100 Books Like 1812

This is the best comprehensive history of the period. The scope is daunting. The book, along with long phone conversations with the author, was my bible when writing Hacks, Sycophants, Adventurers, and Heroes, Madison’s commanders in the War of 1812.  Don not only gives you the facts but is also adept at stinging them together into an absorbing narrative that will keep you looking for the next turning.  The period of the war is filled with the most audacious characters found in any nations’ early history.  From the heroes of the battlefield to the wretched politicians that haunt all our history, you will never find a more gripping read.

I was given the opportunity to make a television program about the Battle of Plattsburgh /Lake Champlain. Amateurs to Arms proved out to the best source for research concerning the War of 1812. It was no wonder since Professor John Elting had also written the 1812 West Point Atlas. His book on the northern battlefields is groundbreaking. An infantry officer in Germany during WWII, his experience brought an understanding of men caught in hand-to-hand combat. As a result of my extensive research, John suggested that I write a companion book to the film. The Final Invasion, Plattsburgh, the war of 1812’s most decisive battle, won the Army Historical Foundation book prize and the endorsement of the US Army War College.

My first novel, Redcoats’ Revenge, an alternative history of the war of 1812 was a break from the lockstep writing of non-fiction and a relief, in a way. But it became a whole new challenge. A primary character in the book was Andrew Jackson, a man without bounds. I read extensively to find his soul and there it was in Brand’s book.  From his backwoods beginnings to his firebrand speeches in the congress, Bill Brand captures the heart of that warrior. Jackson, a leader we must all emulate, stands out in every crowd as a trailblazer, a warrior, an American frontiersman we all think of when building our own stories. At the end of this volume, you will say to yourself, “what a man”.

In the first few years of our country, it became evident to President Adams that we needed a Navy. The Continental Navy from the American Revolution was disbanded in 1783 along with the army. As a country, we were defenseless. Adams, against strong opposition from Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republicans—managed to push through the Congress the Navy Act of 1794 which funded the rebirth of the Navy. This is the story of the act, the political battles over building, manning, and funding these unique vessels as well as their successes as warships. They are viewed as the best sailing frigates ever built.

Much has been written about the U.S.S. Constitution and its five sisters—Congress, Chesapeake, Constellation, President, United States—yet few know of how they came into being and the Congressional battles to create a new U.S. Navy and build and equip ships. The six came about via… show more.

In chronological order, I’ll start with this book (1882, modern reprint 1999) by Theodore Roosevelt. There are many excellent modern books about this conflict, but a reader cannot go wrong by turning to an early book on the subject by a young (22) Theodore Roosevelt. Begun as his senior thesis at Harvard, it remains in print today and breathes with the future president’s love of all things naval.  

While the outcome of the naval war was a foregone conclusion, the United States Navy and a swarm of privateers punched well above their weight, humiliating the world’s preeminent navy early in the conflict and boosting American national morale. There are a number of excellent books on the naval history of the conflict, but, carefully researched and accessibly written, Perilous Fight is my favorite telling of this critical aspect of the War of 1812.

We tend to reject older histories, but sometimes they maintain their currency and their importance – and thus remain in print and would find a respectable berth on a basic thematic bookshelf. One such work is Alfred T. Mahan’s two-volume Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812, first published in 1905. An officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War, Mahan later joined the faculty of the Naval War College where he combined his professional experiences with close studies of historical records to examine the theme of sea power’s importance in history from the 17th century to his own time. His 1812 text was one of his works that proved to be influential in naval circles in Britain, France, the United States, and Japan in his day and afterwards. For modern readers, Sea Power is a well-written, accessible, but sophisticated study that not… show more.

It is an interesting fact that Hamilton and Gallatin, who served as Treasury Secretary during most of the republic’s first quarter-century, were immigrants from commercially more active locales, Hamilton from the sugar island of St. Croix, Gallatin from the stony Calvinist banking center of Geneva, Switzerland.

As congressman from the Pennsylvania frontier, Gallatin opposed Hamilton’s national debt and Bank of the United States, that gave the infant republic circulating money and workable finance. But as Jefferson and Madison’s secretary of the Treasury Gallatin maintained the bulk of Hamilton’s system and managed—with help from fellow immigrants John Jacob Astor and Stephen Girard—to finance the War of 1812.

This study is by far the best single-volume history of the war. John Stagg is a prolific, American-based historian, known in particular for his leadership in editing the Papers of James Madison, the president who took his country to war with Great Britain in 1812. Dr. Stagg’s book covers all the important themes about the conflict, and, despite having been published in 1983, has not been superseded. Anyone wanting a strong, detailed, and complete study could not find a better option. 

Mr. Madison’s War is, however, a serious academic study, so some readers might find it “hard-going.” There are other one-volume studies of the conflict in print, but most of them strike me as being more than a little deficient. Two of the most accessible and reliable standard-length overviews for those unwilling to take on John Stagg are J.M. Hitsman’s The Incredible War of 1812, updated and edited by… show more.