"A fine, invaluable book. . . . It is always instructive to study Lincoln, but now is a particularly good time to consider his devotion to words." —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book WorldFor Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America's 16th president through his use of language both as a ve...

Acclaimed national security columnist and noted cultural critic Fred Kaplan looks past the 1960s to the year that really changed AmericaWhile conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed. Pop culture exploded in upheaval with the rise of artis...

This "fascinating" biography of an iconic American author and public intellectual "is so full of incident and celebrity . . . a pageant of entertaining stories" ( The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Few writers of recent memory have distinguished themselves in so many fields, and so consummately, as Gore Vidal. A prolific novelist, Vidal also wrote for film and theater, and became a classic essayist of his own time, delivering prescient analyses of American ...

The engaging biography of one of the most celebrated and enduring authors of Western literatureCharles Dickens grew up in harsh poverty and became one of the world's most beloved authors. Biographer Fred Kaplan takes a brilliant, multifaceted approach in his examination of Dickens's life: his fraught marriage and relationships; the ever-present effects of his humble beginnings; his extensive, but carefully managed, public life; and his friendships with famous writer...

A stunning biography of the magisterial author behind The Portrait of a Lady and The AmbassadorsHenry James is an absorbing portrait of one of the most complex and influential nineteenth-century American writers. Fred Kaplan examines James's brilliant and troubled family—from his brother, a famous psychologist, to his sister, who fought with mental illness—and charts its influence on the development of the artist and his work. The biograp...

America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past few years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. Celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan explains the grave misconceptions that enabled George W. Bush and his aides to get so far off track, and traces the genesis and evolution of these ideas from the era of Nixon through Reagan to the present day.

From the author of the classic The Wizards of Armageddon and Pulitzer Prize finalist comes the definitive history of American policy on nuclear war—and several presidents’ actions in nuclear crises—from Truman to Trump.Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter,” takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pen...

"One of the finest biographies of a sadly underrated man . . . [Kaplan is] a master historian and biographer" (Carol Berkin, Washington Post).In this fresh and illuminating biography, Fred Kaplan brings into focus the dramatic life of John Quincy Adams—the little-known and much-misunderstood sixth president of the United States and the first son of John and Abigail Adams. In doing so, he reveals how Adams' inspiring, progressive vision guided his life and h...

An absorbing study of the evolution of sentiment in Victorian life and literatureWhat is sentimentality, and where did it come from? For acclaimed scholar and biographer Fred Kaplan, the seeds were planted by the British moral philosophers of the eighteenth century. The Victorians gained from them a theory of human nature, a belief in the innateness of benevolent moral instincts; sentiment, in turn, emerged as a set of shared moral feelings in opposition to both sci...

Pulitzer Prize finalist: "The definitive biography" of the Victorian-era writer and historian ( The Times Literary Supplement).A Pulitzer finalist that draws upon years of research and unpublished letters, Thomas Carlyle examines the life of the Victorian genius. Carlyle was the author of Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution: A History, and he possessed one of literature's ...

"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship." — St. Louis Post-DispatchThe acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan returns with a controversial exploration of how Abraham Lincoln's and John Quincy Adams' experiences with slav...

“An important, disturbing, and gripping history” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), the never-before-told story of the computer scientists and the NSA, Pentagon, and White House policymakers who invent and employ cyber wars—where every country can be a major power player and every hacker a mass destroyer.In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a teenager unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the s...