The American Revolution was a war, but it was also a time, a span of
history, in which some people fought, but most just lived. They thought,
acted, worked, raised families, worshipped, built, sold, bought, and
tried to live as best they could in a time of hope, anxiety, despair,
loss, gain, and, above all, disruption. In the Time of the Revolution is
a popular, single-volume history of the American Revolution, 1775 to
1783, an intensely active, exciting, and critical span of time in North
America. It began with a lopsided skirmish at Lexington, Massachusetts,
culminated militarily in a major amphibious campaign mounted by a large
Franco-American army against British army and naval forces at Yorktown,
Virginia in 1781, and then passed through two more years of desultory
combat and cruel fights between diehard Loyalists and vengeful Patriots
before ending in the Treaty of Paris. During these eight years in an
America that was a collection of young towns on the edge of a vast
wilderness, the break-up with the mother country was the central fact of
life.