"From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States Founding Partisans is a lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues....

From New York Times bestselling author H. W. Brands, a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House.
Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.
"A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions.......

The two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War traces the extraordinary downfall of financier Jubilee Jim, bringing to life New York’s Gilded Age and some of its legendary players, including Boss William Tweed, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the railroad tycoon Jay Gould.

Even before he was shot dead on the stairway of the tony Grand Central Hotel in...

The first "common man" to rise to the presidency, Jackson embodied the spirit and the vision of the emerging American nation; the term "Jacksonian democracy" is embedded in our national lexicon. Historian Brands follows Jackson from his days as rebellious youth, risking execution to free the Carolinas during the Revolutionary War, to his years as a young lawyer and congressman from the newly settled frontier state of Tennessee. As general of the Tennessee...

Theodore Roosevelt (1857—1919) was the most literary of American Presidents, writing scores of books, including Through the Brazilian Wilderness and African Game Trails. He was also the most active of American writers. In little more than six decades, Roosevelt was, among many of his activities, a rancher, historian, reformer, New York City Police Commissioner, renowned hunter, New York State Governor, conservationist, Vice President of the United...

A study of the life of Benjamin Franklin and his influence on both American and world history. From his early days as a printer's apprentice to very nearly his last days, Benjamin Franklin's thirst for knowledge and his desire to share what he knew brought him into the forefront of a changing world.

From the first days of the United States, a battle raged over money. On one side were the democrats, who wanted cheap money and feared the concentration of financial interests in the hands of a few. On the other were the capitalists who sought the soundness of a national bank-and the profits that came with it. In telling this exciting story, H. W. Brands focuses on five "Money Men": Alexander Hamilton, who championed a national bank; Nicholas Biddle,...

"What do moral people do when democracy countenances evil? The question, implicit in the idea that people can govern themselves, came to a head in America at the middle of the nineteenth century, in the struggle over slavery. John Brown's answer was violence--violence of a sort some in later generations would call terrorism. Brown was a deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to do whatever was necessary...

America is forged in the fires of adversity. These stories chart the challenges that helped shape a nation. In the mid-1800s, America faces its darkest hour yet. Abraham Lincoln is elected President of a United States on the brink of Civil War.