American History Biographies

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don't come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.

At the age of 14, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for 20 hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice.

The vivid, behind-the-scenes story of perhaps the most consequential political moment in American history—Abraham Lincoln’s history-changing nomination to lead the Republican Party in the 1860 presidential election.

In this incredible narrative, Erica Armstrong Dunbar reveals a fascinating and heartbreaking behind-the-scenes look at the Washingtons when they were the First Family and an in-depth look at their slave, Ona Judge, who dared to escape from one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Born into a life of slavery, Ona Judge eventually grew up to be George and Martha Washington’s “favored” dower slave. When she was told she was going to be given as a wedding gift to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Ona made the bold and brave decision to flee to the North, where she'd be a fugitive.

We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of narratives. These are threats American journalist Sigrid Schultz knew all too well. The Chicago Tribune's Berlin bureau chief and primary foreign correspondent for Central Europe from 1925 to January 1941, Schultz witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and was one of the first reporters—male or female—to warn American readers of the growing dangers of Nazism.

The United States of 1797 faced enormous challenges. The father of the new nation, George Washington, left his vice president, John Adams, with relatively little guidance and impossible expectations to meet. Adams was confronted with intense partisan divides, debates over citizenship, fears of political violence, potential for foreign conflict with France and Britain, and a nation unsure that the presidency could even work without Washington at the helm. Making the Presidency is an exploration of the second US presidency, a period critical to the survival of the American republic.

An “epic and intimate” (David M. Kennedy) portrait of four generations of the Morgenthau family, a dynasty of power brokers and public officials with an outsize—and previously unmapped—influence extending from daily life in New York City to the shaping of the American Century.

Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution - a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind”. But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution?

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which was unavailable for more than 10 years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering.

When James Buchanan was inaugurated president in March of 1857, he had inherited a powder keg that was just waiting to explode into the turmoil that was the American Civil War. Buchanan has since been vilified as being the great appeaser who placated the South enough to embolden them to secede from the Union. He is frequently listed as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. Buchanan himself, however, always held out the hope that history would vindicate him and the role he played.

Blending history and memoir, retired U.S. Marshal Mike Earp - a descendant of the legendary lawman Wyatt Earp - offers an exclusive and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the most storied law enforcement agency in America, illuminating its vital role in the nation's development for more than two hundred years. Setting his own experiences within the long history of the U.S. Marshals service, Earp offers a moving and illuminating tribute to the brave marshals who have dedicated their lives to keeping the nation safe.

For the first time ever, acclaimed naval historian James D. Hornfischer, “the dean of World War II naval history," writing with his son David J. Hornfischer, explores Capt. E. Evans’s incredible story, from his humble upbringing as a child of a Cherokee and Creek family in Pawnee, Oklahoma, and his graduation from the Naval Academy in 1931, to his service on fighting ships during the Pacific War and his selfless bravery and cool command during a valiant faceoff with the pride of the Japanese Navy.

Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in American history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's?

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

The 1968 US presidential election was the young Lawrence O'Donnell's political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America's shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different and how we got to where we are now.

A major historical biography of George C. Marshall - the general who ran the U.S. campaign during the Second World War, the Secretary of State who oversaw the successful rebuilding of post-war Europe, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - and the first to offer a complete picture of his life.

What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.

The NBC journalist who covered - and took fire from - Donald Trump on the campaign trail offers an inside look at the most shocking presidential election in American history. Intriguing, disturbing, and powerful, Unbelievable is an unprecedented eyewitness account of the 2016 election from an intelligent, dedicated journalist at the center of it - a thoughtful historical record that offers eye-opening insights and details on our political process, the media, and the mercurial 45th president of the United States.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death - from an assassin's bullet - in 1968.

Arriving as a fresh US Army Air Forces pilot in New Guinea in late 1942, Richard Bong wasted no time taking on the Japanese, shooting down two planes in an early skirmish—an action that earned him a Silver Star. Over the next two years, Bong would amass the US armed forces’ most impressive record of aerial victories of the entire war, surpassing even the great Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I tally and notching forty kills. In December 1944, he was personally awarded the Medal of Honor by General Douglas MacArthur.