War Without Mercy is a necessary corrective to the long-held belief that the American Revolution was more about high-minded ideals than brutal warfare. As Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin vividly demonstrate, Americans found themselves in a no-holds-barred conflict of terrifying violence from which the country has yet to recover. This is history at its insightful and mesmerizing best.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of 'Valiant Ambition' and winner of the George Washington Prize

Noted military historians Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin offer a fresh look at the brutality of the Revolutionary War, one they rightly call cruel and ruthless. This book breaks new ground showing why the conflict took so violent a turn, and explores the unforgiving and merciless nature of revolutionary violence.

John R. Maass, author of 'From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War '

Powdered whigs and genteel manners have no place in Lender & Martin's War Without Mercy, the long overdue and brilliantly told story of a vicious struggle for supremacy in America.

John Buchanan, author of 'The Road to Guilford Courthouse' and 'The Road to Charleston'

Did the Revolutionary War devolve into an existential struggle divorced from the constraints of “civilized warfare”? Acclaimed historians Lender and Martin make their case in War without Mercy. Deeply thoughtful, if controversial, this is a profoundly important book.

Beth L. Hill, President & CEO, Fort Ticonderoga

[A] powerful and unflinching account… War Without Mercy exposes the raw emotional and ideological forces that drove Patriots and Loyalists alike to acts of extraordinary violence. This is an essential corrective to the sanitized narrative of American independence.

T. Cole Jones, author of 'Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution'