"Seasoned to the Country" brings together the details of slavery in the life of one of the most famous founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin.Franklinstarted life as a poor boy, receiving only two years of education before starting to work at age ten. When he opened his print shop, he hired an indentured servant, and advertised slaves for sale and runaway servants and slaves for capture. After he became married, he adopted the local practice of relying on slave labor in his home. By the end o...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham, “a big, grand, absorbing exploration of not just Jefferson and his role in history but also Jefferson the man, humanized as never before” (Entertainment Weekly)“Probably the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.”—Gordon S. WoodA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Entertai...

A Pulitzer Prize winner looks at the course of American history from the birth of the Constitution to the dawn of the Civil War.The years between 1787 and 1863 witnessed the development of the American Nation—its society, politics, customs, culture, and, most important, the development of liberty. Burns explores the key events in the republic's early decades, as well as the roles of heroes from Washington to Lincoln and of lesser-known figures. Captivating and insi...

Washington, D.C., is home to the most influential power brokers in the world. But how did we come to call D.C.—a place once described as a mere swamp "producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs (of enormous size)," and which was strategically indefensible, captive to the politics of slavery, and the target of unbridled land speculation—our nation's capital? In Washington, acclaimed, award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns to the backroom deal-making and shifting al...

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox t...

From the author of White Trash and The Problem of Democracy, a controversial challenge to the views of the Founding Fathers offered by Ron Chernow and David McCulloughLin-Manuel Miranda's play "Hamilton" has reignited interest in the founding fathers; and it features Aaron Burr among its vibrant cast of characters. With Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg plumbs rare and obscure sources to shed new light on everyone's favorite founding villain...

George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale...

A testament to the power of the human spirit under conditions of extreme oppression, this landmark history of slavery in the South challenged conventional views by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.Displaying keen insight into the minds of both enslaved persons and slaveholders, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that enslaved persons forced their owners to acknowledge their humanity through cul...

"One of those rare books that quickly became the standard work in its field." —Anne Firor Scott, Duke UniversityLiving with the dual burdens of racism and sexism, slave women in the plantation South assumed roles within the family and community that contrasted sharply with traditional female roles in the larger American society.This revised edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, explori...

John Ferling has nearly forty years of experience as a historian of early America. The author of acclaimed histories such as A Leap into the Dark and Almost a Miracle, he has appeared on many TV and film documentaries on this pivotal period of our history. In John Adams: A Life, Ferling offers a compelling portrait of one of the giants of the Revolutionary era. Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary, a leader who was deeply troub...

"Traces the history of abolition from the 1600s to the 1860s . . . a valuable addition to our understanding of the role of race and racism in America."— Florida CourierReceived historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radic...

Winner of the Bancroft PrizeWinner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln PrizeWinner of the Merle Curti awardWinner of the Frederick Douglass PrizeNo historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's ...