"The greatness and imperfections of America's 16th president, captured by a former Democratic nominee for the White House. With considerable skill and insight, McGovern crafts a biography snappy, clear and comprehensive enough to please general readers, students and scholars alike. In eight short chapters, six of which deal with Lincoln's presidency, he nails the essential strengths, flaws, failures and achievements of America's most revered leader."—Kirkus Reviews

"We can be grateful if any are half as learned, lively and enriching as Orville Vernon Burton's The Age of Lincoln . . . He makes a virtue of jargon-free, accessible prose. But his language also allows readers to soak up the texture and complexity of developments with his sprawling, interlacing stories—stories with which all scholars may not always agree, but compelling tales that shed new light on America's complex heritage . . . The Age of Lincoln reminds us that ideas are everything, and a book bursting with so many of them will provide robust reading for years to come."—Catherine Clinton, Chicago Tribune (cover review)

"The American Civil War: A Hands-On History should prove to be invaluable for a variety of audiences, including high school and college students, who need resources that authoritatively blend primary and secondary source material. Olsen's book is an ideal introduction to a very complicated subject in U.S. history."—Wilson Warren, Western Michigan University

"Griffin contrasts the formative ideologies of western frontier settlers regarding American Indians with those of the British Empire and the American tidewater revolutionary elite. Frontier corn whiskey culture . . . helped foster an American complex of racial and multicultural relations that lionized even arguably psychotic slayers of Indians, who avenged personal losses and brought a sense of order based on racial divisions to violent new homelands. Recommended for libraries with research interests in civil rights and racial relations in the early American republic."—Nathan E. Bender, University of Idaho, Moscow, in Library Journal

"Wilentz's concise and clear short biography (part of the remarkable and useful series of short presidential biographies under the editorship of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) reflects the research behind his accomplished Rise of American Democracy."—Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

“Once in a while a book comes along to remind us that history has no gods, that the past is less fossil than textbooks suggest and America more vibrant than a mere list of principles. John Ferling's Ascent of George Washington is just such a book: a fresh, clear-eyed portrait of the full-blooded political animal that was George Washington . . . In John Ferling’s eminently readable, landmark interpretation, we cannot help but marvel at the man.”—Marie Arana, The Washington Post

“The journal of the Quaker mystic and abolitionist John Woolman has never been out of print since 1774, when it was first published. Along with Woolman’s pamphlets and speeches, the journal was instrumental in persuading the Society of Friends to give up owning slaves. In this meditative biography, Slaughter provides sensitive readings of Woolman’s writings in order to draw a picture of a ‘prophetic Old Testament radical’ who practiced a patient and methodical mode of activism. Woolman balanced a workman’s life in New Jersey with visits to Indian tribes and to Friends’ meetings in other states, preaching a doctrine of asceticism and human perfectibility.”—The New Yorker

"In an engaging biography, Miller shows that even though the flag story is riddled with improbabilities, the life of the woman who came to be known as Betsy Ross is worth recovering . . . Through skillful use of small details, Miller sustains her repeated assertion that the future Betsy Ross was often 'only a handshake away' from the men who made the Revolution . . . Miller's admiring biography will warm the hearts of those who love the Betsy Ross legend. It may also convince skeptics (Miller refers to them as 'naysayers') that there is something in the flag stories worth considering."—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The New York Times