Through the Perilous Fight

Starred review from April 1, 2013
Veteran Washington Post military reporter Vogel (The Pentagon, 2007), returns with a brisk chronicle of the critical closing months of the War of 1812--specifically, the British attacks on Washington and Baltimore. The experienced author knows how to write about the military and its human and martial conflicts, so the battle and strategy scenes have a clarity that surpasses what even the several maps provide. He begins in the summer of 1814 with the British planning their attack. They were eager for payback after the American invasion of Canada two years earlier. Vogel focuses on Rear Adm. George Cockburn--a figure he revisits throughout--who was especially intent on capturing and torching Washington. Vogel follows a number of other principals, too, among them Francis Scott Key, James Madison and James Monroe, Dolley Madison, Mary Pickersgill (who made the Star Spangled Banner flag) and numerous others. Vogel hopscotches around the terrain, showing us snapshots of the Royal Navy, the American defenses, British commanders, civilians, politicians and so on, creating in the process a colorful (and rarely sanguinary) mosaic of the events. He shows us the burning of the capital, but we also see the ambivalence some of the British expressed as they destroyed what they recognized as beautiful works of public architecture. Vogel examines the scramble to ready Baltimore for the next assault; we go inside Fort William McHenry (over which the Star Spangled Banner would fly the morning following the fierce British assault). Periodically, the author takes us to Ghent, where negotiators (among them, John Quincy Adams) were working to end the war. A swift, vibrant account of the accidents, intricacies and insanities of war.

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June 1, 2013

With primary-source research in UK and U.S. collections, Vogel (military journalist, Washington Post; The Pentagon) writes about the final weeks of the War of 1812, from August through September 1814, when the British burned Washington, DC, and then attacked Baltimore in a war of choice that nevertheless had unifying results: the ultimate deliverance of the nation's capital and the iconic "Star Spangled Banner"--both the Fort McHenry flag and the commemorative anthem. Vogel includes character studies of many primary figures, including Britain's Rear Admiral George Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross, American attorney Francis Scott Key, James and Dolley Madison, and various American military leaders. He also addresses the roles of African Americans and Native Americans during this war. He reminds readers that the young United States was not yet truly independent of British control and was subject to interior squabbles as well. Even seasoned historians may not know of the looting by local populations in contrast to relative British restraint, or that the banner held by the Smithsonian Institution is the larger garrison flag rather than the smaller flag of which Key wrote. VERDICT Complementing Donald R. Hickey's War of 1812 and Alan Taylor's The Civil War of 1812, this title will contribute to making this war no longer one of our "forgotten" conflicts.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2013
From the War of 1812, Vogel selects the British invasion of the Chesapeake Bay in the summer of 1814 for this tight-focus treatment. Few details escape his attention, from the appearances and characters of commanders to specifications of weaponry, ships, and forts, which he integrates into an active narrative of military events. Showing the British initiative conferred by their naval supremacy, Vogel depicts American leaders guessing where their opponents would land in the deeply incised coastline of the bay. One such was James Monroe, who suspended his duties as secretary of state to scout the enemy on horseback. Also in the saddle, President James Madison personally inspected defense lines, fleeing their collapse in the Battle of Bladensburg and ensuing incineration of Washington. After inflicting this humiliation, British admiral Cockburn and general Ross decided to visit a conflagration on Baltimore, whose defiance of this fate an eyewitness expressed in a militant composition. Vogel, a Washington Post reporter, superbly dramatizes a campaign whose legacy is The Star-Spangled Banner, both the anthem and the flag for which it stands, today displayed in Washington.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)