Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has written a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.How does life...

A vivid and intimate portrait of the New Deal president by the first woman ever appointed to the U.S. Cabinet.When Frances Perkins first met Franklin D. Roosevelt at a dance in 1910, she was a young social worker and he was an attractive young man making...

Is labor's day over or is labor the only real answer for our time? In his new book, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan argues that even as organized labor seems to be crumbling, a revived--but different--labor...

In The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89, Edmund S. Morgan shows how the challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting true story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history—from the acclaimed author of The Devil in the White City“A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and...

Drawing on previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives, An Unfinished Life is packed with revelations large and small -- about JFK's health, his love affairs, RFK's appointment as Attorney General, what Joseph Kennedy did to help his...

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody...

A gripping and original account of how the Civil War began and a second American revolution unfolded, setting Abraham Lincoln on the path to greatness and millions of slaves on the road to freedom.   An epic of courage and heroism beyond the...

The preeminent historian of the Founding Era reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the American Revolution remains so essential.For Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood, the American Revolution is the most important...

The #1 bestseller that tells the remarkable story of the generations of American artists, writers, and doctors who traveled to Paris, fell in love with the city and its people, and changed America through what they learned, told by America’s master...

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in BiographyWidely and enthusiastically acclaimed, this is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most fascinating but troubled figures of the twentieth century by the nation's leading Cold War historian. In...

• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fictionParticularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look...

A selection of nineteen essential essays from The Federalist Papers in their original lengths by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, with notes by Richard BeemanPenguin presents a series of six portable, accessible, and—above all—essential...

What is the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court really allowed to do? This unique and handy guide includes the documents that guide our government, annotated with accessible explanations from one of America's most esteemed constitutional scholars...

This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes...

This final volume of Shelby Foote’s masterful narrative history of the Civil War brings to life the military endgame, the surrender at Appomattox, and the tragic dénouement of the war—the assassination of President Lincoln.Features maps throughout."An...

Focused on the pivotal year of 1863, the second volume of Shelby Foote’s masterful narrative history brings to life the Battle of Gettysburg and Grant’s Vicksburg campaign and covers some of the most dramatic and important moments in the Civil War...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The extraordinary account of James Garfield's rise from poverty to the American presidency, and the dramatic history of his assassination and legacy, from the bestselling author of The River of Doubt. The inspiration for the...

An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slaveryWhen George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves...

In the first study that combines an in-depth examination of Madison's National Gazette essays of 1791-92 with a study of The Federalist, Colleen Sheehan traces the evolution of Madison's conception of the politics of communication and public opinion...