'The Fate of the Day' recalls the perilous middle years of the American Revolution

(This program was originally broadcast on July 3, 2025) In this encore edition of Midday, we reprise Tom Hall's conversation earlier this summer with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Rick Atkinson. After a 20-year career as a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor at the Washington Post, in 1989, Atkinson — the son of a US Army Officer — began writing about military history, including a three-volume series called the Liberation Trilogy, about World War II in Europe. In 2019, he published the first of his three planned volumes about the American Revolutionary War, The British Are Coming, which chronicles the American rebellion against the British from the year before the Declaration of Independence until the year after. The second volume of this Revolution Trilogy was published last Spring. It covers the middle years of the war for America, from the battles of Ticonderoga to Charleston between 1777 and 1780. It’s called The Fate of the Day.  Rick Atkinson discusses this sweeping, granular exploration of the people, the politics, and the passions that animated American rebels and British loyalists alike. It is a beautifully written, meticulously researched, and gorgeously shaped account of the conflict that began the American experiment. Rick Atkinson spoke with Tom via Zoom from Washington, DC on June 25, 2025. (Because this program was recorded, we won't be taking any new calls or online comments)