The Greater the Honor Author:William H. White The year is 1803, and young Oliver Baldwin arrives in Boston to take his berth aboard the newly launched United States brig Argus commanded by Stephen Decatur. Argus is bound for the Mediterranean to join Commodore Preble's squadron to protect our trade against the "Barbary Pirates," the North African Corsairs who made their livelihood preying u... more »pon merchant vessels sailing in the western Mediterranean. Baldwin and his shipmates are in for a rollicking adventure. Under Decatur's careful eye, the young men in his command learn to hand, reef, steer and fight! Novelists, like historians, are storytellers. Unlike historians, however, they find the elements of plot and suspense not in libraries and archives but in their own imaginations. Bill White is one of those few novelists who is comfortable both in the world of imagination as well as amongst books and dusty manuscripts. In The Greater the Honor he weaves an imaginative tale of young men in war set against an historical background that is accurate in nearly every detail.« less