Uncovering the Forgotten War: How Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates Changed American History

Serge A. Simard: This book is very interesting.
After the british were kicked out of the United States and it became a country, the United States were not a strong military force in the world. Mediteranean commerce suffered. Americans were incarcerated abroad with no hopes of being released. Things needed to change.
What I noticed was the lack of written documents from that time. It's the 1790s and 1800s, at sea and on the other side of the Atlantic, correspondance was scarce.
But the author does give us an impression of those times, of those dangers. This was the birth of the american navy and foreign policy.

Canada on Mar 03, 2023

montalbaran: I have just started to read the first chapter and this book is terrible from an historical perspective. It focuses so much on US centered victimism that it leaves out other countries and nations that had been suffering piracy for longer and in worse conditions. Maps include Israel but claim piracy didn't reach Italy, Greece, Ireland and other countries that have documented pirate attacks from North Africa. The book is so biased against Islam it does not mention the differences between the concept of Islam in the 18th and 19th century compared with the 21st century. I then realized that obe of the authors is a Fox Channel presenter and the book has a quote recommending it from Donald Rumsfeld himself. This is so sad as there are few history books that try and explain this period in time. I live in Spain, in an area that suffered pirate attacks for almost 500 years. I recommend you buy a book that talks about the Barbary states and not how the United states saved some of their citizens. I recommend "The Barbary Coast" by John Wolf and "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters" by Robert C Davis, both books were available on Amazon.

Spain on Mar 18, 2022

Troy Wallner: This was a gift it arrived a couple of days late but it was in good shape

Australia on Dec 18, 2021

Gabriel Stein: "to the shores of Tripoli" goes the Marine Corps hymn, yet few who sing it stop to think about what the words mean. In this book, Kilmeade lays out the causes, course and consequences of the First Barbary War with admirable clarity. It is an easy and enjoyable read. My only regret (and this is why I give four stars instead of five) is that there is practically nothing about Sweden, yet Sweden, having been the first country to salute the Stars and Stripes during the Revolutionary War, here fought as the ally of the United States. This should also be remembered.

United Kingdom on Jun 07, 2018

John Berry: Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History
This is a very quick read but well worth the readers time. This book is just around 200 pages which I read in a few hours, but it took me much longer to look up all the places, ship designs and other details the authors described. This book is a foretelling of history that was doomed to be repeated over and over again. I literally couldn't put this book down and when I didn't have it in my hand I would be thinking about what happened. How I could consider that I have been formally educated and yet to have never heard the first word about this part of history is amazing. Other than the marine anthem with the words "from the shores of Tripoli" not a word have I heard about this conflict. This declared war was over shadowed perhaps by the Lewis and Clark Exposition or Thomas Jefferson himself. Having read about Jefferson from numerous books it seems almost impossible an impression wasn't made to me prior to reading this book regarding the Barbary Pirates of the Mediterranean.

Having said all of this, I did have some confusion with all the different boats/ships the authors named during...

United States on Jan 11, 2018

Francis: Good read, possibly biased but I ran through it an enjoyed it until I saw Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly get acknowledgements!

United Kingdom on Nov 14, 2017

MaggieG13: “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea..” In this nifty new book, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger tell the exciting story of how the US Marines earned bragging rights to include the shores of Tripoli in their hymn.

Even before the Constitution was ratified and the United States of America came to official existence, the Barbary pirates were menacing our vessels. In summer 1785, the American Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, received a letter from Richard O’Brien, captain of the Dauphin, which had been raided by Algerian pirates two weeks earlier. O’Brien and his crew had been captured and enslaved by the pirates and he was deploring their treatment to Jefferson. The true misery was yet to come. O’Brien would spend 10 years enslaved in Algiers and many of his men would succumb to disease, starvation and overwork. It seemed that was the only escape for any of them.

It was not even two years since America had won their independence from Great Britain. That country and the rest of the world was waiting for the former colonies to fall on their faces. There were no bones to the...

United States on Dec 18, 2015