Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) lived an extraordinary life: war hero, twenty-sixth president, reformer, historian, conservationist recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, author, and explorer. But it was the navy that most fascinated him throughout his long and varied career, and it was in «The Naval War of 1812» (published in 1882 when he was only twenty-three) that he first declared his interest. Praised for its scholarship, assurance, and originality, this classic naval history offers stirring and comprehensive accounts of the war's dramatic naval battles, and of the American and English commanders who fought on the vast North American lakes and on the ocean for control of the continent.

The book proved instrumental in securing Roosevelt's appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, and decisively influenced the U.S. Navy's transformation from a skeletal isolationist force into a formidable international sea power that made U.S. expansionism not only possible but inevitable.