I just couldn't walk past the book table at the French Club's spring rummage sale without picking up a bunch of interesting-looking books! This was one of them.

This is an excellent book! Although it's pure history, it reads like a historical novel. An amazing amount of research into eye-witness accounts from "letters, military dispatches, documents, reports, diaries, journals and memoirs" convey what this war was really like for the participants and by-standers. This is the type of book that's exciting and hard to put down.

Canadians are fiercely proud that the USA did not succeed in their attempt to annex what was then a colony of Britain. Thomas Jefferson thought the conquest of Canada would be "a mere matter of marching". He was certainly proven wrong!

So many blunders, misinformation, miscommunications! Also, a good measure of brilliancy and chance. Lots of incedible and sometimes hilarious anecdotes. And some sad and disgraceful.

Who knew that The Star-Spangled Banner was composed about a vain attempt by British forces to take a fort in Baltimore? Or that the song "The Battle of New Orleans" was written about the final battle in the War of 1812 (fought after Peace was signed and declared but not yet communicated to those at this Battle)?

This War in many ways helped define the differences between Canada and the US. And set up the Native Peoples for the crippling land-grabs to come.

I immensely enjoyed the richness of story and detail in this very readable book and hope to find the first in this two-book set, "The Invasion of Canada".

Left at the Little Free Library by Ecossentials