Benton Rain PattersonBesprekingen

The Generals is a parallel biography of the contestants at the Battle of New Orleans: American, Andrew Jackson and Briton Edward Pakenham.

These parallel studies are often difficult to complete successfully and author Benton Patterson has joined a long line of others who have failed. I bought this book because I'm a sucker for anything on the War of 1812, but this book rambles so far afield I'm unclear whether I'll get much of anything out of it.

Patterson tries to do too much in order to provide some context to the battle. We find ourselves reviewing all of Napoleon's service in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as every other campaign in the War of 1812 whether it involved Jackson and/or Pakenham or not. There's just not sufficient focus on the principal actors to devote a book to them. By the time we get to New Orleans, we've very little about Pakenham and only a sketch of Jackson with about 110 pages left to go. We haven't learned enough about the two generals to explain their actions in this important battle.

I recommend Robert Remini's fine, brief book on this important battle. Remini, as Jackson's biographer, offers the insite that Patterson does not.