Customer Reviews
Happy Homemaker of Oregon, 12/28/2011
Being young and naive the first time I read this book, it took me a while to figure out that when he said, "True to the Old Flag", Henty meant the English flag. Naturally, being a Brit, Henty doesn't look too kindly on the ungrateful rebels who turned their backs on the country who gave them birth just because they had to pay a few taxes. Although this isn't the most the most exciting of all the Henty books, I really like it because there just aren't that many history books that take the British position on this war. After all, we won. For instance, I'd always read about how smart the Americans were for hiding behind trees to fire instead of standing in a line of bright red for all the world to shoot. From the view of a Brit, however, they were cowards and not men!
For any scholar of the the American Revolution, this book is worth your time.
Depends on Your Point of View....
Sincerelyornot of Oregon, 10/13/2011
G A Henty is a writer with a distinctive style and fairly narrow subject matter. This is the book to read for the battle details, the gun details, and the boy-scout-oh-cool-he's-sleeping-on-the-ground-moments. Whether this is the preferred source material depends on your point of view.
Personally, I find that biographies, when well written, can be the most entertaining sources of all. Also, I don't care what kind of gun you used (musket versus shotgun etc), or that you're a boy scout before they were cool. Politics and daily life and lots of rabbit trails are my idea of a good biogr- I mean, uh, book. I read this book because I had to, not because I enjoyed it.
There was one redeeming quality to this book: its written from the British perspective, with the colonial militia as the bad guys. That was fairly unique in my experience at the time and, I have to say, made the book much less boring because yo never knew what they were going to think of any given scenario. Overall, its a good book, if you like that sort of thing.