December 1814: its economy in tatters, its capital city of
Washington, D.C., burnt to the ground, a young America was again at
war with the militarily superior English crown. With an enormous
enemy armada approaching New Orleans, two unlikely allies teamed up
to repel the British in one of the greatest battles ever fought in
North America.
The defense of New Orleans fell to the backwoods general Andrew
Jackson, who joined the raffish French pirate Jean Laffite to
command a ramshackle army made of free blacks, Creole aristocrats,
Choctaw Indians, gunboat sailors and militiamen. Together these
leaders and their scruffy crew turned back a British force more
than twice their number. Offering an enthralling narrative and
outsized characters, Patriotic Fire is a vibrant recounting of the
plots and strategies that made Jackson a national hero and gave the
nascent republic a much-needed victory and surge of pride and
patriotism.
關於作者:
Winston Groom wrote the acclaimed Vietnam War novel Better
Times Than These, the prize-winning As Summers Die, and
co-authored Conversations with the Enemy, which was
nominated for a 1984 Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of the
No.1 New York Times best sellers Forrest Gump and
Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump. His Shrouds
of Glory, an account of Confederate General John Bell Hood''s
decisive actions in the last great campaign of the U.S. Civil War,
was published in April 1995. His most recent book, 1942,
covers a year of World War II. He lives in Point Clear, Alabama,
and Cashiers, North Carolina.