Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America

by John Keegan

Book Overview

At once a grand tour of the battlefields of North America and an unabashedly personal tribute to the military prowess of an essentially unwarlike people. - " A] magisterial narrative history, enriched... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067942413X
• ISBN13: 9780679424130
• Release Date: May 1996
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 348 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, but not standard Keegan

Readers who have never had the privilege and good fortune to read John Keegan's histories should probably start with other works by the author. Fields of Battle covers notable conflicts on North American shores, beginning with the colonization of Canada by the French, and moving on to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and conflicts with the Indians. What makes Fields of Battle special, however, is that it is a profoundly personal journey by the author across battlegrounds and historic locations throughout the United States. Keegan employs his extensive traveling and historical erudition to explore his own spiritual and cultural identity -- that of British historian in love with America. In bringing his own complex perspective as a "foreigner" to our shores, Keegan shows us what we didn't know about ourselves. Keegan's account of conflicts with Native Americans is relatively uncharitable to them. Readers who are accustomed to simplistic, typically Leftist whitewashings of the often stark brutality and recalcitrance of Indian tribes will find this history distinctly unpalatable. To his credit, Keegan does not shy away from describing American mistakes, but holds the perspective that there always was, is, and should be room in North America for both populations. Finally, to readers insufficiently acquainted with the author's other writing to give him the respect he merits, Fields of Battle may come off as excessively sentimental and wistful. For those not in that group, Fields of Battle is yet another history by the preeminent John Keegan to savor and add to your book case.

Utterly Beautiful Traveling Book

This is my traveling book. I bring it with me anytime I go on a long trip, precisely for the way that Keegan writes about his travels in the U.S. It is a change in style for him, yes; however, it's just as good as his normal style, albeit in a different way. For those who haven't read it, it basically goes over four major battles in American/Canadian history...The Plains of Abraham, Yorktown, the Seven Days, and Custer's Last Stand. The latter, as someone else mentioned, I thought was the most useful, simply because I knew very few of the details involved. Yorktown I thought was the weakest, though it was also the broadest, discussing the end of the Revolutionary War.If you get a chance, get this book. Maybe you should preview it from the library at first, but I found it a very, very good book. I'm just upset I didn't get the hardcover.

Contains errors, plus some incredibly lucid prose!

With a novelist's eye and a cultural anthropologist's sensitivity, ''Fields of Battle'' includes one fascinating description after another of how Americans do things differently from the English or French -- in designing military cemeteries, locating military academies, organizing university life. It also bears witness to what were, in retrospect, revolutionary changes in American life over the past 40 years. The substance of the book, however, lies in its account of wars that are often forgotten by modern Americans, with their shallow sense of history (we do not live in time) -- those fought on our soil in the 18th and 19th centuries. North America, Mr. Keegan says, is ''a continent of conquest,'' the evidence for which lies in the strings of old forts sprinkled throughout the nation. ''Fields of Battle'' includes vivid descriptions of conquerors who needed to know the land to conquer it, and so were often map makers like Samuel de Champlain or surveyors like George Washington. Its focus, however, is on fields, not faces -- on geography that explains how specific battles were fought and why in war after war fighting recurred in much the same places: near Chesapeake Bay, for example, or along the water route linking the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers via Lake Champlain. Mr. Keegan retells some often-told tales with great skill. He describes the exploration and conquest of French Canada, as well as the entire French and Indian War, in one chapter. In another he covers the Revolutionary War, and summarizes its causes more accurately in a few lines than some writers have done in entire books. ''Fortifying the Confederacy,'' on the Civil War, concentrates on Gen. George McClellan's ''Peninsular Campaign'' of 1862, in part because that campaign revisited sites from the Revolutionary War. The best of these military accounts, however, is the last -- on the wars with the Plains Indians, and particularly George Custer's ''last stand'' in 1876. Mr. Keegan holds readers at the edge of their seats watching Custer ride across the crest of hills lining the valley of the Little Bighorn, then order his men to form a front facing the Indians swarming toward them from all sides.

Wow. An historian who writes with soul.

Exceptionally well-written. The current 2 1/2 stars rating is an injustice to this wonderful book. Keegan is one of the great non-fiction writers of the century.

Keegan's prose is as readible as ever.

The first chapter is worth the price of the book if you like to read complementary things about the USA. Keegan's British background, history profession, and numerous visits to the United States enable him to describe North American battle fields and the participants as no other writer can.