Dean R. Snow

This detailed history of the battle of Saratoga attempts to capture what happened from multiple perspectives - from British and American, generals and lowly infantry and everyone in between. The author's knowledge of the sources is apparent, and I particularly enjoyed learning about Frederika Riedesel, the wife of a German officer serving in the British army, who kept a journal during the battle as she and her daughters struggled to stay safe and tend to the wounded. Details like this and tales like that of the spy Daniel Taylor give this text an immediacy and help the reader stay engaged in what might be an otherwise dry read. Overall, a good history of the Saratoga campaign, with a heavy military emphasis.… (mehr)

In August 1582 an English sailor, David Ingram, sat before a panel of gentlemen who were very interested in what he had to say. The men included Queen Elizabeth I’s principal secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the wealthy Catholic investor Sir George Peckham. Both were gathering information on whether colonisation of the ‘New World’ could be successful; Ingram, unlike the rest of the room, had actually been to North America.

He also had an incredible story to tell, retold in Dean Snow’s new book. Ingram had joined Sir John Hawkins’ third slaving expedition, which left Plymouth on 2 October 1567. They spent two months on the Guinean coast and departed from what is now Freetown in Sierra Leone on 3 February 1568. After a few months in the Caribbean Sea, stopping at various islands and coastal towns in what is now Venezuela and Colombia, they made their way between the Yucatán Peninsula and Cuba in order to pass out of the Gulf of Mexico and through the Strait of Florida back into the Atlantic.

They did not make it. In September, a fierce hurricane forced the fleet to take harbour at the hostile Spanish port of San Juan de Ulua at Veracruz on the Mexican coast. A deadly battle ensued, and half of Hawkins’ fleet were killed or captured. Once they were out of immediate danger, Hawkins told the remaining men that they had a difficult choice to make: they only had the provisions to keep half the crew alive for their journey across the Atlantic.

In October 1568, David Ingram was one of 112 men left on the shore of Tampico, Mexico, then the coastal territory of the Huastecs. Eleven months later, Ingram and two other survivors, Richard Browne and Richard Twide, were rescued, thousands of miles away, at the mouth of the Saint John River on the Bay of Fundy in Canada. The only record of their experiences are Ingram’s responses to the questions from his 1582 interrogation.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Emilie Murphy is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York.… (mehr)

Why would anyone WANT to be in a War as many of these men do? Is this what humans were created for?

Aside from the battle scenes briefly described by Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman or, from a distance,
by John Adams, I'd had no experience of witnessing a battle in progress.

Tipping Point explores this in great detail,day-by-day, at times, hour-by-hour,
from the perspectives of the opposing leaders, British Burgoyne and Colonial American Gates.

It is a fascinating, face-paced historical approach, with examples for people unfamiliar with military tactics,
as: "The purpose of the light infantry was to support the rifleman in close action."

Ebenezer Wild was my favorite, while Benedict Arnold was a revelation.

Readers may well be sickened by the encouragement of Indian tortures for entertainment.

An Index would be welcome.… (mehr)