Reminder: If you’re reading this in your email, you have to go to dpauthor.com and click on the Speaking of Which tab in order to view the actual blog post with the featured image.

For anyone who may be interested, you can view an image of the preliminary cover design for my next literary enterprise at the bottom of this post.

The focus of the book’s content will be twofold:

(1) to explain and analyze twelve significant choices by General Washington that preserved the Continental Army and shaped how the American rebellion survived over the course of eight long years; and

(2) to place these decisions within the larger context of an array of factors that impinged on the outcome of the war for independence, including British logistical and administrative weaknesses, the challenges of distance and terrain, growing American military competence, civilian resistance, and the decisive impact of foreign intervention.

The purpose of this work is to explain how Washington’s judgment and the limits of British power determined the outcome of the Revolutionary War. Along the way, the reader will (hopefully) be treated to a measured reassessment of the ongoing historiographic debate over the question of Washington’s indispensability and a credible analysis of whether it was ever truly possible for Great Britain to win a military or political victory that would have restored the status quo ante in colonial America before the Revolutionary spirit embedded itself “in the minds and hearts of the people” (to quote John Adams).

I hope to submit the manuscript to Brookline Books (an imprint of Casemate Publishers) early next year, in which case I believe it will be released in the second half of 2027—perhaps as early as August.

Stay tuned, and have a great semiquincentennial 4th!

dp