The book is an intriguing account of the the politician,president and the flawed human being he was in many respects. In all, it is a panoramic view of a man made by the times of depression and war and how he responded to both. He towered above the course of the nation through the most trying tim...
The book give a good history of the settlement of East Texas by American adventurers, the 15-year rush to populate Texas with American "Anglos", and the contentious showdown with Santa Anna and the Mexican army. There are many familiar characters, now legendary personalities, like Bowie, Crocket...
Andrew Jackson may be the most important American not yet exhumed in the rush to learn from the leading lights of our early history. If so, it makes sense that H.W. Brands is leading the charge toward his rediscovery. For one thing, Brands teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, in a state ...
The ‘California Gold Rush’ is known as one of the most iconic time periods in American history not only because of the economic boom that it brought west but because of the idealistic American values that came with it. ‘Manifest Destiny’ is an idea that has caressed the minds of some of the grea...
In the first comprehensive biography of Benjamin Franklin in over sixty years, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands brings vividly to life one of the most delightful, bawdy, brilliant, original, and important figures in American history.A groundbreaking scientist, leading businessman, philosopher, be...
Indian resistance would continue, but the unity he preached and imperfectly accomplished couldn’t survive without its apostle and ablest practitioner. Neither whites nor Indians had ever seen his like or would see it again. Jackson applauded the death of the Shawnee leader and would have apprecia...
By the beginning of the Civil War, California’s mines had produced more than $600 million in gold. During the four years of the war, another $130 million came out of the ground. Not all of the gold went east right away; much was employed to build San Francisco and the other cities and towns of Ca...
The Republicans felt sufficiently secure to deliver a slim majority to Hayes. Such, at any rate, was what the Republicans asserted. The Democrats alleged a miscount. They also alleged miscounts in the two other Southern states still controlled by Republicans, Florida and Louisiana, where the Haye...
For Austin to place his trust in Santa Anna, and to ask others to do the same, seemed to Houston to raise serious doubt about Austin’s sanity—or his integrity. “It awakened no other emotion in my breast than pity mingled with contempt,” Houston told a contemporary. “He showed the disposition of t...