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Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas

Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas

by David Hackett Fischer

Liberty and freedom: Americans agree that these values are fundamental to our nation, but what do they mean? How have their meanings changed through time? In this new volume of cultural history, David Hackett Fischer shows how these varying ideas form an intertwined strand that runs through the core of American life. Fischer examines liberty and freedom not as philosophical or political abstractions, but as... (more)

The Age of Reason

by Thomas Paine

Paine's years of study and reflection on the role of religion in society culminated with this, his final work. An attack on revealed religion from the deist point of view — embodied by Paine's credo, "I believe in one God, and no more" — its critical and objective examination of Old and New Testaments cites numerous contradictions.

The Faiths of Our Fathers: What America's Founders Really Believed

The Faiths of Our Fathers: What America's Founders Really Believed

by Alf J. Mapp

In The Faiths of Our Fathers, widely acclaimed historian Alf Mapp, Jr. cuts through the historical uncertainty to accurately portray the religious beliefs of eleven of America's founding fathers, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. He discovers men with religious beliefs as diverse as their political opinions. These profiles shed light on the lives and times of the... (more)

The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy

The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy

by Bruce A. Ackerman

The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when it was almost destroyed by the rise of political parties in the United States. As Bruce Ackerman shows, the Framers had not anticipated the two-party system, and when Republicans battled Federalists for the presidency in 1800, the rules laid down by the Constitution exacerbated the crisis. With Republican militias preparing to march on Washington, the House of... (more)

"Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power

"Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power

by Garry Wills

In "Negro President," the best-selling historian Garry Wills explores a controversial and neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson's presidency: it was achieved by virtue of slave "representation," and conducted to preserve that advantage. Wills goes far beyond the recent revisionist debate over Jefferson's own slaves and his relationship with Sally Heming to look at the political relationship between the president... (more)

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

by Joseph J. Ellis

From the prizewinning author of the best-selling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx , a masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country. The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated and determined group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of triumphs; yet, as Joseph J.... (more)

Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and the ConstitutionRichard B. Morris

Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and the Constitution

by Richard Brandon Morris

Real Benjamin Franklin (American Classic Series)

Real Benjamin Franklin (American Classic Series)

by Andrew M. Allison, W. Cleon Skousen

The Real Benjamin Franklin: The True Story of America s Greatest Diplomat There are many Benjamin Franklins. Or at least he has taken on many different forms in the history books and conversations of the last two centuries. Some historians have shown us an aged statesman whose wise and steadying influence kept the Constitutional Convention together in 1787, while others have pictured a chuckling prankster who... (more)

Understanding Thomas Jefferson

by E. M. Halliday

Recent biographies of Thomas Jefferson have stressed the sphinxlike puzzles of his character -- famous champion of freedom yet lifelong slaveholder, foe of miscegenation yet secret lover of a beautiful slave for 30 years, aristocrat yet fervent advocate of government by the people. E. M. Halliday's absorbing and lucid portrait recognizes these and other puzzles about this great founder, but shows us how... (more)

The Honor of Command: General Burgoyne's Saratoga Campaign

The Honor of Command: General Burgoyne's Saratoga Campaign

by Stuart Murray

Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution as Seen Through British Eyes

Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution as Seen Through British Eyes

by Michael Pearson

A re-creation of the American Revolution from the British point of view --and a dramatically different picture of the birth of our nation. Using firsthand accounts--journals, letters from British officers in the field, reports from colonial governors in the colonies--Michael Pearson has provided a contemporary report of the Revolution as the British witnessed it. Seen from this perspective, some of the major... (more)

Thomas Jefferson: (The American Presidents Series)

Thomas Jefferson: (The American Presidents Series)

by Joseph Ferry, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Joyce Oldham Appleby

An illuminating analysis of the man whose name is synonymous with American democracy Few presidents have embodied the American spirit as fully as Thomas Jefferson. He was the originator of so many of the founding principles of American democracy. Politically, he shuffled off the centralized authority of the Federalists, working toward a more diffuse and minimalist leadership. He introduced the bills separating... (more)

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America

by Henry Wiencek

'Wiencek is a fine writer, a careful historian and an accomplished genealogist who engagingly invites readers into his researches.' - Raymond Seitz, "Daily Telegraph". George Washington's will decreed that all his slaves were to be freed; an action that has fuelled controversy, speculation and intrigue ever since. In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at... (more)

Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism

Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism

by Eric Burns

This lively, fascinating account of the surprisingly raucous journalism of the Revolutionary era-and how it helped to build a nation that has endured-offers new perspective on today's media wars Infamous Scribblers is a perceptive and witty exploration of the most volatile period in the history of the American press. News correspondent and renonwned media historian Eric Burns tells of Ben Franklin, Alexander... (more)

For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington, 1748-1760

For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington, 1748-1760

by Thomas A. Lewis

Lewis ( The Guns of Cedar Creek ) examines young George Washington as a figure illustrating the tension in the developing American character: the aristocratic ideals of the East Coast vs. the action-oriented pull of the West. Depicting early Easterners as valuing status and Westerners as drawn to change, Lewis suggests that Washington's work as surveyor of lands west of the Blue Ridge mountains, begun in 1748,... (more)

Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past

Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past

by Ray Raphael

The highly praised book in which cherished stories from American history are exposed as myths. Widely praised following its initial publication, Founding Myths is a page-turner created out of the stuff of American history primers. Reexamining thirteen well-known tales from the American struggle for independence, the book documents the errors and inventions that permeate these cherished national myths—myths... (more)

Washington's God

by Michael Novak

A leading conservative thinker offers the first in-depth look at the religious life of our country's greatest founding father, George Washington Washington has long been viewed as the patron saint of secular government, but in Washington's God , Michael Novak and his daughter, Jana, reveal that it was Washington's strong faith in divine Providence that gave meaning and force to his monumental life. Narrowly... (more)

Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill

Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill

by Richard M. Ketchum

Boston, 1775: A town occupied by General Thomas Gage's redcoats and groaning with Tory refugees from the Massachusetts countryside. Besieged for two months by a rabble in arms, the British decided to break out of town. American spies discovered their plans, and on the night of June 16, 1775, a thousand rebels marched out onto Charlestown peninsula and began digging a redoubt (not on Bunker Hill, which they had... (more)

Errand into the Wilderness

by Perry Miller

The title of this book by Perry Miller, who is world-famous as an interpreter of the American past, comes close to posing the question it has been Mr. Miller's lifelong purpose to answer: What was the underlying aim of the first colonists in coming to America? In what light did they see themselves? As men and women undertaking a mission that was its own cause and justification? Or did they consider themselves... (more)

The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History 1775-1865 (Dover Thrift Editions)

The Declaration of Independence and Other Great Documents of American History 1775-1865 (Dover Thrift Editions)

compelling and influential documents: Monroe Doctrine, U.S. Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and more.

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