"We meant well to the Americans -- just to punish them with a few bloody noses, and then to make laws for the happiness of both countries," said George III. The ensuing uprising led to the creation of the United States -- this extraordinary country, this amalgam of people from every corner of the earth. Robert Harvey, whose most recent book Liberators cast a new light on the struggle against colonialism in South America, challenges many conventional views of the American Revolution -- why it happened, who was winning and when, who was for it and who was not, the characters of the principal protagonists, and the role of Native Americans and slaves. Harvey creatively studies this seminal event in the making of the United States, taking a penetrating look at a war that was both vicious and confused, bloody and protracted, and marred on both sides by incompetence and bad faith. He underscores the effect of the Revolution on the colonists in America, and those at home in Britain -- the country that the colonists had left behind, and to which (not so widely known) many returned. The result is an extraordinarily fascinating and thoroughly readable work.

Originally published: London : John Murray, 2001.