War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier

Often hailed as the godfather of today€s elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on €œimpossible€ missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers€ legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England€s dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates Rogers€s life and his spectacular battles with breathtaking immediacy and meticulous accuracy, but brings a new and provocative perspective on Rogers€s unique vision of a unified continent, one that would influence Thomas Jefferson and inspire the Lewis and Clark expedition. Rogers€s principles of unconventional war-making would lay the groundwork for the colonial strategy later used in the War of Independence€"and prove so compelling that army rangers still study them today. Robert Rogers, a backwoods founding father, was heroic, admirable, brutal, canny, ambitious, duplicitous, visionary, and much more€"like America itself.