God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man

Historian Kelly (Band of Giants) endeavors in this novelistic biography to present a fuller picture of Benedict Arnold, the Continental Army officer who betrayed the American Revolution. A brash and moody military strategist, Arnold came under the admiring eye of George Washington after a victory over the British at Fort Ticonderoga in New York and an unsuccessful expedition to capture Quebec. But, lacking a “gentleman’s” background, Arnold never found the wealth or military honors he desperately sought. Wounded at the battle of Saratoga, he spent a painful convalescence as the military governor of Philadelphia that ended in a court martial for financial corruption. Disillusioned with the revolution, Arnold began funneling information to the British. Assigned a command at West Point, he planned to surrender it without a fight, but missives detailing the plot were intercepted. After serving out the rest of the war on the British side, he spent his postwar exile in England and Canada. The narrative is at its best when detailing the grim realities of 18th-century warfare; the account of the Quebec winter expedition is particularly riveting. Yet Kelly’s analysis of Arnold’s treachery, which casts him as “an enigma, his motives lost in the impenetrable alchemy of the human heart,” doesn’t come to grips with his complexities. Revolutionary War buffs will enjoy the skillful narration, but there are few new insights here. (Dec.)