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Rating: 
Summary: Warfare in the Wilderness
Review: I enjoyed this book with a few exceptions.The "Battle of Grant's Hill" during the Forbes Campaign to take French held Fort Duquesne was poorly researched.The book states that the British destroyed several blockhouses around the fort prior to the battle,when in reality,they only set fire to one which was eventually extinguished.There are several other errors that a little research would have corrected.Otherwise,not a bad book on the F&I War.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overall
Review: I found this book to provide an excellent general overview of an often overlooked period of American colonial history. I am bemused by the earlier poster Mr. Westbrook's comments regarding the Joshua Goodenough account (which, by the way, forms a fraction of the book's content). The source for this is listed as the Massachusetts Historical Society, which cites this under the Library of Congress heading "Subject(s): United States--History--French and Indian War, 1755-1763-Personal narratives", so clearly the claim for its being fiction is not universally known. (Remington himself claims that it is a real letter.) The surname Goodenough has a well-established Anglo-Saxon history and can be found even today in both England and the US, so by itself is not really sufficient proof of an 19th (or 18th!) century literary joke. More thoughtful commentary and less of what sounds like backbiting would be welcome in these reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overall
Review: This disappointing book comes from the usually reliable Osprey, but the editors and fact-checkers must have on holiday when this came through. The illustrations are muddy, and many are printed backwards! The real howler is that the author accepts at face-value the account of one of Robert Rogers' supposed Rangers, "Joshua Goodenough" (get it?), but written by artist Frederic Remington for Harper's Magazine in 1897. This is certainly NOT an "Essential History" from Osprey. Save your money for the ones that are, and there are plenty of those.
Rating: 
Summary: Unreliable
Review: This disappointing book comes from the usually reliable Osprey, but the editors and fact-checkers must have on holiday when this came through. The illustrations are muddy, and many are printed backwards! The real howler is that the author accepts at face-value the account of one of Robert Rogers' supposed Rangers, "Joshua Goodenough" (get it?), but written by artist Frederic Remington for Harper's Magazine in 1897. This is certainly NOT an "Essential History" from Osprey. Save your money for the ones that are, and there are plenty of those.
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