Book Review: 1776

Thanks to Guadspot for lending me my latest and final summer read for 2005. It was a very quick read and I thoroughly enjoyed it much like another McCullough book I read earlier this year, "John Adams".
It is really amazing to me what I have either forgotten or never learned in my elementary or even high school education. So much of the information in this book was new to me even though by all rights I should have known it already. Several of the more famous battles and experiences during 1776 were familiar to me and by reading this book I now have a much deeper understanding of what our forefathers went through.
Even up till the final pages of this book I was wondering to myself, "Self, how in the heck did we ever defeat the British and gain our independence?" Watching, with my mind's eye, as Washington et al went through defeat after defeat and retreat after retreat it is absolutely a miracle that we went on to win the revolutionary war. There is no doubt in my mind after reading about only the first year in this 7 year travail that God was with us and destiny was on our side in defeating British tyranny.
Putting myself in their shoes, even though many of them fought through bitter cold and horrible conditions shoeless, I wonder if I would have not given up after oh, say the 7th or 8th major defeat/retreat in a row starting with the Battle of Brooklyn in mid 1776.
McCullough does an amazing job of putting you in Washington's war council room and out in the field with the continental army. Even putting a great perspective on the brash and arrogance of the British Generals. They had every right to be arrogant about their situation. No one in their right mind would be anything other than arrogant if you had a force so overwhelmingly greater than your opponent. It is clear that God made sure that all of us studying the history of our land would be able to see without doubt that it was by his providential hand that America was brought to pass.
Would to God that we can keep his providential hand active in our trying times. For surely the history books in 200 years will read every bit as much interesting as this book has.