![]() ![]() His portrait of the Virginian who led them is much more ambivalent. McCullough writes with obvious warmth about flinty New Englanders. Charles Lee, Washington’s second-in-command, is described by a contemporary as a ‘great sloven, wretchedly profane,’ and so ill tempered that ‘his Indian name was Boiling Water.’ In Massachusetts, we meet Washington’s idiosyncratic staff, including Nathanael Greene, a Quaker foundryman and limping asthmatic with one eye clouded by a smallpox inoculation. ![]() “McCullough deftly sketches characters with a few quotations and details, humanizing a cast of thousands. The result is a lucid and lively work that will engage both Revolutionary War bores and general readers who have avoided the subject since their school days. Another surprise is that David McCullough, best known for Rushmore-size biographies of underrated presidents, wrestles America’s founding year into a taut 294 pages of text, describing the trying months that followed the heroics at Lexington, Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. ![]()
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