Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries in a war in which Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean, permanently changing the political and cultural landscape of North America. He explains how the war destroyed an American diplomatic system in which native peoples had long played the central, balancing role; revealed discontinuities in inherited perceptions of authority; and gave tens of thousands of American colonists their first experience of real Englishmen, as well as of the British cultural and class system. Thus the groundwork was laid for an American generation holding a common view of the world and of the empire, and capable of rallying against the men who had once been their masters.

Interweaving stories of kings and imperial officers with those of Indians, traders, and the diverse colonial peoples, Anderson brings alive a chapter of our history that was shaped as much by individual choices and actions as by social, economic, and political forces.