1781: The Decisive Year of the Revolutionary War

Robert Tonsetic's book (published last year) offers a concise and well written account of the fighting in the American South which eventually led to the siege of Yorktown and the collapse of mainstream support of the war in England.
Tonsetic's hero of the hour is not George Washington. In fact he makes it clear that Washington consistently opposed the shift to a "Southern strategy" which would prove decisive. Only the insistence of French Gen. Rochambeau (and Washington's need for French support) pushed the American commander in chief to link up with the forces of LaFayette and Nathaniel Greene at Yorktown.
It is Greene who reaps the most praise, both for his battlefield tactics and overall strategic sense. Greene's bedraggled army, assisted by the maraudings of Pickens and Marion and the like, bedeviled the arrogant Cornwallis, who seemed to shift strategy at the slightest reversal.
Greene took charge of the Continental Army in South Carolina following the disastrous defeat at Camden. He rebuilt the army as a fighting force and fine tuned his tactics to take into account the relative weakness of the lightly trained militiamen who made-up much of his command.
Examples?
Strategically, Greene brilliantly preyed on the British's reliance on long supply lines back to Savannah and Charlestown and the invaders' need to garrison numerous supply depots, which made fine targets for the mobile Americans.
Tactically, his use of cavalry (often led by the under appreciated William Washington) in both defensive and offensive capacities was superb.
Tonsetic also does a fine job of describing the "end game" at Yorktown, where the gathered American and French forces put Cornwallis' veteran army in a vise they could not escape.
A fascinating subject told well.