John Ferling, professor emeritus, University of West Georgia, speaking at the Atlanta History Center, August 7, 2007.

John Ferling discusses this chronicle of America's struggle for independence, an eight-year conflict filled with heroism, suffering, cowardice, betrayal, and fierce dedication. As Ferling demonstrates, it was a war that America came much closer to losing than is now usually remembered. General George Washington put it best when he said that the American victory was "little short of a standing miracle."

John Ferling has appeared in four television documentaries devoted to the Revolution and the War of Independence and has written nine books, including John Adams: A Life, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson and the American Revolution, and A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. 

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