The little known story of perhaps the most productive Congress in US history, the First Federal Congress of 1789–1791. The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prizewinning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed—as many at the time feared it would—it’s possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today. The Constitution...

Combining biography and Washington's own writings with his own trademark insights, comments, and sidebars, Beck explores our nation's first president and describes how Washington's beliefs and values--beliefs and values which united a country in an age even more fractious than our own--are especially important to remember today.

Popular historian and former White House speechwriter Jonathan Horn tells the astonishing true story of George Washingtons forgotten last yearsthe personalities, plotting, and private torment that unraveled Americas first post-presidency. Washingtons End begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered...

"The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Accidental Presidents looks at eight men who came to the office without being elected to it. It demonstrates how the character of the man in that powerful seat affects the nation and world. Eight men have succeeded to the presidency when the incumbent died in office. In one way or another they vastly changed our history. Only Theodore Roosevelt would...

"Revised and updated to include the winner of the 2020 presidential election, this photo-filled and fact-packed book is a timely reference. Key features include: Information about the 2021 president-elect and the 2020 election results, a brand-new thematic spread on the impeachment process and its history, revised terminology around the language of slavery and analysis of early presidents who benefitted from and relied on enslaved labor, comprehensive...

A biography of our first President, illustrated with old prints, maps, and photographs.

We all know that George Washington was our first president and a hero of the American Revolution. But did you also know that he didn't want to be president, never thought he would fight in a war, and had teeth so bad that he hated to smile? Told through bold and hilarious comic-style illustrations, the first Action Presidents book features the all-too-true history of the ultimate Founding Father, prime patriot, and awesome American George Washington....

Throughout American history, Presidents and Presidential candidates have faced assassination threats and attempts on their lives. Historian Ronald L. Feinman discusses sixteen Presidents, as well as three important candidates, and how they were directly threatened with assassination -- six being killed, three wounded, and ten unhurt. Additionally, he reveals information about some failed attempts, which, had they been successful, could have resulted...

"Sacred Liberty offers a dramatic, sweeping survey of how America built a unique model of religious freedom, perhaps the nation's "greatest invention." Steven Waldman, the bestselling author of Founding Faith, shows how early ideas about religious liberty were tested and refined amidst the brutal persecution of Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Quakers, African slaves, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses. American leaders drove religious...

"From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States Founding Partisans is a lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues....