John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Lincoln

David Herbert Donald · 714 pages

The phenomenal national bestseller that is "the Lincoln biography for this generation" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)-now in paperback. Drawing on resources not available until recently, including Lincoln's personal papers, archives, and newspaper reports, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Herbert Donald presents a masterful account of Lincoln's rise to the presidency and the political and p

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship

Russell Freedman

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

Jon Meacham · 568 pages

In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was th

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

Eric Metaxas · 304 pages

Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate twenty-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as w

Belle: The True Story of Dido Belle

Paula Byrne · 283 pages

The illegitimate daughter of a captain in the Royal Navy and an enslaved African woman, Dido Belle was sent to live with her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery. Growing up in his lavish estate, Dido was raised as a sister and companion to her white cousin, Elizabeth. When a joint portrait of the girls, commissioned by Mans

Washington: A Life

Ron Chernow · 928 pages

In this work, the author, a biographer provides a portrait of the father of our nation, dashing forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man, and revealing an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People

Sarah Hopkins Bradford · 132 pages

A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor · 316 pages

Chronicles the life of a former slave to James and Dolley Madison, tracing his early years on their plantation, his service in the White House household staff and post-emancipation achievements as a memoirist.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin · 916 pages

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the R

Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

Karen Swallow Prior · 320 pages

This book is the enthralling biography of the woman writer who helped end the slave trade, changed Britain's upper classes, and taught a nation how to read. The history-changing reforms of Hannah More affected every level of 18th-century British society through her keen intellect, literary achievements,collaborative spirit, strong Christian principles, and colorful personality. A woman without con

Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man

Judith Bloom Fradin, Dennis Brindell Fradin · 120 pages

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Joseph J. Ellis · 440 pages

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters pe

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

C.L.R. James · 426 pages

En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

Tom Reiss · 430 pages

“In the early 1800s, General Alex Dumas was purposefully disappeared by hie enemies. And though his son sought to make him live through his classic novels, for too long his story has remained silenced. The Black Count vividly vindicates the great general, restoring him to his rightful place at the center of the Age of Revolution.

Abraham Lincoln

Ingri d'Aulaire, Edgar Parin d'Aulaire · 56 pages

Text and illustrations present the life of the boy born on the Kentucky frontier who became the sixteenth president of the United States.

Franklin Pierce

Michael F. Holt · 154 pages

This book tells the story of the genial but troubled New Englander whose single-minded partisan loyalties inflamed the nation's simmering battle over slavery. Charming and handsome, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was drafted to break the deadlock of the 1852 Democratic convention. Though he seized the White House in a landslide against the imploding Whig Party, he proved a dismal failure in offi

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

Stephen B. Oates · 208 pages

Portrays America's most famous slave rebel and the insurrection he led in southeastern Virginia's Southampton County in August, 1831.

The Underground Abductor (An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman)

Nathan Hale · 128 pages

Araminta Ross was born a slave in Delaware in the early 19th century. Slavery meant that her family could be ripped apart at any time, and that she could be put to work in dangerous places and for abusive people. But north of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery was illegal. If she could run away and make it north without being caught or killed, she'd be free. Facing enormous danger, Araminta made it, an

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Ronald C. White Jr. · 845 pages

In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first. Based on seven years of research with prim

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

Tony Horwitz · 522 pages

In this book the author tells the tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war. Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, this work portrays Brown's uprising revealing a count

The Hemingses of Monticello

Annette Gordon-Reed · 798 pages

Historian and legal scholar Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America

Henry Wiencek · 404 pages

When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born an

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave

Jennifer Fleischner · 372 pages

This book is a vibrant social history set against the backdrop of the Antebellum south and the Civil War that recreates the lives and friendship of two exceptional women: First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her mulatto dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly. "I consider you my best living friend," Mary Lincoln wrote to Elizabeth Keckly in 1867, and indeed theirs was a close, if tumultuous, relationship. Born i

Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U. S. Marshal

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson · 40 pages

This biography profiles the life of Bass Reeves, a former slave who was recruited as a deputy United States Marshal in the area that was to become Oklahoma.