The Unvanquished

By Howard Fast

Book Overview

Originally published in 1942, The Unvanquished is the story of the Continental Army and George Washington in the desperate early months when the American Revolution faced defeat and disintegration. The book begins with the retreat across Manhattan's East River that saved the Continental Army after the Battle of Long Island. It ends with Washington's recrossing of the Delaware in the daring 1776 Christmas Eve raid on the Hessian camp at Trenton.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563245957
• ISBN13: 9781563245954
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

A tale for out times

You may find the prose a little bit too much like a Bible story, and the black and white moral clarity a little out of kilter with our present-day tendency to equivalency and pandering. But this book hits the mark in its ability to depict a great man triumphing after going through some really tough times. George Washinginton is the man, and the time is the summer and fall of 1776 - not a good stretch for the Revolution. Mr. Fast gives us an inside look at what Washington might have been thinking as he literally drags his army in retreat from one disaster after another, from Brooklyn Heights, to Manhattan, to New Jersey - with the British army and Hessian mercenaries breathing down his neck, soldiers deserting on a grand scale, fellow generals looking for ways to stab him in the back, and all the while not getting much support from the Continental Congress. The truthfulness of the portrait is striking, we see Washington is not necessarily the demi-God we have grown up to believe in, but a simple man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, grasping for a way out, as he watches his army disintegrating like "grains of sand falling through his hands." Fast also gives us facinating insights into characters, such as Nathan Hale, Gen. Henry Knox, Alexander Hamilton, and others. Mr. Fast wrote this historical novel in the early dark days of WWII to rally his countryman by illustrating that tough times weren't new to America. If you think you're having a bad day, or that you live in tough times, or that America is in a jam it can't get out of, this book is a jolt and a tonic. Washington retreated, but believed he would ultimately win. As the British, Japanese, and Germans learned - don't ever count us out.