Showing results for "Biography" in Revolution & Founding

The drama of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is the foundational story of America - courage, loyalty, hope, fanaticism, greatness, failure, forgiveness, love. Agony and Eloquence is the story of the greatest friendship in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made, ruined, and finally renewed. In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future.

During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty's name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an "Indian lover," Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight for the British.

Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.

Like many historical events, the American Revolution is sometimes overlooked, ignored, or minimized by historians due to being shrouded in romantic myth and stubborn stereotypes. Here historian Phillip Thomas Tucker provides an in-depth look at the events of the Battle of Trenton, weeding out fiction and legend and presenting new insights and analysis.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Bestseller, a landmark biography of George Washington. In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of...

What did the Founding Fathers think about religion? And why did a group of practicing Protestants create a republic with widespread religious liberty? The 12 lectures included in this fascinating course provide multi-layered insights into the vision, philosophies, politics, and deep-seated faith of these brilliant leaders - in their own time, in their own words.

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 troubled by the warfare that he helped to make, and a fiercely independent statesman. Bringing to life an exciting time, an age in which Adams played an important political and intellectual role. this book is a singular biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically chronicles his hilarious adventures in attempting to follow the original meaning of the Constitution, as he searches for answers to one of the most pressing issues of our time: How should we interpret America’s foundational...

A controversial challenge to the works of Ron Chernow and David McCullough Lin-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...

In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, ?What made these men great???and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life...

The inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton! In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian...

The extraordinary life of James Monroe: soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform thirteen colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic. “A first-rate account of a remarkable life.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author...

"A fast-paced, often riveting account of the military and political events leading up to the Declaration of Independence and those that followed during the war ... Brands does his readers a service by reminding them that division, as much as unity, is central to the founding of our nation...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Times Bestseller, a landmark biography of George Washington. In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of...

An entertaining look at the life and wisdom of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who mastered the arts of wit, war, and wealth, long before becoming the subject of the runaway Broadway hit Hamilton: An American Musical. Two centuries after his death, Alexander Hamilton is...

The Mother of the Father of our Country. Mary Ball Washington was an unlikely candidate to be the mother of history’s most famous revolutionary. In fact, George Washington’s first fight for independence was from his controlling, singular mother. Stubborn, aristocratic Mary Ball Washington...

Arguably the most intellectual, creative, cosmopolitan, and curious of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the only top-tier Founder not to have served as president. Despite not becoming the Chief Executive, Franklin played an active role in American politics and served the aspiring and young United States in the key European capitals. His prodigious reading and appetite for learning are epic. As he did in works about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Kevin J. Hayes interprets the life and mind of Franklin through what he read.

Throughout his long and illustrious career, Benjamin Franklin nursed a not-so-secret desire to annex Canada and make it American. When he was not busy conducting scientific experiments or representing American interests at home and abroad, Benjamin Franklin hatched one plan after another to join Canada to the American colonies and then later to the United States. These were not solely intellectual efforts. He went to Montreal in 1776 to try to turn around the faltering occupation by American forces.

The #1 New York Times bestseller, and the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical Hamilton! Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation. "Grand-scale...

More than thirty years after working side by side in the White House, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger still stand as two of the most compelling, contradictory, and powerful leaders in America in the second half of the twentieth century. Both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition...