319 pp. The story of how the ragged Continental Army, in despair after almost six years of hunger and defeat, joined with its new French allies in a lightning stroke that brought victory within two months. "An old hand that has lost none of its professional skill uses official records and the words of participants on both sides to retell the perennially fascinating story of Cornwallis at Yorktown (his third book at that site). The drama opens at the conference on the Harlem River between Washington and that ""remarkable soldier,"" the French general Rochambeau, who persuaded him to lead the joint armies to Virginia where Cornwallis, reeling from his disastrous Carolina ""victories,"" had gone to earth at Yorktown. The reader follows them, hearing the bickerings between the dapper French soldiers and the hard-bitten Americans, admiring Washington, huge on his big horse, meeting the amazing boy-general Lafayette. At Yorktown he watches Cornwallis erecting his massive fortifications, is present at the naval Battle of the Capes, and finally sees a drummer boy mount a parapet and beat a long-unheard call to parley prefacing the British surrender. Obligatory for the Revolutionary War buff and for any reader who likes to witness history as it happened." Keywords: Revolutionary War Yorktown American History Military
