Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation Hardcover - 2005

"Insightful and entertaining, Victory in Tripoli is an absolutely fascinating story, wonderfully told. Anyone with even a passing interest in naval history, or U.S. history in general, should read this book."
--Admiral William J. Crowe Jr., USN (Ret.), former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

"Victory in Tripoli deftly captures the dangers of covert operations, the complexity of international diplomacy, and the thrills and horrors of battle. Joshua E. London's exciting and insightful look at one of America's earliest and seldom remembered foreign escapades offers much for the keen observer of current events."
--Charles T. Pinck, president of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Society

"History shall tell that the United States first volunteered a ship of war, equipped, a carrier for a pirate. . . . Frankly I own, I would have lost the peace and been impaled myself rather than yield such a concession. Will nothing rouse my country!"
--William Eaton, in a letter to the secretary of state, 1800

Giving money, arms, and a warship to a pirate who has attacked our merchant vessels and taken U.S. sailors as slaves? William Eaton, United States consul to Tunis, was furious. Eaton, however, was not a man given to impotent rage. He was intent on ending the custom of paying protection money to the Barbary pirates of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. His plan: to reverse the roles of diplomacy in the region by taking the fight straight to the piratical regimes.

Over the next five years, the fledgling U.S. Navy would develop into a formidable force as it employed blockades, covert operations, amphibious assaults, brute force, and even mercenaries to make the Mediterranean safe for U.S. merchant ships. Victory in Tripoli tells the inspiring story of how Eaton and a few other determined Americans forced their young nation to stand up to terrorism. It is an eerily familiar tale whose lessons remain central to U.S. foreign policy to this day.