num_pages: 576
description: Hailed as the father of todays elite special forces Robert Rogers was not only a wilderness warrior but North Americas first noteworthy playwright and authentic celebrity. In a riveting biography John F. Ross reconstructs the extraordinary achievements of this fearless and inspiring leader whose exploits in the early New England wilderness read like those of an action hero and whose innovative principles of unconventional warfare are still used today.They were a group of handpicked soldiers chosen for their backwoods savvy courage and endurance. Led by a young captain whose daring made him a hero on two continents Rogerss Rangers earned a deadly fame among their most formidable French and Indian enemies for their ability to appear anywhere at any time burst out of the forest with overwhelming force and vanish just as quickly. This swift elusive intelligence-gathering strike force was the brainchild of Robert Rogers a uniquely American kind of war maker capable of motivating a new breed of warrior.The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants Robert Rogers learned to survive in New Englands dark and deadly forests grasping as did few others that a new world required new forms of warfare. Marrying European technology to the stealth and adaptability he observed in native warriors Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials raw woodsmen farmers and Indian scouts on impossible missions that are still the stuff of soldiers legend. Covering heartbreaking distances behind enemy lines they traversed the wilderness in whaleboats and snowshoes slept without fire or sufficient food in below-freezing temperatures and endured hardships that would destroy ordinary men.With their novel tactics and fierce esprit de corps the Rangers laid the groundwork for the colonial strategy later used in the War of Independence. Never have the stakes of a continent hung in the hands of so few men. Rogers would eventually write two seminal books whose vision of a unified continent would influence Thomas Jefferson and inspire the Lewis and Clark expedition.In War on the Run  John F. Ross vividly re-creates Rogerss life and his spectacular battles having traveled over much of Rogerss campaign country. He presents with breathtaking immediacy and painstaking accuracy a man and an era whose enormous influence on America has been too little appreciated.
language: English
title: War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier
publisher: Bantam