This SDG will be based on The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, the second volume of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Rick Atkinson’s, trilogy on the American Revolution. Paul Markowitz and Sam Pryor will jointly coordinate. Markowitz and Pryor led a very successful SDG based on the first volume of Atkinson's American Revolution trilogy, and are confident this second one will be similarly well received. It is intended to be a free-standing SDG with no requirement that members participated in the earlier one.
In this second volume, we will examine the middle years of The Revolution, in which George Washington and his troops struggle to defeat the most powerful armed service in the world. During this period some of the crucial events of the war took place, including Fort Ticonderoga, the Battle of Saratoga, the British occupation of Philadelphia, Valley Forge, Charleston, South Carolina, and the entry of France and Spain into the war. Atkinson is a brilliant and very readable author. The New York Times review of this second volume asserts “There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Atkinson, who is able to transport readers to a different time and place without minimizing the differences of the past from the present.” Atkinson is able to portray not only the major battles and characters on both sides of the Atlantic, but also lesser characters and conflicts, including on the American frontier and the civil wars being waged on the American side. Atkiinson is a master of detail, including those about people, nature, and technology, that help make his story novel and fascinating. The Times review describes this volume as “a gripping, masterfully told story,” “a riveting narrative” and “[a] brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British [that] offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.” The Times also described this volume as "compulsively readable" and included it in its Best Books of 2025.
But Atkinson’s focus is not simply on the war in the colonies, but the way in which the war spread around the world after the French entry in 1778, a conflict reaching from the Caribbean to Europe to India. One aspect, virtually unknown to Americans is the naval and land battle of St Lucia, where 1500 French soldiers died.
This SDG will also be especially timely since 2025 is the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution and interest is likely to be sparked by the attention that will surely attend this occasion.
Week 1:Prologue and Fort Ticonderoga (July-August 1777);
Week 2: New York and Pennsylvania (July-August 1777);
Weekl 3: New York, Bennington and Brandywine (Sept. 1777);
Week 4: Philadelphia and Germantown, Pennsylvania (September and October 1777);
Week 5: Saratoga (September and October 1777);
Week 6: Philadelphia and London (October 1777-February 1778);
Week 7: Paris and Valley Forge (December 1777-June 1778);
Week 8: London, Portsmouth, England and Paris (April-July 1778);
Week 9: Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, New York and Newport, Rhode Island (June-August 1778);
Week 10: New York and Savannah Georgia; Philadelphia (October 1778-February 1779);
Week 11: London, Hampton Roads, Virginia and New York (January-July 1779);
Week 12: The American Frontier and British Home Waters (June-September 1779);
Week 13: Savannah George and Morristown, New Jersey (September 1779-February 1780);
Week 14: Charleston, South Carolina and Epilogue (February-June 1780).
Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780