Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation Paperback – August 1, 2005

I was curious about the origins of our modern Navy and Marine Corps, this book fills the bill. While full of names and dates, I did not find this book a tedious read. It was interspersed with accounts of actual events, and the personal correspondence of the primary actors, which made it all the more captivating to read.

You will cheer when Steven Decatur lines up his fleet in the Bay of Tripoli and gives the lying Pasha/Bey his terms. Unconditional surrender or I will blow your city to pieces with our cannons!! All the Europeans were paying tribute but Pres Madison had enough of Islamic deceit & lies so he sent our fleet and Decatur delivered.Decatur ordered ALL slaves, from any & every nation were to be freed and brought to the docks post haste. Decatur warned if one single slave was not freed & found later during a threatened house to house search of the whole city, goodbye Tripoli.He loaded up all the slaves & went on America's 1st good will tour. Delivered former long time slaves back to their home countries including Italy, Greece, & other Mediterranean locales. He then delivered emaciated slaves to Spain, England, France, Netherlands, Scandinavian countries etc.He delivered AMERICAN GOODWILL to European powers that tiny, newly formed America could not buy with any amount of money or words. European nobility could not get enough of him. Newspapers screamed praises to him and America and shamed the nations that bowed & paid tribute.Trust me when I say that Decatur's goodwill tour was a lot different than Obama's bowing "Bend Over & Spread Em" apology tour through the Levant and Europe Obama started his failed presidency with!!

Josh London has written a pretty good book about the challenges that the newly formed United States of America faced when it decided to move out from the wing of its mother country and strike out on its own. One of those challenges being the band of criminals who essentially controlled access to the Mediterranean Sea along the Barbary Coast.While he is not a writer who knows how to turn a very interesting piece of history into a page-turner as Wright does with his book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage) it is fine when compared to many other rather dull writers of history. At least he seems to get his facts straight and does not have some political agenda get in the way of an interesting story.The most interesting part of the book is actually not something in it, but the fact that little has changed in two hundred years. Pirates still threaten the seas all over the world, politicians debate and deflect about serious issues concerning national security and national interests, and the consequences of being on the wrong side of history are soon forgotten as a new generation of voters and politicians who are ignorant of history get a chance to relive it again at great expense.

A welcome addition to the previously sparse scholarship on this subject. The erudite scholar, thinker, and critic Joshua E. London presents an excellent, fascinating, and detailed history. A unique book, it is a must for anyone interested in American and World history, especially in its Middle Eastern dimension. It is also a timely book, as it provides insight into U.S./Muslim relations in past historical context and provides a much needed model for better understanding the world theater today.

very exciting Jefferson and the Navy and the Muslims who took Americans as slaves

I'm a history nut and a retired Marine so I'm more likely to like this than others. If I had one complaint it was that the author didn't use notes.

Good historical research done to create a compelling fact based story. The author did a good job of taking the reader through the actions and implications of a new republic (USA) trying to play on a world stage.

I found here the facts description which I've searched for a long time. So I've got few good, well founded references.

A very good book spoiled by one or two silly statements, such as in the 1800s Britain and Europe were 'labouring under the oppression of kings and queens'. Although Britain was not a full democracy it certainly had a parliament that took only mild note of what any king or queen wanted. To be an oppressor you need to be able to wield power and the kings and queens of that period had very little power being merely figureheads. Having read several books by American authors of this period, there seems to be a desire to promote a myth that 18/19 Century Britain - from which quite rightly the USA had extricated itself - was still in a medieval state and kings were able to lop off heads at will. Do Americans still need the belief that Europe is medieval? Surely not.