From Baird Maritime
If you ask the average American today who won the War of 1812, the answer, if they have even heard of it, would most likely be "America, of course".
This would be on the strength of a win in one battle, the Battle of New Orleans, that has been widely celebrated in song and movies.
This excellent book reminds us of the facts. It also does much more than that in describing fully how the blockading tactics developed in that war were successfully used by Britain, Germany and the United States in subsequent wars.
It was Bismarck, your reviewer recalls, who described war as politics taken to extremes. In the War of 1812 it was much more a case of economics taken to extremes. The author approaches the war from an economic perspective.
As he shows very clearly, the war was economically disastrous for the Americans. They were taught a very expensive lesson.
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