Zacks’ punchy historical retelling, which provides a colorful, blow-by-blow account of the events - with Batman-style intensity - gives it 400-plus pages with notes.īy the time Eaton, a debt-ridden, down-on-his-luck ex-American diplomat, sets out on the nation’s first covert operation to overthrow the Tripolitanian regime, restore the pasha’s exiled brother Hamet to power and liberate the enslaved Americans, he’d already survived a major blow - then-President Thomas Jefferson, who’d authorized the effort, reneged on his official support for the mission, transferring the decision on whether Eaton would be allowed to go to the U.S. “Most people give it 50 pages in their books on the Barbary wars,” Zacks said in a telephone interview from New York last week.

Richard Zacks brings this important story of America's first overseas covert operation to life.Richard Zacks, a left-handed author with a thinning pate, admits to a weakness for the underdog.Īnd few figures in American history have been less fortunate than William Eaton, the star-crossed hero of Zacks’ latest book, “The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805.”Īgainst the backdrop of the Barbary War, when America was at odds with Tripoli and its Barbary pirates, which had declared war on the United States, Zacks’ narrative homes in on Eaton’s real-life, if quixotic, bid to restore the fledgling nation’s honor after the ruling pasha took captive some 300 American sailors and Marines run aground off the coast of Tripoli. But as Eaton dared to reveal that the president had deserted him, Jefferson set out to crush him. After surviving sandstorms, treachery, and near death, Eaton achieved a remarkable victory on 'the shores of Tripoli,' gaining freedom for the American hostages and new respect for the young United States. But before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.Īstoundingly, Eaton persevered, gathering a ragtag army and leading them on a brutal march across five hundred miles of desert. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission. President Jefferson sent out navy squadrons, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. A real-life thriller-the true story of the unheralded American who brought the Barbary Pirates to their kneesĪfter Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured three hundred US sailors and marines.

The pirate coast by richard zacks