The British Attack on the Patriot Capital

The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777 represents the latest entry from Casemate Illustrated’s glossy series of books on the Revolutionary War. The reader gets a well-illustrated account of the campaign and the two major battles of Brandywine and Germantown. The book feels excessively padded by the accompanying illustrations and photographs, often of re-enactors. Brandywine, in particular, is covered in a few short paragraphs surrounded by multiple illustrations and photos that fill the pages around the text.

The book shines in its emphasis on the smaller skirmishes and actions of the campaign. The action off Fort Mifflin especially is a combat I had not heard much about before, and Harris presents a fascinating account of it, and of the Battle of the Schuylkill River. Overall, however, I would recommend that readers skip this book and, if they are interested in the topic, instead pick up Osprey Campaign # 176: Philadelphia 1777, which covers the same subject matter in a better and more complete manner.

Our Reviewer: Dr. Stavropoulos received his Ph.D. in History from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2013. Currently, an Adjunct Professor at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, his previous reviews include?Prelude to Waterloo: Quatre Bras: The French Perspective,?Braddock's Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, Italy 1636: Cemetery of Armies, In the Name of Lykourgos, The Other Face of Battle, The Bulgarian Contract, Napoleon’s Stolen Army, In the Words of Wellington’s Fighting Cocks, Chasing the Great Retreat, Athens, City of Wisdom: A History, Commanding Petty Despots, Writing Battles: New Perspectives on Warfare and Memory in Medieval Europe, SOG Kontum, Simply Murder, Soldiers from Experience, July 22: The Civil War Battle of Atlanta, and New York’s War of 1812.