Unlikely General – "Mad" Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America

Unlikely General
360 Pages
Yale University Press
ISBN 978-0-300-21475-8

In the spring of 1792, President George Washington chose "Mad" Anthony Wayne to defend America from a potentially devastating threat. Native forces had decimated the standing army and Washington needed a champion to open the country stretching from the Ohio River westward to the headwaters of the Mississippi for settlement.

A spendthrift, womanizer, and heavy drinker who had just been ejected from Congress for voter fraud, Wayne was an unlikely savior. Yet this disreputable man raised a new army and, in 1794, scored a decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, successfully preserving his country and President Washington's legacy.

Drawing from Wayne's insightful and eloquently written letters, historian Mary Stockwell sheds light on this fascinating and under appreciated figure. Her compelling work pays long-overdue tribute to a man -- ravaged physically and emotionally -- by his years of military service -- who fought to defend the nascent American experience at a critical moment in history.

Mary Stockwell

About Mary Stockwell (Toledo, Ohio Author)

Mary Stockwell

Mary Stockwell has lived most of her life near the reserves carved out for the Ohio tribes after the War of 1812. She got her love of history from her father who was proud of his Irish descent and who took his children along the remnants of 19th century canals in northwest Ohio reminding them that their ancestors came into this country to build them and for the freedom and opportunity that America promised. She got her love of storytelling from her mother who was an actress, director, acting teacher, and prize winning poet.

In 1996, she was hired as the American History Professor at Lourdes University, and in 2001, she became the Chair of its Department of History, Political Science, and Geography. She won the Faculty Excellence Award for her superior teaching three times at Lourdes University and was nominated by her institution for national teaching awards. She said goodbye to her teaching and administrative career in 2012 to become a full-time writer and to accept the Earhart Foundation Fellowship at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan.

Mary Stockwell is the author of history books used by young people throughout the United States including The Ohio Adventure, A Journey Through Maine, and Massachusetts, Our Home, the 2005 winner of the Golden Lamp Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for Best Book. She is also the author of Woodrow Wilson: The Last Romantic In The First Men (America’s Presidents Series) for Nova Press and The American Story: Perspectives and Encounters to 1865 for Bridgepoint Education.

Her essays on George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt have appeared in major scholarly studies of these presidents. She has written for the website of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate. She just completed Unlikely General: "Mad" Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America for the Yale University Press and is currently working on Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses Grant and the Native Americans for the Southern Illinois University Press.

Dr. Stockwell is an excellent public speaker with an informative and engaging style of expression. She is a frequent lecturer at history events in the United States and Canada.