on historical fiction (II)

It's been close to three months, but I've finally finished the fourth and fifth books on my "Shaara Reading List": Rise to Rebellion & The Glorious Cause. The first covers the events leading up to the siege of Boston, focuses more on the politics and culture of the day than the actual war. The only "bloody" events covered are the Boston Massacre, Gaspee Incident, and the skirmishes at Lexington & Concord followed by the British catastrophe at Bunker's Hill. The Glorious Cause is epic in its scope, seeking to cover the extent of the war following the Continentals. The book covers a span of seven years (1776 to 1783), focusing on such battles as New York, Trenton & Princeton, Brandywine & Germantown, and then Monmouth Court House; and when the war turned south, attention turned from Washington to Nathaniel Greene and his "foraging war" against Cornwallis, focusing on the battles at Cowpens and Guilford Court House. The end of the book followed the siege of Yorktown and Cornwallis' surrender, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783 where the Americans were granted their independence. The next book on the list is Gone for Soldiers, all about the Mexican-American War. I wish Shaara would've written something about the War of 1812, an extension of the Napoleonic Wars; but he just shoots forward to the war that prepped the nation for all the shit that went down in the 1860s. 

And what of the other two books? I've been getting into the Revolutionary War (or, rather, getting back into it), and these two books were read in tandem with Shaara's fiction titles. The Glorious Cause (not to be confused with Shaara's fictional work of the same name) is a long-winded examination of the Revolution, paying most attention to the events leading up to the war and those events following it. Although much of the writing is drab, there are some excellent chapters on the nature of the British and American armies as well as the experience of civilian life "on the home front." The second book, Rebels & Redcoats, follows the course of the war and retells it from diaries, journals, and battlefield reports written by those involved in the campaigns. I enjoyed it far more than the other: my main interest isn't on the politics but the fighting. The politics of the time are best served as background music, in my opinion.