Review: A Fresh-Eyed Tour Through Revolutionary America

In his 2012 page-turner, My American Revolution: A Modern Expedition Through History’s Forgotten Battlegrounds, Robert Sullivan embarks on a journey that will be familiar to the 50-something male of the species, noticing with fresh eyes the historical stuff in his immediate surroundings, steadily expanding the scope and intensity of his search, and ending up in a state so obsessive that he’s sending mirrored sun signals to his blasé teenaged daughter in Brooklyn from George Washington’s winter headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey.

Sullivan surfaces some of the flame keepers all around us: the historical reenactors, but also the motley crew that pays annual homage to the mostly forgotten 11,500-plus Americans killed by Brits on prison ships in the East River, a delightfully deranged artist recreating and illegally launching Benjamin Franklin’s attempted revolutionary submarine, and some pals he dragoons for his own futile attempt to retrace Washington’s inaugural flotilla.

Along the way there are low-key ruminations on the randomness of historical memory (why don’t we universally recognize Washington’s magical Battle of Brooklyn retreat as America’s Dunkirk?), intriguing documentation of extreme weather (the Hard Winter of 1779–80, Sullivan persuasively argues, was the coldest in recorded North American history), and, above all, a constant motivational whisper that it’s never too late, never too embarrassing, to begin seeing and asking naive questions about the inspiring American history surrounding us.