Andrew Jackson, Hero

Donald Barr Chidsey brings his amazing and widely acknowledged skills as a popular historian to bear on one of those controversial American wars-perplexing, colorful, at times brutal, often devastating. It was in protest against the war with Mexico that Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax, and wrote his famous essay "Civil Disobedience."

In extraordinarily vivid terms, Chidsey re-creates the wanton massacre of a whole company of American troops, the heroic defense and fall of the Alamo, the dramatic battles of Buena Vista and Vera Cruz, and the invasion of Mexico, culminating in the storming of Chapultepec and entrance into Mexico City itself.

Sam Houston, the enigmatic and powerful Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Zachary Taylor, Jose Herrera, General Winfield Scott, James K. Polk, and others in the forefront of battles and behind the scenes, and here, too-seen with all the intimate detail that has made Donald Barr Chidsey unsurpassed in his field.