Henry Clay: The Essential American Buy Now

Henry Clay was one of the central figures in American history; his political career spanned the first half of the 19th Century, a tumultous period in the early Republic. He would be a key player in the events of the period: a War Hawk in the run-up to the War of 1812 (he was first elected Speaker at 34); a negotiator in the Ghent conference that ended the war; the Missouri Compromise of 1820; the Bank of the U.S. crisis in the 1830's; the Mexican War; the last Compromise of 1850. He worked with, and fought with, some of the most vivid characters in American history -- Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas. And as a Speaker, and later, one of the Republic's most powerful Senators, he would help craft the compromises that would postpone the Civil War. Indeed, the reader gets the sense that, by 1850, he must have known that this would be a desperate and ultimately futile effort, the "firebell in the night" that Clay, Jefferson and others had sensed was coming.

It's a thoroughly-researched work, and for all its length is a smooth read that loses nothing of the political, personal and family drama that a long and full life would see. The prose is interesting, the story clearly told, and the emotions of the day fully understood. Given Henry Clay's centrality to U.S. political history, it's important -- and the result is an important, and readable, history of his life, his times, and the country he helped frame, for better or for worse.

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