Amy S. Greenberg. (2012). A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Amy S. Greenberg. 2012. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012.

Amy S. Greenberg. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012.

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Wicked War Polk Clay Lincoln and the 1846 U S Invasion of Mexico

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Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U. S. Invasion of Mexico

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Greenberg, Amy S.
   • bioText: Amy S. Greenberg is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Women's Studies at Penn State University. She is a leading scholar of Manifest Destiny and has held fellowships from the Huntington Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. Her previous books include Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire and Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth-Century City.
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2012-11-06T00:00:00-05:00

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title

A Wicked War

fullDescription

Often forgotten and overlooked, the U.S.-Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations as it divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War a generation later, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln. Amy S. Greenberg’s skilled storytelling and rigorous scholarship bring this American war for empire to life with memorable characters, plotlines, and legacies.   
When President James K. Polk compelled a divided Congress to support his war with Mexico, it was the first time that the young American nation would engage another republic in battle. Caught up in the conflict and the political furor surrounding it were Abraham Lincoln, then a new congressman; Polk, the dour president committed to territorial expansion at any cost; and Henry Clay, the aging statesman whose presidential hopes had been frustrated once again, but who still harbored influence and had one last great speech up his sleeve. Beyond these illustrious figures, A Wicked War follows several fascinating and long-neglected characters: Lincoln’s archrival John Hardin, whose death opened the door to Lincoln’s rise; Nicholas Trist, gentleman diplomat and secret negotiator, who broke with his president to negotiate a fair peace; and Polk’s wife, Sarah, whose shrewd politicking was crucial in the Oval Office.
This definitive history of the 1846 conflict paints an intimate portrait of the major players and their world. It is a story of Indian fights, Manifest Destiny, secret military maneuvers, gunshot wounds, and political spin. Along the way it captures a young Lincoln mismatching his clothes, the lasting influence of the Founding Fathers, the birth of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and America’s first national antiwar movement. A key chapter in the creation of the United States, it is the story of a burgeoning nation and an unforgettable conflict that has shaped American history.  

