H. W Brands

"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...

"William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for the American West. When Sherman rose to commanding general of the Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his followers onto a reservation where they would live as farmers and ranchers. But Geronimo preferred to fight. The Last...

"Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential president of the twentieth century. Reagan took office at a time when the public sector, after a half century of New Deal liberalism, was widely perceived as bloated and inefficient,...

What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? George Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Benjamin Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success. Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently-- and soon heard themselves denounced...

"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....

Explores the life of the first "common man" to become president of the United States, discussing Jackson's early days in South Carolina, his military exploits, and his contributions to the causes of democracy and Manifest Destiny.

H.W. Brands tells the story of settling the American West, from fur trading in Oregon to the Texas Revolution; from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' vivid dreams drove courage, perseverance, and outrageous acts of violence. The West was where riches rewarded a miner's persistence, a cattleman's courage, a railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

"An engaging and intimate portrait of the controversial early American politician Aaron Burr, by bestselling historian H. W. Brands"--