Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent... and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong

Journalist Thompson (Born on a Mountaintop) mixes playful imagination and solid research in this episodic romp through the Revolutionary War. Among other turning points, Thompson highlights the Powder Alarm, a precursor to the confrontations at Lexington and Concord; the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was actually fought on Breed’s Hill, where “building a redoubt... was like flipping the bird at the British Army”; and British general John Burgoyne’s defeat in the Battle of Saratoga, “the Mother of All Turning Points.” Elsewhere, Thompson recounts the Battle of Kings Mountain near the border of North and South Carolina, an “out-of-nowhere victory” for the patriots that “drove a stake through British hopes of mobilizing loyalists to win the war,” and the crucial role played by the Marbleheaders, an interracial regiment of Massachusetts sailors and fishermen, in the battles of Brooklyn and Trenton. Throughout, Thompson enriches his well-chosen primary sources with entertaining profiles of museum curators and historical reenactors and down-home turns of phrase (“you can’t swing a dead cat by the tail in Concord without hitting the home of a literary icon”). The result is an eclectic yet cogent and cohesive account of the American Revolution. (Mar.)