The Weekly Standard

Victory at Sea: The Navy comes of age in the War of 1812 by Joseph F. Callo*

"Frequently {The War of 1812} is seen as a sequence of freestanding, intensely dramatic events rather than as the tightly intertwined series of battles, military campaigns, diplomancy, and domestic politics that it was. But if a compulsion to concentrate excessively on the more spectacular bits and pieces of the conflict has been an endemic problem among academics and writers, this volume is an antidote. Daughan not only thoroughly illuminates the emotion-triggering events of the conflict; he also adds the background that connects the highlighhts. That background includes, for example, the American and British domestic politics and diplomacy, which were continuously both cause and effect in the process."

*Joseph F Callo is the author of John Paul Jones: America's First Sea Warrior
..................................................The Weekly Standard, December 5, 2011