I first became aware of the Barbary War when I was around fourteen years old. I was in my hometown’s Barnes and Noble and saw a book that covered the career of William Eaton, focusing on his role in the Barbary War and eventual conflicts with Thomas Jefferson. It had been granted a prominent place in the bookshop since it involved TJ – our local hometown hero, of sorts, and yes, we do call him TJ – and while I didn’t buy it at the time it stuck with me. Later I convinced my parents to buy a copy of the audiobook on CD and after one failed attempt, eventually listened to it with my father on a road trip somewhere. It is perhaps not the most ringing of endorsements that I remember almost nothing from that book, not even its title. I tried looking it up, but it turns out that several books on the Barbary War were published in the mid-00’s. Still, while my first encounter with the Barbary War was not the most engaging it has sat in the back of my head all these years as one of the more interesting, and forgotten, American wars.