Before the railroads carved through the Iowa prairie, before the abolitionist fires burned brightest across a divided nation, one man stood at the crossroads of American destiny and refused to look away. Josiah Bushnell Grinnell was not merely a witness to the turbulent birth pangs of modern America, he was one of its most passionate architects. Preacher, politician, pioneer, and tireless crusader for human freedom, Grinnell carved his name into the soul of the American Midwest with nothin...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An elegantly written account of leadership at the most pivotal moment in American history" ( Philadelphia Inquirer): Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson reveals how George Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president.After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington shocked...

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes “a historical spellbinder” (The Christian Science Monitor) about a trio of political giants in nineteenth-century America—and their battle to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy.In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Fo...

a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas,

A "thoroughly researched [and] historically enlightening" account of how the Commonwealth of Virginia split in two in the midst of war ( Civil War News)."West Virginia was the child of the storm." —Mountaineer historian and Civil War veteran Maj. Theodore F. LangAs the Civil War raged, the northwestern third of the Commonwealth of Virginia finally broke away in 1863 to form the Union's 35th state. Seceding from Secession chronicles ...

Fifty-five men met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a document that would create a country and change a world: the Constitution. Here is a remarkable rendering of that fateful time, told with humanity and humor. Decision in Philadelphia is the best popular history of the Constitutional Convention; in it, the life and times of eighteenth century America not only come alive, but the very human qualities of the men who framed the document are brought provocatively into focus—casting ...

A Pulitzer Prize winner's "magisterial" biography of the Civil War–era Massachusetts senator, a Radical Republican who fought for slavery's abolition ( The New York Times).In his follow-up to Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, acclaimed historian David Herbert Donald examines the life of the Massachusetts legislator from 1860 to his death in 1874.As a leader of the Radical Republicans, Sumner made the abolition of slavery his p...

"[A] solidly researched, briskly presented popular history that helps sharpen our picture of a surprisingly pivotal era." — Los Angeles Times1776, 1861, 1929. Any high-school student should know what these years meant to American history. But wars and economic disasters are not our only pivotal events, and other years have, in a quieter way, swayed the course of our nation. 1831 was one of them, and in this striking new work, hist...

The president who served the shortest term—just a single month—but whose victorious election campaign rewrote the rules for candidates seeking America's highest officeWilliam Henry Harrison died just thirty-one days after taking the oath of office in 1841. Today he is a curiosity in American history, but as Gail Collins shows in this entertaining and revelatory biography, he and his career are worth a closer look. The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independe...

From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States.To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution ...

A fascinating exploration of American identity by one of the most influential historians and thinkers of the twentieth centuryAccording to Frederick Jackson Turner, the distinct qualities of the American character are inseparable from the idea of the frontier. One of the nation's most influential historians, Turner sets forth his "frontier thesis" in the eight brilliant, enlightening, and provocative essays that make up his seminal work, The Frontier in America...

America Afire is the powerful story of the election of 1800, arguably the most important election in America's history and certainly one of the most hotly disputed. Former allies Adams and Jefferson, president versus vice president, Federalist versus Republican, squared off in a vicious contest that resulted in broken friendships, scandals, riots, slander, and jailings in the fourth presidential election under the Constitution.