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{{Mediawiki[[File:kindleoasis}}{{Book InfoboxHodges_scout.jpg|200px|thumbnail|left|name = '''''[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421418053/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1421418053&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=34UUOZCQ2OZQ2W2Y Hodges' Scout]''''' |picture = Hodges_scout.jpg|300px|Author = Len Travers|publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press|publication-date = 2015}}]]
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[https://www.press.jhu.edu/ Johns Hopkins University Press] has recently published Len Traver's new book [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421418053/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1421418053&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=RRHMV6SX3N4D2LTS Hodges' Scout: A Lost Patrol of the French and Indian War]. Travers' book examines a group of colonists colonial scouts who were ambushed on a patrol in upstate New York in 1756 that was ambushed by French and Native American soldiersduring the French and Indian War. Travers uses this massacre to explore the lives of the colonists who fought, died and how a a few of them even survived this conflictmassacre. Instead of focusing on a major battle, Travers tries to understand the people who were involvedin this war by focusing on their lives before and after this traumatic event.
Len Travers is professor of history at the Univesity of Massachusetts Dartmouth and he is also the author of [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558492038/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1558492038&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=IQIEUSA55IDE5MNQ Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic].
Here is our interview with Professor Travers.
No modern history of the French and Indian War even mentions Hodges’ Scout. On the face of it, the omission is quite understandable. In terms of numbers, the loss of Hodges’ command was not of significant consequence to the conflict. Additionally, Hodges and his men died at the beginning of a long war, one that would see much in the way of high drama and make household names for British, Canadian, and American history: James Wolfe, the Marquis de Montcalm, George Washington.
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The history of warfare is like that. It tends to elevate a few individuals, and swallows hosts of others in obscurity. Historians are apt to write of wars as aggregate experiences: “generals” decide, “armies” move, “soldiers” clash, “casualties” mount, “the dead” are buried. Likewise, “captives” are taken – and then largely ignored. But in all of these cases, and on the home front as well, war was – and still is – felt and understood by its participants at the deeply personal level. Although largely forgotten, the story of Hodges’ Scout can tell us much about the war as ordinary young men – those without whom wars cannot be fought – actually experienced it and, for those who survived, remembered it. My story assumes that the experiences of ordinary men and women in war are as important, and their lives as compelling, as those of the “great.” And as it happens, in this case the great were never very far away from the ordinary. In the course of this story readers will see that Hodges and his men, obscure as they were, rubbed elbows (albeit briefly) with some of the best-known individuals of the war on both sides.
*[[Gilded Age/Progressive Era History Top Ten Booklist]]
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