cover image After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence

After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence

Don Glickstein. Westholme, $29.95 (448p) ISBN 978-1-59416-603-7

Glickstein, a journalist with an interest in the American Revolution, takes account of the war’s continuing costs subsequent to the colonists’ September 1781 victory at Yorktown. Though the Battle of Yorktown is generally acknowledged as the end of the Revolutionary War, Glickstein and other historians name a 1783 sea battle between the French and British navies off the coast of India as the war’s final battle. As Glickstein shows, the two years between 1781 and 1783 were marked by multiple military engagements between the British and an array of other forces that had allied themselves with the American rebels. Soldiers and sailors clashed in theaters around the world, including in the Caribbean, the western Mediterranean, and off the coast of India. Glickstein relies on an impressive array of primary sources, which he assiduously mines for the back-and-forth of important battles, the interesting biographical details of the major personalities driving the war, and the tragic costs of the war. The martial aspects of the continuing conflicts are well documented, but Glickstein pays limited attention to the geopolitical forces that drove post-Yorktown conflicts. Glickstein’s thorough research is admirable, but the minutiae of battles and skirmishes can be exhausting. [em](Nov.) [/em]