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought
   • content: "Amy Greenberg's original and moving narrative of the U.S. invasion of Mexico relates the gradual loss of enthusiasm for waging what began as a popular war of conquest. How peace ultimately prevailed is the most surprising part of her story."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, authors of Madison and Jefferson
   • content: "No less a warrior than Ulysses S. Grant had good reason to decry the war with Mexico as 'wicked.' In Amy S. Greenberg's dramatic and deeply engaging political narrative, the reader gets the grit of the campaign and rich insight into the fascinating historical actors who stage-managed (or resisted) this all-important, under-studied war. In these fast-turning pages, we see clashes among political opportunists, moments of eloquence and pathos-all under the rising sun of American power."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Andrés Reséndez, author of A Land So Strange
   • content: "A Wicked War gives the U.S.-Mexican War a personal dimension and immediacy that has been lacking until now. Amy Greenberg makes us live the war vicariously through the lives of the aging patriarch Henry Clay who lost a son in Mexico, the husband-and-wife presidential team of James K. and Sarah Polk, the lanky and somewhat disheveled Abraham Lincoln still learning about politics, and others. This is a rare melding of great story-telling and analysis of an era that shaped not only the United States but the entire North American continent."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Mark E. Neely, Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fate of Liberty
   • content: "A Wicked War, with its emphasis on politics rather than military history, does for the Mexican-American war what James McPherson did for the Civil War with Battle Cry of Freedom, greatly broadening our understanding of the war. Certainly Professor Greenberg's book will immediately become the standard account of the Mexican War, at last giving it an important place in the history of the United States. This book restores my faith in the merits of narrative history."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: "A well-rendered, muscular history of a war whose ramifications are still being carefully calibrated."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "The seldom-sung Mexican War emerges as one of America's most morally ambiguous and divisive conflicts in this illuminating history."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Maria Montoya, San Francisco Chronicle
   • content: "Amy S. Greenberg's new history elegantly unfolds the story of the war through the lives of five politicians . . . [Greenberg] immerse[s] her readers in the early 1840s . . . Gripping."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "A provocative main idea in a freshly original narrative."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Zocalo Public Square
   • content: "Greenberg writes taut political history, full of chapter-ending cliffhangers and characters who feel like real people."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Bill Kauffman, Reason
    • content: "In her absorbing and valuable A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, Penn State's Amy S. Greenberg does a splendid job of vivifying this disgraceful episode in American history."
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 10, 2012
      The seldom-sung Mexican War emerges as one of America’s most morally ambiguous and divisive conflicts in this illuminating history by historian Greenberg (Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire), who gives sketchy, colorful recaps of the battlefield highlights, but focuses on the war’s politics and shifting ideological currents. Provoked by President James K. Polk to further his expansionist program and silence Whig critics, the war began as a wildly popular vehicle for manifest destiny and American fantasies of martial vigor. But Greenberg demonstrates the rapid spread of public disillusionment and opposition, despite triumphant victories, as casualties and desertion took their toll on war-weary soldiers; press reports of American atrocities tarnished the war’s glamour, and a nationwide antiwar movement condemned the invasion as an unjust landgrab. The author arranges her lucid narrative around vivid profiles of central and marginal figures, including first lady Sarah Polk, an influential adviser to her husband; Abraham Lincoln, whose politics were galvanized by the war; and envoy Nicholas Trist, who was so ashamed of the war that he disobeyed Polk’s orders and negotiated a relatively lenient peace treaty. Greenberg’s probing account of this war reveals its drama—and its very modern complexity. Photos, illus., maps. Agents: Sydelle Kramer and Susan Rabiner, Susan Rabiner Literary Agency.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 15, 2012
      A condensed new study of the Mexican-American war portrays America's terrible loss of innocence. Waging war against an unoffending neighbor changed the tenor of American politics in the mid 19th century, created a new crop of military leaders and aroused a deep anti-government suspicion among American citizens, writes Greenberg (History and Women's Studies/Penn St. Univ.; Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents, 2011, etc.). The rebellion of Texas from Mexican rule created a clamor for annexation, taken up first by President John Tyler in advance of congressional approval. The author focuses mainly on five individuals whose destinies were intimately tied up in the war with Mexico. Former Speaker of the House Henry Clay was morally opposed to annexation and lost his bid for the presidency in 1844 to James Polk, who used the expansionist frenzy to win political advantage, becoming the key advocate of Texas and California annexation. In the wake of Clay's eloquent speech in Lexington, Ky., in 1847, denouncing the aggressive war against Mexico, Illinois congressman and fervent Clay admirer Abraham Lincoln distinguished himself in Congress with his own stirring emotional condemnation of the president's evasive tactics. Two other lesser-known figures appear prominently: Illinois patriot and Lincoln's Whig Party rival John Hardin represented the typical zealous volunteer to the Mexican conflict, grown quickly disillusioned by the senseless violence, while State Department clerk Nicholas Trist was secretly dispatched to Mexico by Polk to make a treaty advantageous to the U.S.--though Trist harbored great ambivalence. A well-rendered, muscular history of a war whose ramifications are still being carefully calibrated.

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 15, 2012
      Historian Greenberg, who specializes in Manifest Destiny, advances a thesis about the expansionist doctrine's realization through the Mexican-American War of 184648. As he sees it, things could have been much worse for Mexico, for at times President James Polk demanded more Mexican territory than he eventually settled for. Greenberg argues that strengthening antiwar sentiment deterred Polk, the evidence for which she draws from four figures who opposed the war: Henry Clay, Polk's opponent in the 1844 election; Nicholas Trist, Polk's diplomat, who defied orders and negotiated the peace treaty; Abraham Lincoln; and Lincoln's now-forgotten Illinois political rival, John Hardin. Greenberg brings forth interesting details about each character's political life and stance toward proposals to annex Texas that posed an obvious risk of war. Particularly intriguing is the prominence Greenberg accords to Hardin, whose deepening doubt about the war never assumed public expression and who, killed at the Battle of Buena Vista, was honored as a war hero. Adding Polk's politically talented wife to the historical mix, Greenberg clothes a provocative main idea in a freshly original narrative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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Often forgotten and overlooked, the U.S.-Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations as it divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War a generation later, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln. Amy S. Greenberg’s skilled storytelling and rigorous scholarship bring this American war for empire to life with memorable characters, plotlines, and legacies.   
When President James K. Polk compelled a divided Congress to support his war with Mexico, it was the first time that the young American nation would engage another republic in battle. Caught up in the conflict and the political furor surrounding it were Abraham Lincoln, then a new congressman; Polk, the dour president committed to territorial expansion at any cost; and Henry Clay, the aging statesman whose presidential hopes had been frustrated once again, but who still harbored influence and had one last great speech up his sleeve. Beyond these...

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