American History Biographies

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of America’s most influential writers and also one of the most complex. He was the essential New Englander, a believer in hard work and simple living, and his personality and writing were tremendously influenced by his Puritan ancestry and the Salem Witch Trials. He obsessed over sin and redemption his entire life. Hawthorne’s unequivocal belief in the dark side of humanity proved to be one of the greatest assets of his writing.

You may know W. Kamau Bell from his new, Emmy-nominated hit show on CNN, United Shades of America. Or maybe you’ve read about him in the New York Times, which called him “the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years.” Or maybe from The New Yorker, fawning over his brand...

America’s leading religious scholar and public intellectual introduces lay readers to the Qur’an with a measured, powerful reading of the ancient text Garry Wills has spent a lifetime thinking and writing about Christianity. In What the Qur’an Meant, Wills invites readers to join him as he...

“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker “A Childhood has been widely recognized as a masterpiece, a Dickensian document of survival and blight in Depression-era Georgia.” –Harper’s The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the...

Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry crafts works synonymous with the grandeur and beauty of the American West. Here McMurtry turns his attention to George A. Custer, a complex man who has captivated historians for over a century. From graduating last in his class at West Point to leading the ill-fated 7th Cavalry in the attack at Little Bighorn, Custer forged a legacy - still very much alive today - as one of the West's most enduring historical figures.

One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the...

In American Brutus, popular historian Michael W. Kauffman delivers a history that reads more like a best-selling novel. This definitive masterwork dispels commonly held myths and reveals the truth about John Wilkes Booth. Luring Southern sympathizers into a “noble” presidential kidnapping, Booth stunned his puzzled pawns by murdering Lincoln. From Booth’s early life and acting career to his escape and death, this meticulously researched book re-examines it all using a wealth of primary sources.

A sweeping, magisterial biography of the man generally considered the greatest president of the twentieth century, admired by Democrats and Republicans alike. Traitor to His Class sheds new light on FDR's formative years, his remarkable willingness to champion the concerns of the poor and...

"Ryken's Worldly Saints offers a fine introduction to seventeenth-century Puritanism in its English and American contexts. The work is rich in quotations from Puritan worthies and is ideally suited to general readers who have not delved widely into Puritan literature. It will also be a source of...

In Exit Right, Daniel Oppenheimer tells the stories of six major political figures whose journeys away from the left reshaped the contours of American politics in the 20th century. By going deep into the minds of six apostates - Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens - Oppenheimer offers an unusually intimate history of the American left and the right's reaction.

The debut memoir from award-winning journalist Morgan Campbell: an incredible history of a family’s battles across generations, a hilarious and emotional coming-of-age story, and a powerful reckoning with what it means to be Black in Canada—particularly when you have strong American roots...

Forty years ago, Buzz Aldrin became the second human, minutes after Neil Armstrong, to set foot on a celestial body other than the Earth. The event remains one of mankind’s greatest achievements and was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. In the years since...

Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.

On this fascinating, inspirational, and often humorous audio program-recorded live-the incomparable Sylvia Browne explains how you can heal your body, mind, and soul by reprogramming your cell memory, virtually eliminating your physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. Sylvia talks about...

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

A captivating oral history of the iconic music venue the Stone Pony and of the rise, fall, and rebirth of Asbury Park, New Jersey—featuring interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Southside Johnny, members of the E Street Band and Asbury Jukes, the Ramones, the Jonas Brothers, Jack...

Special edition including the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas Elaine Pagels, one of the world’s most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the National Book Award for her groundbreaking work The Gnostic Gospels, now reflects on what matters most about...

On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.

The Wild West had more than its share of rough and tumble characters, some of them more intriguing than others. But few were quite as formidable as Chief Joseph. He led his people through one of the most challenging periods of their existence, when survival itself hung in the balance. Joseph was thrust into leadership of the Nez Perce just as US forces began systematically closing off the vast territories his people had called home for generations.

An extraordinary re-envisioning of the scope and ambitions of the contemporary military memoir: the Iraq War’s only living Medal of Honor recipient examines the bonds and wounds of war across two decades. After fourteen years apart, forty veterans of brutal close-quarters combat, lost souls to...