Books, Arts & Manners: Big Country

Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America, by John Keegan (Knopf, 348 PP; $30)

THIS book, if presented as a report to the Prussian General Staff, would probably have got its author cashiered. It is chatty, discursive, and it doesn’t cover what its subtitle—The Wars for North America—says it will. The War of 1812, the Texas war of independence, and the Mexican War do not appear, and of the wars that do— the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution, the Civil War, and the last Indian wars on the Great Plains—only the Revolution is discussed comprehensively. What we really have is Thoughts on America, and Some of Its Battles, and many of the thoughts are indirect. To explain the culture of New France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the author tells us what it was like living for a summer as a teenager in rural France in the 1950s.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America, by John Keegan (Knopf, 348 PP; $30)

THIS book, if presented as a report to the Prussian General Staff, would probably have got its author cashiered. It is chatty, discursive, and it doesn’t cover what its subtitle—The Wars for North America—says it will. The War of 1812, the Texas war of independence, and the Mexican War do not appear, and of the wars that do— the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution, the Civil War, and the last Indian wars on the Great Plains—only the Revolution is discussed comprehensively. What we really have is Thoughts on America, and Some of Its Battles, and many of the thoughts are indirect. To explain the culture of New France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the author tells us what it was like living for a summer as a teenager in rural France in the 1950s.