Did Hamilton really fire his shot in the air? Did Burr really intend to kill his long-time rival? Why did these two statesmen end up targeting each other on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River in 1804? Long a touchstone of American history, the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr has taken on mythic proportions. Reveals facts from the fictions surrounding their fateful encounter. Features a wide-ranging, round-table discussion of experts...

"In this remarkable new portrait, award-winning historian David O. Stewart unveils the political education that made Washington a master politician--and America's most essential leader. From Virginia's House of Burgesses, where Washington learned the craft and timing of a practicing politician, to his management of local government as a justice of the Fairfax County Court to his eventual role in the Second Continental Congress and his grueling generalship...

First translation by Jerry Neeb-Crippen made from a text with "substantial deletions" by the author. Richard Leffler and the author revised the first three chapters of the translation; then Leffler and Kaminski finished the editing. (p. ix).

Surprisingly, no previous book has ever explored how family life shaped the political careers of America's great Founding Fathers--men like George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. In this original and intimate portrait, historian Lorri Glover brings to life the vexing, joyful, arduous, and sometimes tragic experiences of the architects of the American Republic who, while building a nation, were also raising...

A narrative account of how Jefferson, Paine and Monroe championed the most radical political and social ideas of the American and French Revolutions in order to transform the monarchical order into a form of idealism that gave way to the violence of war

Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions?and two nations. Revolutionary Brothers casts fresh light on this remarkable, often complicated, friendship of the two men.

"Bouton's work reveals a unique perspective, showing intimately how the war and the events that followed affected the majority of "the people": small farmers, craftsmen, and laborers. Bouton introduces us to the Revolution's unsung heroes - farmers, weavers, and tailors who risked their lives to create democracy and then to defend it against what they called the forces of "united avarice." We also get a look at some familiar characters from the Revolution,...

"In October 1785, American statesman John Jay acknowledged that the more his countrymen 'are treated ill abroad, the more we shall unite and consolidate at home.' Behind this simple statement lies a complicated history. From the British impressment of patriots during the Revolution to the capture of American sailors by Algerian corsairs and Barbary pirates at the dawn of the nineteenth century, stories of Americans imprisoned abroad helped jumpstart...