The American Revolution

 

This started with the Fallout TV series. I had never played any of the games in the Fallout series, but watched the first season (and subsequently the second season) of the TV series because of how well it was received. I really enjoyed the show (the second season was a bit of a step down, in my opinion), and decided to play Fallout 4 the game. Fallout 4 takes place in the Commonwealth in what is present day Massachusetts, including the city of Boston. The game features the Freedom Trail and other Revolutionary War sites, thus sparking my interest. We even traveled to Boston to walk the trail and see the sites for ourselves, and really enjoyed it. 

I started reading the Rick Atkinson book The British Are Coming and learned a lot, but got bogged down by the complex details of the war. The book is 777 pages on the Kindle, and I made it to about page 220. I'm most interested in the pre-war activities that took place in Boston, and the activities that took place at the beginning of the war. What I learned from this book was that this was not a war between what would become the United States and Britain. This was a war between those two countries, and also included France (and what would become Canada), Spain, Germany, and Native Americans (probably other nations as well), and took place over multiple states and countries. Because of the number of entities involved, and the sheer size of the location of the war, this is a complicated war to summarize, hence the length of Atkinson's book.

Around the time that I decided to quit Atkinson's book, Ken Burns' The American Revolution was debuting. I decided to forgo reading the rest of the book and instead switch to the documentary. The six episode series did a good job of summarizing the complexity of the Revolutionary War. Like the book, I thought the pace was a bit slow at times, but this was mostly because of my lack of interest in specific battle details. As the war progressed, it involved so many nations and was spread out over such a large area, it became difficult to wrap your mind around what was going on. I think this is partially why the United States won the war. After years of dragging on and on, the British suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Yorktown, and just like that the war was over. 

Each episode was approximately 2 hours long, making the entire series around 12 hours in duration. Despite that length, I was able to get through the series more quickly than if I had read the 777 page book. This isn't to discredit the book, however. Like most book-to-TV or movie transitions, the book is able to go into much more depth and detail, if you're interested in additional information. Interestingly, Rick Atkinson is featured quite heavily in the show as an author & historian, so I got to hear his viewpoints on many of the war's topics. With that being said, I was satisfied with what I learned about the war from watching the show. After finishing the show, I've become satisfied with my Revolutionary War kick. I feel like I've learned what I've wanted to learn about this piece of history.