Blood and Liberty: 10 Truths About the Fight for Freedom

What does it really take to build a nation?

It takes more than musket fire and patriotic slogans. It takes sustained sacrifice, political clarity, and the courage to fight when the odds say surrender. In Blood and Liberty: 10 Truths About the Fight for Freedom, former U.S. military strategist Korey Blathewick strips away the romantic haze of the American Revolution and reveals the raw truth of what it took to break an empire-and build a republic.

This is not a story of inevitability. It's the story of thirteen colonies backed into a corner, fighting against the world's strongest military force, with limited supplies, internal division, and no guarantee of survival. What began as protest over unfair taxation became a drawn-out war for identity, sovereignty, and a future no one could fully predict.

Blathewick's approach is sharp and unapologetic. This is battlefield clarity applied to a political revolution. Each chapter delivers a core truth of the American War for Independence, beginning with the foundational grievance-taxation without representation-and carrying through the transformation from colonial dissent to open rebellion. The opening shots at Lexington and Concord weren't just clashes between militia and redcoats. They were the spark that lit a global fire.

Inside these pages, you'll find:

• The strategic miscalculations of the British Empire, and how overreach combined with underestimation opened the door for rebellion.

• The ideological stakes of the Declaration of Independence, not as abstract philosophy, but as a calculated move to redefine power and attract foreign aid.

• The indispensable leadership of George Washington, whose value was less in any single battle and more in his unshakable ability to hold the Continental Army together when it was on the brink of collapse.

• France's intervention, and how foreign support turned the tide-from financing and weapons to decisive naval power at Yorktown.

• The pivotal battles, not just for their outcomes, but for how they taught the fledgling United States how to fight, regroup, and endure.

• The internal conflicts, including Loyalist resistance, Native alliances, and the uncomfortable contradictions between revolutionary ideals and the realities of slavery and exclusion.

• The long road to peace, culminating in the Treaty of Paris, which didn't just end a war-it redrew borders, redefined diplomacy, and forced the world to reckon with a new, unlikely player: the United States of America.

But Blathewick doesn't stop at the battlefield. He exposes how the Revolution challenged the global order, inspiring republics across Europe and Latin America, while simultaneously embedding contradictions that would haunt the new nation for generations. Freedom was declared-but not for all. Power shifted-but not always responsibly. The Revolution ended colonial rule, but started the far harder task of building a republic that could live up to its promises.

This is a book for readers who want to understand the American Revolution not as mythology, but as a calculated, complex, bloody struggle for self-governance. It's for those who respect history enough to confront it as it really was-messy, driven by strategy and compromise, and filled with people making decisions under pressure with no guarantee of success.

If you're ready to go beyond the surface, Blood and Liberty will take you to the heart of the fight. This isn't a celebration. It's a reckoning-with ten truths that shaped the founding of a nation and the future of global democracy.

Because independence wasn't given. It was taken. And the cost was everything.