The War for America, 1775–1783 by Piers Mackesy

“[A] brilliant, classic history of the American Revolution. . . . I hadn’t known about The War for America until earlier this year, when it was recommended by friends steeped in strategic thinking. . . . Mackesy’s book was first published in 1964 and is still in print in paperback. He calls it a ‘strategic history,’ which he describes as the no-man’s-land between a diplomatic history of a war and a narrative history of its battles. It is the single best such work that I ever have encountered.”—Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Book World