Richard Kluger

Less than 100 years after its creation as a fragile republic, the United States more than quadrupled its size, making it the world's third largest nation. No other country or sovereign power had ever grown so big so fast or become so rich and so powerful. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Kluger chronicles this epic achievement in a compelling narrative, celebrating the energy, daring, and statecraft behind America's insatiable land hunger...

In 1733, struggling printer John Peter Zenger scandalized colonial New York by launching the New-York Weekly Journal, which assailed the British governor as corrupt and arrogant -- a direct challenge to the prevailing law against "seditious libel", which criminalized any criticism of the government. Fronting for a group of powerful antiroyalist politicians, Zenger was jailed for nine months before his landmark trial in August 1735, when he was brilliantly...