The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of Louisa May Alcott illuminates the world of Little Women and its author.Since its publication in 1868–69, Little Women, perhaps America's most beloved children's classic, has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. It has been translated into more than fifty languages and inspired six films, four television shows, a Broadway musical, an opera, and a web series. This lavish, four-color editi...

Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Matteson illuminates three harrowing months of the Civil War and their enduring legacy for America.December 1862 drove the United States toward a breaking point. The Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and Northern confidence. As Abraham Lincoln’s government threatened to fracture, this critical moment also tested five extraordinary individuals whose lives reflect the soul of a nation. The changes they underwent led to...

Based on a terrifying real-life incident, this tale of seduction, insanity, and murder is one of America's earliest novels. It unfolds in rural Pennsylvania of the 1760s, where a religious fanatic massacres several members of his family. Part thriller and part psychological drama, it explores the corruption of law and order within a small community.The American Gothic style of author Charles Brockden Brown combines intellectual and supernatural elements — a literary mode that influe...

After 25 years as a piano teacher of 100 students, mostly children, I find that i continue to be impressed by their musical talent and amused by their unexpected comments. If you like kids as much as i do, you will appreciate some of their unintentional and frequently uninhibited humor. Quoting my late grandmother Velma Peterson, as she quoted a favorite early T.V. host "Kids Say the Darnest Things".

A spirited freethinker amid an oppressive Puritan community, Hope Leslie champions independence for women and justice for Native Americans. Her best friend Magawisca, the daughter of a Pequot chief, defies tribal authority to rescue a white man from death and restore a kidnapped girl to her family. This frontier novel paints an intriguing portrait of life in seventeenth-century New England as it explores the tumultuous relations between Puritans and Pequots.Author Catharine Sedgwick...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for BiographyLouisa May Alcott is known universally. Yet during Louisa's youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. He desired perfection, for the world and from his family. Louisa challenged him with her mercurial moods and yearnings for money and fame. The other prize she deeply coveted—her father's understanding—seemed hardest to win. This story of Bronson and Louisa's ten...

“Psychologically rich. . . . Matteson’s book restores the heroism of [Fuller’s] life and work.”—The New YorkerA brilliant writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. Outspoken and quick-witted, idealistic and adventurous, she became the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley’s newsp...

Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Matteson illuminates three harrowing months of the Civil War and their enduring legacy for America.December 1862 drove the United States toward a breaking point. The Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and Northern confidence. As Abraham Lincoln's government threatened to fracture, this critical moment also tested five extraordinary individuals whose lives reflect the soul of a nation. The changes they underwent led to...

An artful portrait of a complex, formative figure in American history and his turbulent era, from a New York Times –bestselling author."A balanced, readable portrait. A refreshing perspective." — New York Times Book ReviewIn this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpr...

“Burns examines the fame of a number of the Founding Fathers: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Henry most prominently.” —Kirkus ReviewsTheir ambitions, intrigues, and jealousies shaped the birth of the nation, but they overcame their foibles and imperfections to throw off the chains of tyranny and form a more perfect union. We think of them now as faces on money or statues on pedestals, and, as Burns illustrates in luminous prose, that’...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this biography of Fuller "is as seductive as it is impressive . . . In Ms. Marshall, Fuller has . . . her ideal biographer" ( New York Times ).From an early age, Margaret Fuller provoked and dazzled New England's intellectual elite. Her famous Conversations changed women's sense of how they could think and live; her editorship of the Transcendentalist literary journal the Dial shaped American ...

“Fascinating . . . a lively and perceptive cultural history.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, The New YorkerIn this wide-ranging, brilliantly researched work, David S. Reynolds traces the factors that made Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most influential novel ever written by an American. Upon its 1852 publication, the novel’s vivid depiction of slavery polarized its American readership, ultimately widening the rift that led to the Civil War. Reynolds also charts the...