The tale is a great one, full of detail and recounting from primary records of the time — diaries and letters from diplomats, naval officers and ratings, soldiers on the trail with Eaton, and Eaton himself. While real life rarely has the taut timing of fiction, Zacks does a good job of playing the different threads of the story together, and bringing the various players to life. While the campaign against the Barbary Pirates — which would be resolved far more satisfactorily a decade later — is now more of a footnote in history compared to what else was going on during Jefferson's administration, at the time it was the stuff of headlines, as the barbarous Musselman slavers dragged good Christian men and women — some of them Americans, by God! — into Dantesque hells of slavery and degradation! Zacks captures the tenor of the time, and, most importantly, a sense of William Eaton, a man whose love of liberty and the principles he saw America founded on (plus, to be fair, whose jingoism, bigotry, and self-righteousness) led him to one disastrous adventure after another, ultimately to be defeated by both a surprisingly political President and his own inner demons.

While the subtitle on the book is "Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805," the focus is mostly on the latter (itself an ill-kept secret) and on William Eaton. Jefferson comes off much more as a political schemer, an ivory tower philosopher who learns far too well the ways of power and manipulation. The Marines — a tiny portion of the US force, though important — were not the renowned fighting troops they are today, but were usually lower-paid ship-board or dock guards, and they'd hardly show up in the title were it not for the "shores of Tripoli" connection.

No, this is Eaton's tale, and the story of the events around him that shaped his mission and its tragic aftermath. And it's a tale about how some things never change, about how regime change and covert ops in foreign countries (as often bungled or uselessly thrown away as not) have been themes in foreign policy for years.

Raymond Todd does a serviceable job with the narration, though the sound editing could use some work; while the recording is clear enough, some of the paragraphs, especially between narrative threads, get run together, and at times there are rather jarring transitions that almost certainly read more clearly on the page.

Anyone with an interest in early US history, especially its military/diplomatic aspects, would be well-served to read this book.
Edited: [!--GH--]