H.W. Brands Volgorde van de boeken

"Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands follows the lives of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Apache war leader Geronimo to tell the story of the Indian Wars and the final fight for control of the American continent. William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be- a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a more densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi. Sherman was a well-connected son of Ohio who attended West Point and rose to prominence through his scorched-earth campaigns in the Civil War. Geronimo grew up among the Apache people, hunting wild game for sustenance and roaming freely on the land. After the brutal killing of his wife, children and mother by Mexican soldiers, he became a relentless avenger, raiding Mexican settlements across the American border. When Sherman rose to commanding general of the Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his followers onto a reservation where they would live as farmers and ranchers and roam no more. But Geronimo preferred to fight. The Last Campaign is a powerful retelling of a turning point in the making of our nation and a searing elegy for a way of life that is gone"--

"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. 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. The first party, the Federalists, formed around Alexander Hamilton and his efforts to overthrow the Articles of Confederation. Thomas Jefferson and the opposition organized as the Antifederalists, the precursor to the Republicans. The two factions wrestled as George Washington tried to remain above the fray. John Adams, however, our second president, was an avowed Federalist, and very much in the scrum. The country's first years unfolded in a contentious spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way toward global dominance, against all odds. Founding Partisans is a powerful reminder that fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the republic, one we've survived time and time again"-- Provided by publisher

The book provides a gripping narrative of the military and political events surrounding the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent war. It highlights the complexities of the founding of the nation, emphasizing that division played a crucial role alongside unity. Through detailed accounts, the author sheds light on the turbulent times that shaped America's history, offering readers a deeper understanding of the struggles and conflicts that defined the nation's birth.

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer-prize finalist H. W. Brands follows the lives and battles of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Apache warrior Geronimo to tell the story of the Indian Wars and the final fight for control of the American continent.William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi. Sherman was a privileged son of Ohio who attended West Point and rose to prominence through his scorched earth campaigns in the Civil War. Geronimo grew up in the Apache tribe, hunting wild game for survival and roaming freely on the land. After the brutal killing of his wife, children, and mother, however, he became a relentless avenger, raiding Mexican settlements across the American border. When Sherman rose to General of the U.S. Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his tribe into an agreement with the U.S. government pledging that the Apache would live as farmers and ranchers and roam no more. But Geronimo preferred to fight. The Last Campaign is a powerful retelling of a turning point in the making of our nation and a searing elegy for a way of life that is gone.

"What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels?  That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success. Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for not having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them. After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. Our First Civil War reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends"-- Amazon

A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times-bestselling author sets a new standard for histories of the American West

For the past nine years, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has been tweeting the history of the United States. But this has been no ordinary version of the American tale. Instead, Brands gives his 5,000-plus followers a regular dose of history and poetry combined: his tweets are in the form of haikus. Haiku History presents a selection of these smart, shrewd, and always informative short poems. “Shivers and specters / Flit over hearts in Salem / And so nineteen hang” describes the Salem Witch Trials, and “In angry war paint / Men board the British tea ships / And toss the cargo” depicts the Boston Tea Party. “Then an anarchist / Makes one of the war heroes / The next president” recalls the assassination of William McKinley and the ascension of Teddy Roosevelt to the presidency, while “Second invasion: / Iraq, where Saddam is still / In troubling control” returns us to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As he travels from the thirteen colonies to the 2016 election, Brands brings to life the wars, economic crises, social policies, and other events that have shaped our nation. A history book like no other, Haiku History injects both fun and poetry into the story of America—three lines at a time.

"What do moral people do when democracy countenances evil? The question, implicit in the idea that people can govern themselves, came to a head in America at the middle of the nineteenth century, in the struggle over slavery. John Brown's answer was violence--violence of a sort some in later generations would call terrorism. Brown was a deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to do whatever was necessary to destroy slavery. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery, the eerily charismatic Brown raised a band of followers to wage war against the evil institution. One dark night his men tore several proslavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords, as a bloody warning to others. Three years later Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the goal of furnishing slaves with weapons to murder their masters in a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery once and for all. Abraham Lincoln's answer was politics. Lincoln was an ambitious lawyer and former office-holder who read the Bible not for moral guidance but as a writer's primer. He disliked slavery yet didn't consider it worth shedding blood over. He distanced himself from John Brown and joined the moderate wing of the new, antislavery Republican party. He spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path to Washington and perhaps the White House. Yet Lincoln's caution couldn't preserve him from the vortex of violence Brown set in motion. Arrested and sentenced to death, Brown comported himself with such conviction and dignity on the way to the gallows that he was canonized in the North as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded in anger and horror that a terrorist was made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle of the fracturing country and won election as president, still preaching moderation. But the time for moderation had passed. Slaveholders lumped Lincoln with Brown as an enemy of the Southern way of life; seven Southern states left the Union. Lincoln resisted secession, and the Civil War followed. At first a war for the Union, it became the war against slavery Brown had attempted to start. Before it was over, slavery had been destroyed, but so had Lincoln's faith that democracy can resolve its moral crises peacefully"-- Provided by publisher

"From ... bestselling historian H.W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and to decide the future of our democracy. In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky; as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H.W Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy."-- Dust jacket

The General vs. The President is that rare military chronicle that becomes an instant page-turning classic. -San Antonio Express-News Fast-paced, dramatic, and amply illustrates why Truman's stock has been on the rise in recent decades. -Boston Globe A vivid accounting of an event that was, on the surface, a personality conflict between two strong-minded figures and, at the bottom, a courageous act that solidified civilian authority over the military in wartime. -Dallas Morning News Brands spikes the shadowboxing between [Truman and MacArthur] with vivid dispatches from the battlefield that give his tale a get-along kick. -TIME A highly readable take on the clash of two titanic figures in a period of hair-trigger nuclear tensions. . . . History offers few antagonists with such dramatic contrasts, and Brands brings these two to life. -Los Angeles Times Two American heroes tested and tried at their most inspired hours. . . . An exciting, well-written comparison study of two American leaders at loggerheads during the Korean War crisis. -Kirkus Reviews, starred review