"None of Them Seriously Consider Much of the Latest Research"

"Ellis, Beeman, and Philbrick treat the arming of slaves as a footnote, if at all. In a sense they have no choice, since they focus on a few brief episodes in the 1770s, when the war was largely confined to the north. But the conflict drastically transformed when it shifted to the south, in 1778. The new books virtually ignore the region, instead concentrating on a handful of northern events that are forced to hold the entire meaning of the Revolution. A longer view that included the final war years, and by necessity the south, would have revealed a much more complicated conflict than anything like the Battle of Bunker Hill can shoulder."

In Slate, Eric Herschthal reviews three new books about the American Revolution.