For readers of David McCullough, this is the thrilling story of 1814, when our survival as a nation was finally won.

Few people today realize that the United States’s sovereignty was not assured until 1814, when England acknowledged it with the Treaty of Ghent. In fact, earlier that same year, the prospects for America couldn’t have looked bleaker: a ruined economy, a feeble army, and serious talk of secession by the New England states all threatened its existence. By year's end, however, the young nation was at peace, poised for expansion to the west, never to go to war against Britain again. How did this remarkable transformation happen?

Drawing from rarely used source material, award-winning historian Willard Sterne Randall brilliantly re-creates the dramatic chain of events that prevented the nation from falling into British hands. From Dolley Madison with a telescope on the roof of the White House to Francis Scott Key penning the national anthem on an envelope, Randall’s work firmly establishes 1814 as a seminal year that should be celebrated alongside 1776 in our history.