoga, it is doubtful Louis XVI would have funded the war for the American revolutionaries. It is easy, then, to see why someone with an historian's eye for the results of a conflict and a novelist's sense of story would light on this underknown event with glee.

It is both strength and weakness in this story. If one is not au fait with the Revolution and its roots already, this is not the place to start that journey. Too much will slow the reader's pace that the author's at pains to set...looking people up, finding out who did what to whom before the events described. As it never pretended to be an introductory text to the conflict I'm only mentioning it as a fact for y'all to be aware of in deciding about the read's suitability for your taste. I felt I knew enough to be fully engaged in the material completely new to me without worrying about the background. It is, in fact, a favorite genre of mine. Microhistories suit my own readerly desire to dig into *why* if I already know *what* happened.

I found the author's use of notes added to my interest but didn't point me in new directions for reading further about the subject. It's the reason I stopped at a fourth star. A five-star history read needs to blow me right away and/or point me in new or unexpected directions. None of that happened here. The notes demonstrated the author's superior command of archives, and his selections from those archives definitely were apt and germane.

On balance I'll recommend the read to those already interested in the Revolutionary War, and familiar with its broad strokes, who seek more colorful aspects of its story.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

GOD SAVE BENEDICT AROLD: The True Story of America's Most Hated Man
JACK KELLY
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Benedict Arnold committed treason—for more than two centuries, that’s all that most Americans have known about him.

Yet Arnold was much more than a turncoat—his achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era. God Save Benedict Arnold tells the gripping story of Arnold’s rush of audacious feats—his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, his Maine mountain expedition to attack Quebec, the famous artillery brawl at Valcour Island, the turning-point battle at Saratoga—that laid the groundwork for our independence.

Arnold was a superb leader, a brilliant tactician, a supremely courageous military officer. He was also imperfect, disloyal, villainous. One of the most paradoxical characters in American history, and one of the most interesting. God Save Benedict Arnold does not exonerate him for his treason—the stain on his character is permanent. But Kelly’s insightful exploration of Arnold’s career as a warrior shines a new light on this gutsy, fearless, and enigmatic figure. In the process, the book offers a fresh perspective on the reasons for Arnold’s momentous change of heart.

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My Review: I love this description of Benedict Arnold:

In many ways, he was a typical American—cocky, restless, grasping, perpetually optimistic, quick to take offense. He was a vivid example of the self-reliance and rugged individualism that would be celebrated by Americans from Ralph Wales Emerson to Ronald Reagan. But self-reliance can beget arrogance.

The man behind the victory detailed in the book reviewed above, and the consequential actions he committed later, comes fully alive in Author Kelly's telling of his subject's character. It's not a biography, in the sense that the focus is not on Arnold the man and his life, but a political biography of the deeds he did and the responses of others that impacted him for good and ill.

I was not at all familiar with the details of the very real grievances Arnold harbored against the men who, I agree, wronged and slighted him. I'm caught up with it now. As a person, the picture of Arnold that I got from the extensive quotations from period sources is of an eighteenth-century Elon Musk, someone who can make enemies much more readily than friends while delivering results. I suspect he was as thin-skinned as he comes across in these pages because he really was a better strategist than tactician.

Ultimately his rage-quit of the Revolutionary War was completely understandable, predictable and preventable. The mediocre men who resented him for his strengths handed him the rope he used to hang himself. His own angry demons led him to use it; what he gained was material, what he lost was the lasting capital of reputation.

As I've come to expect of Author Kelly, he uses period sources galore. I'm impressed with his notes because he is scrupulous in citing the sources of opinions not leaving us to wonder if this is his opinion or something considered to be fact in the period. When it's his opinion, I see it presented as such; when it's his analysis of period opinion the same applies.

I don't suddenly like this traitor to the cause of American independence. I do empathize with him, understand "why" better, and still disapprove of his actions. A man of such tremendous capability and capacity for foresight, undone by the niggling ugliness of his character flaws.

Where have we seen that story repeated here lately....

Not a five-star, blow-me-away read, but a much better than average, really interesting story about an unjustly reviled but still critically flawed man.