Publisher's Weekly Review
A nostalgic, witty, and always informative topographic retrospective of the sites pertinent to the American Revolution takes Vogue contributing editor and journalist Sullivan (The Thoreau You Don't Know) to the action seen by the middle colonies especially-New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Years of reflective walks and "site-inspired epiphanies" inform Sullivan's research, as he traced Washington's army crossing the Delaware, marching to engage the British at the battles of Trenton and Princeton, and into the winter refuge at Morristown, in the Watchung Mountains. In the second part, Sullivan discourses by turns on the seasons of the revolution, not in any chronological fashion, e.g., spring 1789 marked the inauguration of the new president in a vastly changing downtown Manhattan, which Sullivan reached by his own personal inaugural barge from Elizabeth, N.J., to Wall Street; summer sounded the anniversary of the disastrous rout at the Battle of Brooklyn; autumn ushered a rueful time of remembrance for soldiers and prisoners; and winter brings to mind the appalling hard winter at Valley Forge endured by the army. As infatuated by later decades' of monuments, statues, and artist's renderings of the revolutionary landscape as he is by the actual history, Sullivan delights in deep digressions into personal moments of discovery, such as viewing Larry Rivers's controversial Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Museum of Modern Art or coming upon the lists of evolving early Dutch and British markets published by butcher turned street historian Thomas F. DeVoe. Sullivan's historic anecdotes form a loose-limbed, irreverent, surprising take on American history, most fun in the footnotes. Agent: Eric Simonoff. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In a roving, digressive memoir, Vogue contributor Sullivan (The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant, 2009, etc.) traces Revolutionary War history in and around New York and New Jersey. Looking down from the top of the Empire State Building, the author saw a war landscape he believed to be neglected. Inspired to bring the Revolutionary War history of his hometown into his own present, Sullivan embarked on a long, twisting journey. Though his motives were somewhat muddled from the beginning, his recreational, relaxed plan was to cross the Delaware River, venture into the mountains, and finish the journey by visiting sites and memories inside New York City. Readers are sure to learn plenty from his travels, including little-celebrated battles and long-forgotten soldiers whose stories never made history textbooks. Throughout, the author meanders through his recounting of history, never ignoring a possible detour. In one instance, the fact that a building bearing a Revolutionary War plaque now houses a Trader Joe's store leads to a footnote about colonists boycotting imported English goods and then ends in an anecdote about the kidnapping of Theo Albrecht, the now-deceased former owner of Trader Joe's. Much of the book reads like a journal edited to add more information rather than to streamline thoughts. Considering Sullivan's obvious passion for many of the tangential subjects--associated art and literature, for example--a book of essays might have been a more appropriate project for a general audience. Tailor-made for trivia lovers and readers who don't mind the scenic route. Those looking for a more straightforward narrative are likely to be frustrated.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and ended at Yorktown in Virginia. For the first half of the conflict, however, some of the most critical battles were fought in the Middle Colonies, especially in New York and New Jersey. As Sullivan, a contributing editor of Vogue, indicates, some of the sites of those battles can be seen from the top floor of the Empire State Building. In an effort to make the rivers talk, he traversed many of the sites, often on foot. The result is this engaging, humorous, and often surprising series of personal reflections upon critical episodes in the birth of a nation. Sullivan combines solid historical knowledge, sensitivity to the physical landscape, and a wry sense of the absurdities inherent in mythmaking to provide a thoroughly enjoyable and original perspective on our revolution.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IMAGINE Herodotus on steroids, not rambling in a roughly straight line from Cyrus to Xerxes, but diverging onto untrodden paths that transmogrify into fluvial streams of consciousness. That sort of detour through history pretty much sums up the quixotic scenic route Robert Sullivan travels in his winsome book "My American Revolution." Following up on captivating volumes about the New Jersey Meadowlands, rats and cross-country excursions, Sullivan has written a provocative Baedeker for a landscape of loss, Gen. George Washington's route from Brooklyn to "the very first Middle America" and back - the states that, Richard Brookhiser once said, can be traversed by jet plane on the New York-Washington shuttle in 20 minutes, but where the American Revolution raged for much of its seven years. We may never learn for certain what Sullivan himself is revolting against, but it's a good bet that convention and linearity are among his