The Dawn's Early Light (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf)

Walter Lord―author of such best-sellers as A Night to Remember and A Day of Infamy―brings to life the remarkable events of what we now call The War of 1812―including the burning of Washington and the attack on Baltimore's Fort McHenry that inspired the Francis Scott Key to write what would become our national anthem. Lord gives readers a dramatic account of how a new sense of national identity emerged from the smoky haze of what Francis Scott Key so lyrically called "the dawn's early light."