This award-winning volume offers a more comprehensive analysis of the Seven Years' War than Anderson's abridged version below. It's massive (more than 800 pages) but very readable—and for the reader interested in learning more about the European context of what Americans called the French and Indian War, this book provides encyclopedic coverage.

This is a great little book. It pays only passing attention to the European war, focusing instead almost exclusively on the contest in North America between the French, British, and Native Americans. But for the reader interested more in the French and Indian War than the Seven Years' War, this is first book to read.

Calloway explores the range of ways in which 1763 represented a watershed in American history, and is a great account of the war's impact on Native Americans and their ongoing struggle for autonomy. Plus, this argument is given a real human quality through the inclusion of countless mini-biographies.

Only the first 70 pages of this book deal with the French and Indian War, but Schama's account of James Wolfe, the Battle of Quebec, and Benjamin West's artistic treatment of these subjects is fascinating. Schama's work also explores the role of art in history, and implicitly, the practice of historical writing as art.