| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Washington's Crossing. By David Hackett Fischer. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xii, 564 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-19-517034-2.)

With the publication of Paul Revere's Ride in 1994, David Hackett Fischer established himself as one of that rare breed of academic historians capable of winning over popular audiences. Much of what made that earlier book so appealing is evident in Washington's Crossing: a rapid-fire narrative built around an episode enshrined in American folklore, engaging thumbnail sketches of the major players, a willingness to expose conventional wisdom to the harsh light of archival research. "Formulaic" is too negative a term to apply to Fischer's telling of the story, but any reader of Paul Revere's Ride will immediately recognize the narrative strategy employed here, from the careful deconstruction of the iconic image of the event (in this case, Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware) that opens the book to the multitude of appendices that closes it.

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