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 militia-men, 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.

Robert V. Remini has been called the foremost Jacksonian scholar of our time by the New York Times. Among his many honors are the Carl Sandburg Award for Nonfiction, the University Scholar Award from the University of Illinois, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation Award, and the National Book Award.