Showing results for "Memoir" 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.

From the New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello comes a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race.

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.

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.

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...

Volumes have been written about George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but no previous work captures the intimate and vital details the way Inventing a Nation does. Vidal's consummate skill takes you into the minds and private rooms of these great men, illuminating their opinions of one another and their concerns about crafting a workable democracy.

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.

Despite the key part he played in the country's founding, few Americans today have heard of John Dickinson. Early chroniclers and historians, seeking to create a patriotic narrative and taking their cues from his political enemies, cast him as a coward and Loyalist for not signing the Declaration. Many later historians have simply accepted and echoed this distorted and dismissive view. Jane Calvert's fascinating, authoritative, and accessible biography restores him to a place of prominence in the nation's formative years.

In 1799, at the behest of President George Washington, Patrick Henry came out of retirement to defend the Constitution that he had once opposed and to thwart Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, whom Washington accused of putting party over country and threatening the fragile union. For the People, For the Country tells the remarkable story of how the most eloquent public speaker of the American Revolutionary era and a leading antifederalist during debates over ratification of the Constitution reemerged on the side of the federalists and once again changed history.

The complicated life and legacy of John Trumbull, whose paintings portrayed both the struggle and the principles that distinguished America's founding moment.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.

The long-awaited biography of the frontier Founding Father whose heroic actions and neglected writings inspired an entire generation, from Paine to Madison. On May 10, 1775, in the storm-tossed hours after midnight, Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary firebrand, was poised for attack. With only two boatloads of his scraggly band of Vermont volunteers having made it across the wind-whipped waters of Lake Champlain, he was waiting for the rest of his Green Mountain boys to arrive....

Volume Four opens as the British abandoned Boston in March 1776. They moved their troops to Long Island and their fleet to New York Harbor. Washington, anticipating such a strategy, came out to face the Redcoats in Brooklyn, but was driven back to the city. More British troops arrived, forcing Washington to withdraw north. As the winter of 1777 approached with Redcoats occupying Philadelphia, Washington restricted the British army's supply line. But almost nobody believed the British could be defeated and few believed Washington's army could survive.

Our Flag Was Still There details the improbable two-hundred-year journey of the original Star-Spangled Banner—from Fort McHenry in 1814, when Francis Scott Key first saw it, to the Smithsonian—and the enduring family who defended, kept, hid, and ultimately donated the most famous flag in American history. Tom McMillan tells a story as no one has before. Digging deep into the archives of Fort McHenry and the Smithsonian, McMillan follows the flag on an often-perilous journey through three centuries.

John and Abigail Adams and their descendants have profoundly influenced life in the United States for more than two centuries. From the great political and philosophical contributions of Founding Father and President John Adams, the roster of Adams luminaries is unprecedented: diplomat and sixth president, John Quincy Adams; pre-Civil War "Voice of Honor", Charles Francis Adams; and authors Henry and Brook Adams. The story of the Adams dynasty is as impressive and compelling as its legacy.

John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.