A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln and the 1846 Invasion of Mexico

The U.S.· Mexican War featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back·channel negotiations as it divided the nation and paved the way for the
Civil War a generation later. Penn State University Professor Amy
Greenberg provides skilled storytelling and rigorous scholarship as she
brings this American war to life with memorable characters, plotlines,
and legacies. In A Wicked War, Dr. Greenberg offers a view into the
world that the war made, a war that brought the United States more than
one·third of its territory, a new border and a Mexican American popula·
tion that would come to demand equal rights. It was a defining moment
in America’s past, and she reminds us of this with her gripping account.

In July Prof. Greenberg’s book on the Mexican War won the best book prize given by the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic in St. Louis. It was also one of five contenders for the Los Angeles Times history book award in April 2013. This book is a skillful blend of the arguments and deceptions that launched the U.S. into its first preemptive war told via a narrative focus on biography of 4 the or 5 key people on different ends of those arguments (including a young Abe Lincoln, and Mrs. Polk along with her husband).

Prof. Greenberg is a Santa Barbara native who studied at Berkeley and Harvard, and now holds an endowed chair at Penn State.

Presented by the Santa Barbara ‘Crust for Histor ic Preservation,
Co·sponsored by the UCSB History Associates.

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hm 7/23/13