This fascinating study of military leadership follows British general Bernard Law MontgomeryÆs military career from his cadet days and service in World War I to his great victories of World War II, including his defeat of the great German panzer commander, Erwin Rommel, at Alamein.Nigel Hamilton presents a brilliant, arrogant Montgomery, who refused to bow to authority and skated on the edge of dismissal like his American counterpart, George S. Patton. Though very different in the...

This intimate biography reveals how FDR took personal charge of the military during WWII: "Splendid . . . the memoir Roosevelt didn't get to write" ( New York Times Book Review).Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR's masterful—and underappreciated—command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR's White House and int...

A DRAMATIC, EYE-OPENING ACCOUNT OF HOW FDR TOOK PERSONAL CHARGE OF THE MILITARY DIRECTION OF WORLD WAR IIBased on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving Roosevelt aides and family members, The Mantle of Command offers a radical new perspective on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's masterful - and underappreciated - role as U.S. commander in chief during the Allied war effort. After the disaster of Pearl Harbor, we see Roosevelt devising a global strategy that wil...

The twentieth century has been called 'the American Century'. Not since the days of the Roman emperors has there been such a succession of rulers holding the fate of the world in their hands. Now, award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton gives us the lives of the twelve men, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, who presided over America's imperial fortunes - the good, the bad and the truly awful.How did these American Caesars reach the White House? What were the challenges ...

A decade-and-a-half after President William Jefferson Clinton first took the oath of office, biographer Nigel Hamilton tells the riveting story of what was possibly the greatest self-reinvention of a president in office in modern times. The Clinton presidency began disastrously -- kicking off with the worst transition in living memory and deteriorating through a series of fiascos, from gays in the military to Hillary Clinton's failed health care reform. How Bill Clinton faced up to his fai...

The astonishing story of FDR's yearlong, defining battle with Churchill in 1943, as the war raged in Africa and Italy: "Superb." —Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post1943 was the year of Allied military counteroffensives, beating back the forces of the Axis powers in North Africa and the Pacific—the "Hinge of Fate," as Winston Churchill called it. In Commander in Chief, Nigel Hamilton reveals Franklin D. Roosevelt's true role in this saga: overrulin...

In the much-anticipated conclusion to his masterful trilogy chronicling the wartime career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, renowned military and political biographer Nigel Hamilton aligns triumph with tragedy to show how FDR was the architect of a victorious peace that he would not live to witness. Providing the definitive account of the events in Normandy on 6 June 1944, Hamilton also reveals the fraught nature of the relationship between the greatest wartime leaders of the Allied forces.

The "gripping and powerfully argued" final volume in the acclaimed 3-part biography of FDR at war—proving that he was the key strategist of WWII ( New York Times Book Review).Nigel Hamilton's celebrated trilogy culminates with a story of triumph and tragedy. In the spring of 1944, FDR oversaw the historic success of the D-day landings he had championed, just as he was found to be mortally ill. Yet even in the face of his own mortality, Roosevelt was the arc...

It is not surprising that biography is one of the most popular literary genres of our day. What is remarkable is that there is no accessible guide for how to write one. Now, following his recent Biography: A Brief History (from Harvard), award-winning biographer and teacher Nigel Hamilton tackles the practicalities of doing biography in this first succinct primer to elucidate the tools of the biographer’s craft.Hamilton invites the reader to join him on a fascinating journ...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 GILDER LEHRMAN LINCOLN PRIZEFrom the New York Times bestselling presidential biographer comes the greatest untold story of the Civil War: how two American presidents faced off as the fate of the nation hung in the balance—and how Abraham Lincoln came to embrace emancipation as the last, best chance to save the Union.**Of all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, there has been one surprising gap: the drama of how the “railsplitter” from I...

Nigel Hamilton brings all the magisterial authority he brought to his Whitbread-winning biography of Monty, and all the talent for tracking down and verifying hidden, controversial material that he showed in JFK: Reckless Youth, which topped the American bestseller charts for months, in this new biography of Bill Clinton. Born into a 'white trash' family in backwoods, racially segregated Arkansas, he suffered under an alcoholic, violent stepfather, on one occasion having to fight him physi...

For thousands of years we have recorded real lives--the lives of others, and of ourselves. For what purpose and for whom has this universal and timeless pursuit endured? What obstacles have lain in the path of biographers in the past, and what continues to confound biographers today? Above all, how is it that biographies and autobiographies play such a contested, popular role in contemporary Western culture, from biopics to blogs, from memoir to docudrama?Award-winning biographer a...