A. Lincoln

Colonel Roosevelt

Edmund Morris · 775 pages

This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize -- and National Book Award -- winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, marks the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third politic

Master of the Senate

Robert A. Caro · 1,232 pages

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Doris Kearns Goodwin · 910 pages

The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. Legislative stalemate paralyzes the country. Corporations resist federal regulations. Spectacular mergers produce giant companies. The influence of money in politics deepens. Bombs explode in crowded streets. Small wars proliferate far from our shores. A dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life. These unnervingly familiar headli

John Adams

David McCullough · 751 pages

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but

FDR

Jean Edward Smith, Marc Cashman · 869 pages

One of today's premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing narrative of one of America's greatest presidents.This is a portrait painted in broad strokes and fine details

Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

John Milton Cooper Jr. · 702 pages

The first major biography of America's twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America's foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president--he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR's New Deal and would prove central to governance thro

Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times

H.W. Brands, John H. Mayer · 638 pages

The extraordinary story of Andrew Jackson--the colorful, dynamic, and forceful president who ushered in the Age of Democracy and set a still young America on its path to greatness--told by the bestselling author of The First American.The most famous American of his time, Andrew Jackson is a seminal figure in American history. The first "common man" to rise to the presidency, Jackson embodied the s

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

H.W. Brands · 888 pages

A sweeping biography of the life and political career of Franklin Delano Roosevelt draws on archival materials, public speeches, interviews with family and colleagues, and personal correspondence to examine FDR's political leadership in a dark time of Depression and war, his championship of the poor, his revolutionary New Deal legislation, and his legacy for the future.

Abraham Lincoln

Carl Sandburg · 640 pages

James Madison: A Biography

Ralph Louis Ketcham · 753 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

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. · 1,087 pages

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow · 832 pages

From National Book Award winner Ron Chernow, a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, National Book Award winner Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. Acc

Washington: The Indispensable Man

James Thomas Flexner · 425 pages

A "distillation" of the author's fourvolume work on the life of the first president of the United States.

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

James M. McPherson · 340 pages

James McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with—and often against— his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it. Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as th

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero

Chris Matthews · 448 pages

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

Walter R. Borneman · 422 pages

In Polk, Walter R. Borneman gives us the first complete and authoritative biography of a president often overshadowed in image but seldom outdone in accomplishment. James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he plotted and attained a formidable agenda: He fought for and won tariff reductions, reestablished an independent Treasury, and, most notably, brought

Martin Van Buren

Ted Widmer, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. · 208 pages

With Malice Toward None: A Biography of Abraham Lincoln

Stephen B. Oates · 492 pages

A biography of the sixteenth President of the United States, covering both his personal and public life.

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

William Manchester · 896 pages

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

A Promised Land

Barack Obama · 768 pages

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making-from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy. In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political

Churchill: A Biography

Roy Jenkins · 1,020 pages

"Winston Churchill is an icon of modern history, but even though he was at the forefront of the political scene for almost sixty years, he might be remembered only as a minor player in the drama of British government had it not been for World War II. In this magisterial book, Roy Jenkins's command of the political history of Britain and his own high-level government experience combine in a narr

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

David Nasaw · 882 pages

"Celebrated historian David Nasaw brings to life the story of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, in this, the first and only biography based on unrestricted and exclusive access to the Joseph P. Kennedy papers."--