Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury USA, and author John Ferling for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

The education I received growing up just outside of New York City would seem to be a pretty good one. Yet, as an adult, I am finding out that there are many subjects we just skimmed the surface of. This is why when people talk about things that they learned in high school, they don’t have that deeper understanding that comes with adding context and maybe a number of other facts that are ignored or glossed over.

In the case of Shots Heard Round the World, author John Ferling takes a deeper look at the outside influences on the War for Independence in the United States. He is a professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia and is considered a leading authority on American Revolutionary history. This is the first book of his that I have read, but it won’t be the last.

The book primarily examines the relationship between the fight for Independence in what would become the United States and France and Spain. Ferling writes about what the international atmosphere was like in Europe at the time. The British dominated the seas with a powerful navy. Both France and Spain felt that if they could cut the British off from the supplies they received from their colonies in North America, it would impact the British Navy and allow these countries to have a chance at expanding their own influence.

From the side of the Revolutionaries in the United States, for the bulk of the time before the writing of the Declaration of Independence, there was a focus on a reconciliation with England, which would allow the colonies to self-govern for the most part, but also maintain the trade that the British depended on for their worldly influence. The push for Independence only came as the Continental Congress realized the help they so desperately wanted from France would only come if France saw an opportunity to directly trade with them. This would not have been the case if the colonies had remained part of Great Britain.

I found it very interesting to take this deep dive into why the United States declared independence from Great Britain. The colonists did not have a problem with the King when fighting began. Most of the argument had to do with Parliament and the laws that were being passed regulating the colonies. This is pretty much the opposite of what I had learned back in the day. It was nearly always presented that the colonists didn’t want to bow down to the King any longer. If there was talk of Parliament, it was in the context of them doing what the King asked, which was also not the complete picture.

Ferling doesn’t just write about the theoretical differences between the colonists and Parliament, but also details the military maneuvers and the obstacles faced by the Continental Army and the British Officers trying to fight a war without access to information quickly. For the British Officers, it was hard to follow orders from England when they often arrived three months or more later than reports were sent to them. Promised reinforcements were late arriving or never showed up. The Generals had to make decisions based on what they knew in front of them, and they often either overestimated or underestimated the Continental Army. Up until France started seriously helping the United States, the British Generals made a lot of poor choices that we can only see as such through the glass of history.

If you are a history buff, I think you need to read Shots Heard Round the World. As an American, it adds nuances to the Revolutionary War that I never knew of before. Ferling uses explanations that I found easy to understand. It also puts things in context, so I could better understand why things happened a certain way. It was a dry read at times, but it was also fascinating. I put it down a number of times and picked it up later after diverting my brain with a good murder mystery. I highly recommend it. People need this deeper understanding of why the Revolutionary War happened, and that, as much as we’d like to believe our independence was inevitable, it took the self-interests of other nations that led to the colonists separating from Great Britain.