targets. He approaches them with gusto, not only chronicling reenactments of "Washington Crossing the Delaware," but embarking on his own 33-mile march to Morristown, N.J., in the Continental Army's footsteps Mid engaging a retinue of game wingmen in replicating Washington's triumphal return to New York by barge from Elizabeth. "Everything can seem so clear-cut about the history of the Revolution until you get on the ground, at which point everything gets muddier," he writes. Along the way, we learn that the Battle of Long Island (which borough boosters later appropriated as the Battle of Brooklyn) began over watermelons; that the German-born artist Emanuel Leutze's original painting immortalizing the Delaware crossing hung in the Bremen Art Museum and was destroyed by British bombers in 1942; and that one of the perennial re-enactors of the crossing (which, for the record, was from Pennsylvania to New Jersey) was Jack Kelly, Grace's brother and an Olympic rower. Sullivan's travels (a map would have been helpful) are recounted in appetizing bite-size morsels, often delivered with knowing asides to his reading audience and accompanied by extended footnotes. No pebble is left unturned. In his note on sources regarding John Honeyman, who may or may not have been a Colonial spy, Sullivan volunteers that Honeyman's New Jersey house was near the home of George Harsh, whose exploits as a World War II prisoner of war partly inspired the film "The Great Escape" - as well as a riveting half-page biography by Sullivan. Rarely are an author's self-deprecating and sometimes sheepish introspections (on his aching back, say) and virtually irrelevant digressions (a painting of Gowanus Bay, we're told, is available on the Web site of the state library of Tasmania) so beguiling. Nor are most families of a boots-on-the-ground observer so forbearing. During one escapade, his daughter stands guard in the music room of a school in Brooklyn while the author positions himself in the Watchung Mountains of New Jersey with a Boy Scout mirror to replicate a Revolutionary scout's alarm. "Looking out the window at a distant hill where your father was signaling from a Revolutionary War vantage point and not seeing the signal," Sullivan allows, "is not the kind of thing that wins you respect among your middle school peers." Sullivan's approach is so engaging that readers who don't give a hoot about his tangential diversions - or even about the basic conceit of the book - will become transported in a time warp where anachronisms, except for more incongruous markers like sewage treatment plants and portable toilets, genially coexist. ("I was with a philosopher, as it happened, a friend with a day job as an art mover; we had to get to the American lines in time for him to get to work." Or: "We got back in the car and parked on the side of the road, roughly equidistant between the house that wasn't there and the tavern that no longer existed.") We share in his frustrations and occasional moments of exhilaration and in his uncanny knack for transforming the mundane into the seemingly profound. When the woman at a farm stand tells his friend Brian that yes, the doughnuts they ordered were made earlier that day, he asks how many minutes ago. "The woman looked at him. 'I don't know how many minutes,' she said." "My American Revolution" gives geography and meteorology overdue recognition as historical catalysts, pointing out, for example, that strategically placed 18th-century signal points metamorphosed into cold war missile sites and finally into 9/11 memorials, in a trajectory that suggests a continuum. A revolution, after all, is something that orbits, or comes full circle, which Sullivan eventually does in a world "before straight lines ruled the day." The reader more or less returns to the starting point, but with a brand-new perspective. What a trip! Sam Roberts, urban affairs correspondent at The Times, is the author of "The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case."
Library Journal Review
Sullivan (contributing editor, Vogue; Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants) directs his attention here to the American Revolution through a mix of autobiography, history, and historical memory. His "revolution" is centered on the Middle Colonies-framed largely by what can be seen from the top of the Empire State Building. His approach is wistful, taking in painter Emanuel Leutze's famous Washington Crossing the Delaware, St. John Terrell's reenactment of that event, Thomas F. DeVoe's (a "New York butcher turned historian") massive historical research, philosopher Duke Riley's submarine excursion, the Battle of Brooklyn, the prison ship Jersey, and poet Philip Freneau's death. Interwoven are Sullivan's efforts to reestablish historical sites and reenact historical events (including signaling from the Watchung Mountains in New Jersey) and his reflections on themes ranging from the importance of place, weather, and season for historical understanding to the multiple meanings of fatherhood. VERDICT This book will be entertaining to history buffs, especially those familiar with the American Revolution and/or with the history of New York City and its environs. [See Prepub Alert, 4/15/2012.]-Mark G. Spencer, Brock Univ., St. Catharines, Ontario (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.