Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814. By Anthony S. Pitch. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998. xviii, 298 pp. $32.95, isbn 1-55750-692-2.)

Until a dozen or so years ago, the War of 1812 was well described as "the forgotten war." It was passed over quickly in textbooks as pointless and inconsequential since it seemed to produce nothing but a reversion to the status quo ante bellum. Much of what was written about it was local in focus, usually about military and naval events, and, intentionally or unintentionally, very nationalistic. Things began to change with J. C. A. Stagg's Mr. Madison's War (1983) and picked up speed with Donald R. Hickey's The War of 1812 (1989), both of which give a broad, analytical, and unemotional account of the war. Since then there has been a flood (in War of 1812 terms) of new books on the war, many narrow in focus, as the older books tended to be, but usually without the strong biases found there. The subject of this review is the latest of the new crop. . . .

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