Covered as well are our nation's earliest debates on defense budgets, foreign intervention, the President's war-making powers, and allied issues that have proved nothing if not perdurable. Among other events, the many-splendored story line encompasses the first US attempt to overthrow the head of a hostile government (the bashaw of Tripoli), plus America's initial effort to isolate another nation via blockade-and bombardment. In his engrossing narrative (which neither ignores nor belabors obvious parallels to latter-day events in the Middle East), the author skillfully combines vivid accounts of derring-do with shrewd appraisals of contemporary politics and diplomacy. Here, with considerable analytic flair, Whipple (The Challenge, 1987) sorts out Washington's often irresolute response to these seizures and the incarceration of US sailors. America's first hostage crises date back to its formative years, when Muslim pirates operating out of city-state ports along North Africa's Barbary Coast preyed on its merchant vessels in the Mediterranean.
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