At the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than three thousand cases -- including more than twenty-five murder trials -- during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him. Lincoln's debates with Senator Stephen Douglas the previous fall had gained him a national following, transforming the little-known, self-taught...

In 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American War, three regiments of volunteer American soldiers were formed to go to war. The most celebrated of them, the 1st United States Volunteer Calvary, also known as "The Rough Riders," was led by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. A motley crew of cowboys and Ivy League scholars, the Rough Riders were hastily trained and thrown into battle in less-than-ideal circumstances. This is Roosevelt's eyewitness...

An assessment of the sixth American president's international life and complicated marriage considers his talents as a linguist and diplomat, citing his achievements during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Napoleonic Age.

More fascinating than fiction, this is the moving story of the most misunderstood woman in American history…The truth about Mary Lincoln has for nearly a century been hidden under a mountain of myth.They said Lincoln really loved Ann Rutledge. That he had tried to avoid marriage to Mary Todd, that his wife hurt him politically though she drove him to the Presidency, that she embarrassed him financially as well as socially and inflicted on him the...

This biography of the sixteenth president explores Lincoln's life and political career along with insights into his philosophy, religious views, and moral character.

The Lincoln Reader weaves a biography of Abraham Lincoln written by sixty-five authors, meshing history, anecdotes and research to provide a fascinating view of the Emancipating President. Paul Angle, the noted Lincoln scholar, has selected passages from the works of Lincoln's contemporaries, later biographers, and even Lincoln himself, to form a composite portrait of one of the wisest and most beloved American presidents. These passages, interwoven...

"Based on genealogical breakthroughs and previously unreleased records, this is the first book to explore the inspiring story of the poor Irish refugee couple who escaped famine, created a life together in a city hostile to Irish, immigrants, and Catholics, and launched the Kennedy dynasty in America. Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys' initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar...

Chester Alan Arthur, surely our unlikeliest president, may have been saved from complete obscurity only by the mutton-chop whiskers that stand out among the full-bearded visages of late-nineteenth-century presidents. But as this highly readable portrait of Arthur and his age reveals, duty's unexpected call turned the quintessential patronage politician into a statesman who skillfully guided America's first steps on the road to becoming a world power....

The child was born on September 14, 1874, at the only hospital in Buffalo, New York, that offered maternity services for unwed mothers. It was a boy, and though he entered the world in a state of illegitimacy, a distinguished name was given to this newborn: Oscar Folsom Cleveland--the son of the future president of the United States-Grover Cleveland. The story of how the man who held the nation's highest office never took responsibility for his son...

"White unites a novelist's knack of dramatization and a historian's sense of significance with a synthesizing skill that grasps the reader by the lapels." -Newsweek The third book in Theodore H. White's landmark series, The Making of the President 1968 is the compelling account of the turbulent 1968 presidential campaign, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and election of Richard Nixon. White made history with his...