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...

"From one election cycle to the next, a defining question continues to divide the country's political parties: should the government play a major or a minor role in the lives of American citizens? The Declaration of Independence has long been invoked as a philosophical treatise in favor of limited government. Yet the bulk of the document is a discussion of policy, in which the founders outlined the failures of the British imperial government. Above...

"From a Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful history that reveals how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation's founding. New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders of the founding who called for American liberty are scrutinized...

"After Thomas Jefferson visited Mount Vernon in 1801 to pay his respects to George Washington's widow, Martha Washington remembered the encounter as the second-worst experience of her life-after the death of her husband. The two founders had become estranged by the time that Washington died. But for most of the time that they had known one another, from their first meeting in 1769, they enjoyed a productive and positive relationship. Contrary to the...