A popular history of the War of 1812 from the perspective of the people who lived it. Written by a retired journalism professor it is very readable. I enjoyed it. ( )

Very disappointing at first, until I realized the author was not writing a history of The War of 1812, but connected biographies of the participants. It’s a good thing, too, because the historical background is pretty miserable – a few large scale maps in the front matter (which makes it very hard to figure out what was going on around Detroit) and lots of minor but annoying factual errors (Dolley Madison is described as entertaining “by gaslight” in the White House, the Constitution is credited with a speed of “12 ½ knots per hour”, and rifles are repeatedly confused with muskets).

Fortunately, the biographies are not bad at all. Author A. J. Langguth starts out with return of Washington to Mount Vernon at the end of his second presidential term, and tracks the careers of John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Zebulon Pike, Madison, Tecumseh, William Hull, Isaac Brock, Isaac Hull, John Armstrong, Oliver Perry, William Henry Harrison, and Dolley Madison through the war and well afterward; plus throwing in various other characters as they come up (I never realized Davey Crocket fought in the War of 1812, or that Sam Houston spent his adolescence as a Cherokee Indian brave (a telling quote from Houston is that he would never forget his days of “wandering along the bank of streams, side by side with some Indian maiden, sheltered by the deep woods, making love and reading the Iliad.” I never realized all the uses of the Iliad before.)

This would make an excellent companion to a more conventional military history; it’s one thing to read of the American collapse at Detroit but another to have the details of the characters of William Hull and Isaac Brock at hand. (Brock comes across as far and away the best general on the Canadian front, and if he hadn’t been shot down by an American rifleman at Queenston while leading his troops the war might have ended very differently; we’d all be speaking Canadian now.) ( )

Very good, I learned many things about a war that always confused me. However, the book encompasses far more that the war/ Union of 1812 ( for good reason, just be prepared!). Also there are numerous broad statements that are a little too generalized and not quite factual, such as the on a Sam Houston, with whom I'm absolutely obsessed. ( )

Starts with a brief history of the years between the revolution (1783), the reforming of the Constitution to the factors that lead up to the War of 1812. Not very put together summary of the major battles of the war and then a really brief "what did they do next" section as it takes the major players from 1815 to 1860. This is the barest scratch of an important conflict and this book is missing alot - no so much the details - but the "why". ( )

Excellent reading. Follows up Patriots (his Revolutionary War account) very nicely. A really good place to start learning about the War of 1812. ( )