Union 1812; The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Jaime Putorti (Jacket Design). x, [4], 482 pages. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Signed by author on title page. DJ has substantial sticker residue at back, otherwise would be in Very Good condition. Arthur John Langguth, known as A. J. Langguth, was an American author, journalist and educator, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was Professor Emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communications School of Journalism at the University of Southern California. Langguth was the author of several dark, satirical novels, a biography of the English short story master Saki, and lively histories of the Trail of Tears, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Vietnam War, the political life of Julius Caesar and U.S. involvement with torture in Latin America. A graduate of Harvard College, Langguth was South East Asian correspondent and Saigon bureau chief for The New York Times during the Vietnam war, using the byline "Jack Langguth". He also wrote and reported for Look Magazine in Washington, DC and The Valley Times in Los Angeles, California. Langguth joined the journalism faculty at USC in 1976. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and received the Freedom Forum Award, honoring the nation's top journalism educators, in 2001. He retired from active teaching at USC in 2003. In A. J. Langguth's classic "Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution," he brought to life leaders from the generation of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in all of their complexity, with their great strengths and human frailties. In "Union 1812," those men appear again, tempered now by age and new responsibilities. James Madison, the fourth president of the United States, must decide whether to go to war again only thirty years after the American Revolution. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson had all made major concessions to avoid entangling their young and divided nation in new battles with Europe. But the War Hawks, aggressive congressmen from the South and West, are demanding that Madison take action to uphold America's honor against Great Britain. In this gripping narrative of the second and final war of independence, Madison leads an unprepared nation into a struggle that will establish the United States as a major world power and stake its claim to the entire continent. As the war begins, the U.S. Navy consists of seventeen oceangoing ships; the British fleet numbers seven hundred. Nor is the country united in its will to win. Governors in New England are refusing to call out their militia, while mobs attack antiwar newspaper editors in Baltimore in a violent repetition of the Boston Massacre. Dramatic scenes range across the world, from vicious fighting on the frontier -- one British officer compares the hand-to-hand combat with the savagery of bulldogs -- to Dolley Madison's elegant receptions at the executive mansion and the wrangling among America's peace delegates in Belgium at Ghent. Before the outcome is decided, the war will have engulfed land and sea, with a disastrous U.S. defeat at Detroit and epic naval campaigns on the Great Lakes. After the Americans sack Toronto, the British retaliate by burning the White House and the Capitol and laying siege with their rockets to Fort McHenry. Finally, two and a half years of bloodshed and botched strategies culminate in the spectacular battle of New Orleans. The heroes of "Patriots" are joined here by dozens of the most colorful and enduring characters from America's past: not only the diminutive and brilliant Madison and the statuesque Dolley, but also Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, Oliver Perry and Stephen Decatur, the great Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh, and four legendary men who will follow Madison into the White House -- James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Quincy Adams, and the triumphant hero Andrew Jackson. For too long, the War of 1812 has been ignored or misunderstood. "Union 1812" thrillingly illustrates why it must take its place as one of the defining moments in American history.