FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

Another colorful, absorbing historical narrative from Leckie (George Washington's War, 1992, etc.), who tells here of the territorial growth of America, as well as of the country's various wars with enemies foreign and domestic, from the early Federal period through the war with Mexico. The history Leckie relates is one of constant warfare. He begins with a lively account of the Yorktown surrender and then proceeds through America's quasi-war with France and its brief, gloriously triumphant conflict with the Barbary pirates on through the War of 1812, the Indian wars, the Texan War of Independence, and war with Mexico. Through anecdotal accounts, Leckie emphasizes the human interest in these battles, drawing distinctive portraits of Edward Preble, commodore of the Barbary expedition; Zachary Taylor; Andrew Jackson; William Henry Harrison; the Indian chief Tecumseh; Winfield Scott, and other military leaders. The author adheres only very loosely to his theme of American expansion: He says little about the Louisiana Purchase, for instance, while devoting a great deal of space to the Barbary War—in which expansion was not an issue—and to the War of 1812, in which American plans to conquer territory were unsuccessful. In telling of the rout by American forces of the Mexican army in the ``halls of Montezuma,'' and of the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—which ceded northern Mexican territories to the US—Leckie doesn't try to ennoble American actions, characterizing the war with Mexico as one of the ``great land grabs in human history that have remained permanent''—one after which, ``except for Alaska, the area of the continental United States was now rounded out.'' Here, as in his earlier works, Leckie offers little that's new or profound, and no penetrating historical analysis—but, once again, he delivers a vivid, engrossing story. (Maps)