Dallas-bound Rick Atkinson Connects Us With America's Violent Birth in ‘The British Are Coming'

Rick Atkinson is on the phone from New York, answering a question about Revolutionary War sites in that city.From where he's staying near Times Square, he's not far from Kip's Bay, where the British landed in September 1776. There's little to see, though: "A landfill has eaten up what was the bay."Time changes more than landscapes. The language evolves, and even though the people of the era speak English, they can seem remote and "really quite antiquated." On top of that, "They are not as ironic and not as skeptical as we are in the 21st century. And that makes it a little difficult to access them somehow."So how does a writer known for a Pulitzer-winning trilogy about relatively modern World War II bridge the gap to events of more than 240 years ago?Brilliantly, it turns out.  Continue reading...