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Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War. By Richard M. Ketchum. (New York: Holt, 1997. xii, 545 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-8050-4681-X.)
Richard M. Ketchum is well known, certainly among general readers, for his studies of Revolutionary War campaigns and battles. Whether writing about Bunker Hill (Decisive Day, 1962), Trenton and Princeton (The Winter Soldiers, 1973), or, in this current instance, the campaign and battles of Saratoga, the author concerns himself with telling his story in a dramatic but also faithfully rendered fashion. Narrative history thus is Ketchum's forte; as such, this book represents an extended chronicle of the Revolutionary War's northern campaigns of 17761777 that resulted in the Patriot defeat and capture of Gen. John Burgoyne's army.
Inherent in good narrative history is the capacity to entertain. Few will dispute that Ketchum's book makes for engaging reading, and a particular strength is the author's willingness to...