The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin distills the complex and passionate intellectual strivings of the man whom David Hume called the first philosopher and great man of letters of the New World. Benjamin Franklin was a true renaissance man. A statesman and a diplomat, (he wa the person to sign all four major documents of the founding of America - The Declaration of Indepence, the Constitution, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the Treary of...

"Alexander Hamilton was arguably the most important figure in American history who never attained the presidency, but he had a far more lasting impact than many who did." "An illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, Hamilton rose with stunning speed to become George Washington's aide-de-camp, a battlefield hero, a member of the Constitutional Convention, the leading author of The Federalist Papers, and head of the Federalist party....

In Inventing a Nation, National Book Award winner Gore Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal's splendid prose, in ways we have not up to now-their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life...

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a best-selling author, the country's first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies' man, and a moralist, and the most prominent celebrity of the 18th century. Franklin was, however, a man of vast contradictions,...

The first major biography of Benjamin Franklin in more than sixty years, The First American is history on a grand scale -- a work of meticulous scholarship and a thoroughly engaging portrait of the foremost American of his day. Diplomat, scientist, philosopher, businessman, inventor, wit, and bon vivant, Benjamin Franklin was in every respect America's first Renaissance man. The eighteenth-century genius comes to life in this masterwork by acclaimed...

"The prizewinning author of Founding Brothers and American Sphinx now gives us the unexpected story--brilliantly told--of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal...

An acclaimed biographer writes the remarkable story of Alexander Hamilton, one of America's most influential and fascinating founding fathers, and his untimely death in a duel with Aaron Burr.

By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to a Gallup poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man's personality and the foreign...