New York City is a battlefield. I know what you’re thinking — psychological warfare, the endless grim clashing of economic forces — but I am being literal. When we ponder America’s defining war, the Revolution, we think of Bunker Hill, or Saratoga, or Lexington and Concord, yet its largest battle, a vast and ferociously fought chess match in August and September of 1776, right after the formal declaration of the colonies’ independence, ranged over what are now the five boroughs. As to why the place was so hotly contested, you already know the answer. Then, as now, as ever, New York City was the center of it all. Both sides believed that if the British took control of New York and the Hudson River, the American resistance would likely collapse.

The battle isn’t as well known today as other encounters during the Revolution, in part because the city has done an excellent job of removing most traces of it. Where Boston sets aside hallowed historic precincts and wends a handsome brick Freedom Trail through its Revolutionary sites, New York City buries its past under mountains of concrete and steel. Hills have been flattened, islands swallowed up by landfill, shorelines redrawn.

But I was determined to find Revolutionary New York, and I did eventually, after a fashion. It helped that I had an organizing principle. I was researching a book, and, since my book isn’t about military strategy I wasn’t trying to cover all of the complex maneuverings of troops. I write narrative history, which to me means focusing on people’s lives. Getting to know the places in which those lives unfolded helps me in my efforts to get into the individuals’ heads and hearts.