Kennebec Journal

"In 1812, the fledgling democracy of the new United States was just 29 years old. Militarily weak and fractured by regional political bickering, the United States was totally unprepared to confront a resurgent British empire, but President James Madison declared war on Great Britain anyway.

"1812:The Navy's War is Portland naval historian George Daughan's excellent naval history of America's most misunderstood war; it was the United States' 'second war of independence.' Daughan is the award-winning author of IF BY SEA (Basic Books, 2008), a comprehensive history of America's navy from the American Revolution to 1812.

"Here {in 1812} Daughan uses his considerable research and writing skills to present a vivid and exciting history of how a few stout warships, bold captains and brave crews were the nation's primary offense and defense facing the world's largest navy, and a powerful and arrogant Great Britain that wanted to destroy its only maritime rival and reestablish British dominance in North America.

"Daughan deftly describes the complex political, diplomatic and economic causes of the war, as well as Britain's unified strategic goals and the United States' surprisingly confused and naive lack of cogent plans, strategic thought and needed resources.

"Best, however, are Daughan's dramatic explanations of how the tiny American navy's victories at sea offset the army's dismal performance on land in a war that raged from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic and into the Pacific Ocean.

" He tells of famous single-ship battles, both defeats and victories, how commerce-raiding privateers affected the war's outcome, how American naval triumps on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain thwarted a British invasion from Canada, and how American naval audacity and sacrifice on the Mississippi River was critical to Andrew Jackson's crushing defeat of the British army in the bloody battle at New Orleans."

(Bill) Bushnell on Books, column in the Kennebec Journal, February 2, 2012.