Describes the life of Gouverneur Morris, who edited the final version of the United States Constitution, served as minister to France, and was instrumental in the establishment of our national coinage system and in the planning of the Erie Canal.

Many consider Franklin the most fascinating American man who ever lived. A scientist, businessman, diplomat, author, inventor, philosopher and politician, he is America's original Renaissance man. His remarkable and varied accomplishments include the discovery of electricity and the modernization of the postal system. Brilliant and bawdy, a master statesman and a cultural icon, Franklin was so important and popular in his day that, according to the...

"Told through the eyes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Great Britain's King George III, Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the reader from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe. What started as protest and unrest in the colonies soon escalated to a world war with devastating casualties. O'Reilly and Dugard recreate the war's landmark battles, including Bunker...

"John Jay was a central figure in the early history of the American Republic. A New York lawyer, born in 1745, Jay served his country with the greatest distinction and was one of the most influential of its Founding Fathers. In the first full-length biography for almost seventy years, Walter Stahr brings Jay to life, setting his astonishing career against the background of the American Revolution." "Drawing on substantial new material, Walter Stahr...

Profiles John Adams, an influential patriot during the American Revolution who became the nation's first vice president and second president. "In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second president of the United States and...

A Southern historian challenges traditional interpretations of the Founding Fathers. "You think you know about the Founding Fathers, but did you know : The Founders were right-wingers by today's standards --- for gun rights, limited government, and religion in public life ; The Founders waged a War of Independence, not a revolution ; Is America a democracy? The Founders regarded the very idea of democratic government with scorn ; 'A nation of immigrants'?...

Thomas Jefferson advocated a republic of small farmers--free and independent yeomen. And yet as president he presided over a massive expansion of the slaveholding plantation system--particularly with the Louisiana Purchase--squeezing the yeomanry to the fringes and to less desirable farmland. Now Roger Kennedy conducts an eye-opening examination of that gap between Jefferson's stated aspirations and what actually happened. Kennedy reveals how the...