Jeffrey Burke

“MY AMERICAN REVOLUTION.” By Robert Sullivan. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.

Robert Sullivan gazes from the Empire State Building and sees history in geography, “the ocean-bound strait called the Narrows,” where “the British sailed in with 40,000 troops, a forest of masts deckling the edge of Staten Island” in 1776.

In “My American Revolution: Crossing the Delaware and I- 78,” Sullivan’s eccentric, entertaining take on the war, he avoids the more-celebrated names like Lexington and Concord, focusing on select events in and around New York, where “the majority of battles were lost and, less often, won.”