The War of 1812

This book does a good job of relating, in detail, all of the military movements and battles of the war. I would have liked more information about the political aspects of this war, but Mahon states at the beginning of this book that this is a purely military history and that is pretty much what it is. There is a little information on the political and diplomatic aspects of the war, but not much. This is a frustrating war to read about if you are an American because we botched up just about everything relating to this war, at least until 1814, when we had some success (the defense of Baltimore and the battle of New Orleans). A bright spot for America during this war was the performance of our tiny navy. Our navy was too small to significantly damage the Royal Navy, but we won several dramatic ship vs. ship battles. The performance of our ground forces was mostly abysmal. America learned an important lesson during this war: we learned that we needed a strong national army and that we could not rely on state militias for our defense. Anyway, the book is well-written, for the most part, and the few good battles of this war are related in an exciting way. My only real criticism of this book is that it jumps around too much from one theater of the war to another. Some individuals are introduced briefly in one part of the book and then reappear much later in the book without a reminder of who this person is. Overall, though, Mahon does a good job of relating the facts of this war, as well as make some good observations about some of the changes to our nation that were caused by the war.