David G. Fitz-Enz

Col. David Fitz-Enz begins this book by writing in the preface "It seems there is no time to set down and read a 300-page study about the life of a historic person, even though the reader would like to." So, he says, he's "condensed twenty-five of the fighting commanders under President Madison into one volume in hopes that once you have a complete grasp of this very complex tale of both sea and land, you will be driven to read more in depth about those who tweaked [sic] your interest."

Capsule biographies of a selection of American commanders in the War of 1812, ranging from the incompetent to the unlucky to the brave and intelligent. More of a reference book than anything else, without a narrative structure at all. The chapters include background on their subjects, and offer short analyses of the War of 1812 exploits, along with sometimes lengthy quotations (one of the oddities about this book is that block quotes appear in two different fonts; this apparently depends on whether the quote is the entire text of a letter or not).

It's unclear just how Fitz-Enz decided to organize the biographies: the first chapter covers Isaac and William Hull, then we get Andrew Jackson, followed by Oliver Hazard Perry. Each capsule biography takes us through that commander's role in the entire war, so there's much skipping back and forth chronologically as the book progresses. Again, though, if you were just using this to dip in and out of looking for a bit of something on a particular commander, or to glean some potentially useful footnotes from, I think this would do just fine.… (meer)

An interesting book, based on the premise that all history is biography. In this case, this book brings together biographies of a number of American men involved in the War of 1812, and shows how they reacted to the conflict.

The title shows some of the judgements of the authors, but this judgement is also based on the author assuming he understood the motives of these men, rather than just judging them from their actions. I'm not sure I agree with him in his severities of judgement, and some times I feel he was exceptionally harsh.

Regretfully, this book is lacking in footnotes although it does have a good index and bibliography. However, the lack of footnotes also shows a desire to tell a good story rather than academic truth. The old Internet urban legend of brass monkeys used for holding cannonballs is included in an account of a Naval battle. Regretfully, this makes other statements suspect.

Aside from these nit-picks, the story does tell the biographies of some of the people known from this conflict, and for non-academic use, this is a good read. The author has a good style of writing that is informal, and the book is enjoyable on the whole. I just don't see it as a textbook for classes.… (meer)