New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville will host a book talk and signing with local author Robert L. O’Connell on Saturday, June 15, at 4 p.m.
O’Connell’s latest book, Revolutionary: George Washington at War, was released from Random House this spring. This event is free to attend.
“Given the amount of ink spilled over the years, it is not easy to offer a fresh look at George Washington’s leadership role during the war for American independence. But Robert L. O’Connell has done it in Revolutionary. The title announces the insight, which is the otherwise uncontrollable political and military energies released by the war that Washington was able to orchestrate.” —Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Dialogues: The Founders and Us
About the Book: In a bold reappraisal of Washington as a young soldier destined to be a legendary general, an acclaimed military historian brings to life the man who took on the British and through his leadership came to define the American character.
How did George Washington become an American icon? O’Connell, bestselling author of Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman, introduces us to Washington before he was Washington: a young soldier, champing at the bit for a commission in the British army, frustrated by his position as a minor Virginia aristocrat. Fueled by ego, he led a disastrous expedition in the Seven Years War, but then the commander grew up. We witness George Washington take up politics and join Virginia’s colonial governing body, the House of Burgesses, where he became ever more attuned to the injustices of life under the British Empire and the paranoid, revolutionary atmosphere of the colonies. When war seemed inevitable, he was the right man—the only man—to lead the nascent American army.
In his trademark conversational, witty style, O’Connell has written a compelling reexamination of General Washington and his revolutionary world. He cuts through enigma surrounding Washington to show how the general made all the difference and became a new archetype of revolutionary leader in the process.
About the Author: O’Connell was educated at Colgate University and the University of Virginia, where he received a Ph.D. in history. He worked for three decades in the U.S. Intelligence Community, before becoming a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He has two grown children and lives with his wife in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of nine published books, including The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic and Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman, which were both New York Times bestsellers.
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Chris Graham
