The first one-volume survey of the American Revolution that is both objective and comprehensive this outstanding narrative history traces the growth of a conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence. Offering a spirited chronicle of the war itself -- the campaigns and strategies the leaders on both sides the problems of fielding and sustaining an army and of maintaining morale -- Stokesbury also brings the reader to the Peace of Paris in 1783 and into the miltarily exhausted financially ruined yet victorious United States as it emerged to create a workable national system.