Self has been reading (at a snail’s pace, because good) Patrick K. O’Donnell’s Washington’s Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution. Despite the florid subtitle, the book is good. It is exactly as described: about that one elite Maryland regiment who were given the task of providing rearguard action/covering fire during the evacuation of American forces from Manhattan in November 1776. Maybe it wasn’t quite on the scale of Dunkirk, but it makes for pretty exciting reading all the same.

Self normally doesn’t read author bios until she finishes a book (she prefers to create/imagine her own image of the author), but today her curiosity gets the better of her.

Who is this Patrick K. O’Donnell? “An expert on elite units” — okay, fairly standard boilerplate. Any number of people can claim to be an “expert.” On any number of subjects.