Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes readers from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush.

"From master storyteller and historian H.W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's...

A masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history.

To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In Founding Partisans, master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of...

"Woodrow Wilson was a man of words. Overcoming dyslexia, he finally learned to read at the age of ten, and then went on to spend much of his early life writing about politics and practicing oratory on the empty benches of his father's Presbyterian churches. Academic studies of the American Constitution and Congress (which he considered the most important branch of the federal government) established his reputation for original and insightful political...

A history of the people and commercial imperatives that contributed to the California gold rush discusses the massive influx of hundreds of thousands of people to the area, which became a state in record time.

"From master storyteller and New York Times bestselling biographer H. W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the first full life of Ronald Reagan since his death. Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon, celebrated for transforming the American domestic agenda and playing a crucial part in ending communism in the Soviet Union. In his masterful new biography, H. W. Brands argues that Reagan, along with FDR, was the most consequential...

From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, an incisive chronicle of the events and trends that guided--and sometimes misguided--our nation from the A-bomb to the iPhone. Ultimately Brands captures the national experience through the last six decades and reveals the still-unfolding legacy of dreams born out of a global cataclysm.

Explores the life of the first "common man" to become president of the United States, discussing Jackson's early days in South Carolina, his military exploits, and his contributions to the causes of democracy and Manifest Destiny.