Champlain’s Dream: The European Founding of North America

David Hackett Fischer writes of Samuel de Champlain, who founded French Quebec four hundred years ago, that “[Champlain] wrote thousands of pages about what he did, but only a few words about who he was.” It is well for our own and future generations that Fischer, in his Champlain’s Dream, has now splendidly written about both the admirable man and his remarkable deeds

1776

David McCullough has written yet another enormously enjoyable and informative narrative history. Compared to his monumental Pulitzer Prize–winning biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, 1776 is only a snapshot of a crucial moment in time, although it is every bit as engaging. It covers the events of the seventeen months between King George III’s October 1775 announcement to Parliament of unrelenting war against his American colonies and the arrival in Britain of the news of George Washington’s victory at Trenton in March 1777. A story of overcoming adversity, 1776 focuses on the early battles of the War of Independence, which were mainly retreats for the ragged and often exhausted Continental Army

The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War

“It is the nature of great events to obscure the great events that came before them.” This memorable phrasing begins nineteenth-century historian Francis Parkman’s masterwork on the French and Indian War, Montcalm and Wolfe. One hundred twenty years later, Fred Anderson’s The War That Made Amer- ica clears away with lucid prose and ef- fective narrative style the obscurity that has veiled the French and Indian War. Described as the “first world war” by Winston Churchill, it was the fourth in a series of six wars fought between En- gland and France and their various allies between 1689 and 1815

The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in theMexican War, 1846–1848

The English novelist C. S. Forester once observed, concerning soldiers in war, that it was a “coincidence that when destiny had so much to do she should find tools of such high quality ready to hand.” This comment aptly describes the human story line woven throughout The Training Ground, Martin Dugard’s spirited and nearly blow-by-blow ac- count of the major battles of the Mexi- can War. Dugard, author of The Last Voyage of Columbus (2005), has written a robust narrative of this conflict de- scribing President James K. Polk’s am- bition to expand the territory of the United States

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers

In this vivid and fact-filled historical ac- count of aerial combat, Daniel Ford completely updates and revises his 1991 work describing the extraordinary ac- complishments of the pilots and sup- port crews of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) in the earliest days of World War II. Ford—a writer for the Wall Street Journal, a recre- ational pilot, and author of Incident at Muc Wa (made into the Burt Lancaster movie Go Tell the Spartans)—has used recent American, British, and Japanese sources to both improve and shorten the original book. Famously known as the “Flying Tigers,” the AVG was a group of American volunteers recruited by Claire Chennault from the aviation ranks of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Ma- rine Corps to help protect China and key areas of Southeast Asia from unre- lenting attack by the Japanese army air force

Flying Black Ponies,

Flying Black Ponies is an effective combi- nation of combat narrative, squadron history, and personal memoir, telling the story of Light Attack Squadron 4 (VAL 4, or the “Black Ponies”), a naval aviation squadron stationed in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. During most of the war, the U.S. Navy made an intense effort with its Mobile Riverine Force to interdict enemy arms and supplies that flowed, primarily from Cambodia, across the Mekong Delta into the area sur- rounding Saigon. Kit Lavell’s book is a readable account of the Black Ponies’ im- portant role in this hazardous interdic- tion campaign

His Excellency: George Washington,

Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004. 564pp. $35 Wiencek, Henry. An Imperfect God: George Wash- ington, His Slaves and the Creation of America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 404pp.$26 Our nation’s first commander in chief, George Washington, is back in the news. At Mount Vernon they are striv- ing to recast Washington’s image as America’s first action hero, while also sponsoring a high-tech, computer- driven rejuvenation of him to figure out exactly what he looked like at ages nine- teen, forty-five, and fifty-seven