This book addresses a pivotal and overlooked moment in American history. In 1815, Britain’s crack troops, fresh from victories against Napoleon, were stunningly defeated near New Orleans by a ragtag army of citizen soldiers under the fledgling commander Andrew Jackson, whom they dubbed “Old Hickory.” It was this battle that first defined the United States as a military power to be reckoned with and an independent democracy here to stay.

The Battle of New Orleans sets its scenes with an almost unbelievably colorful cast of characters—a happenstance coalition of militiamen, regulars, untrained frontiersmen, free blacks, Indians, townspeople, and of course, Jackson himself. His glorious, improbable victory will catapult a once-poor, uneducated orphan boy into the White House and forge the beginning of a true nation.