“Berube’s fine history shows the value of looking back to a neglected period on its own terms while pointing avenues for future research. Scholars and enthusiasts alike will find it a rewarding study that develops larger themes in naval history. Questions about readiness, force structure, and fostering an effective naval professional culture during Jackson’s era also resonate today.”
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Law Liberty“
“On Wide Seas is a broadly researched book that provides extensive detail about a critical phase in the development of the U.S. Navy and the president who shepherded its development during the period.”
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Maritime Archaeology and Historical Society News
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“This is a necessary book, which fills a gap in the knowledge of the early US Navy and raises the bar high. Berube familiarizes the reader with the context of the naval innovations of Andrew Jackson’s eight-year presidency with an easy, agreeable style that neither patronizes nor swamps with complexities. His scholarly analyses draw from a wide horizon of knowledge, and he is a master of all facets of his subject, from the strategic through the financial and doctrinal to the technical and human. My guess is that this will become a classic.”
—Andrew Gordon, author of Admiral of the Narrow Seas: The Life of Bertram Ramsay and The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command
“On Wide Seas is a carefully articulated and argued book, and advocates clearly for the key role Jackson played during the Navy’s transformation, and more broadly to a naval revitalization. Berube makes innovative use of complex primary source material such as court martial records to show Jackson’s perspective on organizational discipline, yet also manages a wide survey of naval and executive branch documents and secondary sources throughout the work.”
—Chris Costello LCDR, USN; Associate Department Chair; Instructor, Colonial and Early Republic (U.S.), Global and Maritime History
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“While Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian era have long been subjects of scholarly fascination and debate, Old Hickory’s relationship with the U.S. Navy has received relatively scant attention. On Wide Seas addresses this much-neglected topic. . . . [and] makes a convincing case for the 1830s as a revolutionary decade for the U.S. Navy. . . . An engaging, persuasive, and significant contribution to the scholarly literature on early U.S. naval policy.”
—Journal of Military History
“On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era is a must-read for those interested in the early Republic of the United States and the development of the US Navy in the decades before the Civil War. Berube’s use of primary sources and an extremely well-laid-out format provides the reader with a wealth of information, supplemented by charts and photographs. Many of the issues facing the Navy in the early 19th century still resonate in the Navy of the early 21st century.”
—Sea History
“Claude Berube has rendered a major contribution to the history of the United States Navy in this examination of the Navy in the period of Andrew Jackson’s presidency. It is a fascinating and well-written story of the Navy’s real birth.”
—Williamson Murray, author of A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War and A Savage War: A Military History of the Civil War
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