Get an early peek at the new Ken Burns documentary about the American Revolution
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Two snippets from the documentary are now available for viewing online. The
Mark Feeney is a Globe arts writer
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L-R: Filmmakers David Schmidt, Sarah Botstein, and Ken Burns.
Stephanie Berger
The clip offers two elements familiar to Burns devotees. The camera pans over a painting of the battle, and viewers hear from two talking-head experts. One, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson, calls the battle, won by the British at great cost, 'a Pyrrhic victory of the first order, four of the most awful hours of combat in American history.'
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The English historian Stephen Conway elaborates on that, noting the British casualty rate that day was 40 percent. Conway adds that that would remain the highest percentage of casualties for the British Army for more than 140 years, until the first day of the Battle of the Somme, in World War I. That bloody day in Charlestown would loom large in British decision-making over the course of the next eight years.
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