A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers. 'The most lovable and most laughable, the warmest and possibly the wisest of the founding fathers, John Adams knew h...

Through portraits of four figures—Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster—Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expe...

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for reti...

A Washington Post Notable BookA Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the YearThe summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events in the story of our country's founding. While the thirteen colonies came together and agr...

In lesser hands the fractious disputes and hysterical rhetoric of these contentious nation-builders might come across as hyperbolic pettiness. Ellis knows better, and he unpacks the real issues for his readers, revealing the driving a...