Shortly after America had achieved its independence from Great Britain, the new nation confronted a threat from the Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Beginning in 1784, raiders from ...

In 1790, in his last public address before he died, Benjamin Franklin ridiculed a proslavery speech in Congress by comparing it to a fictional speech of Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a North African Muslim ...

Some Republican leaders have compared the war in Iraq with President Thomas Jefferson's historic confrontation with the Barbary pirates. But the whole story does not necessarily serve the Republican ...

The history of “one of the most remarkable figures in the early story of the fledgling United States” is unearthed in this intriguing biography from journalist Ekin (The Stolen Village). In 1785, an ...

Forget the pirates of the Caribbean: their Old World brethren were an altogether more colorful and fearsome lot, according to this swashbuckling study. Historian Tinniswood (The Verneys: A True Story ...