The day of the underdog

To a British reader who knows the subject, 1776 may seem pretty thin. To one who doesn’t, it may be confusing. It is an account of the military history of a single year of the American revolution, so the ambitions of the author are oddly limited. David McCullough doesn’t explain why the revolution began. He doesn’t explain why the Americans won. He doesn’t even delve much into the origins of the Declaration of Independence, which was proclaimed in 1776, or reveal much about the men who signed it.

But McCullough nevertheless demonstrates, once again, why he is America’s best-selling historian. For his book does lend colour and interest to events that have sadly come to seem dry and dusty to most Americans. Say ‘1776’ to your average Vermonter or your typical Californian, and he will look a little blank and then perhaps remember a dark painting of the Constitutional Congress that he once saw a long time ago, or the preamble to the Declaration (‘We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…’) which he had to memorise in school.