Joseph J. Ellis

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, even in his retirement. In his twilight years, Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death on July 4, 1826. In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts from the legend to find the heart of the man who, at the grass roots, is no longer

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"A culminating work on the American Founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the "American Revolution": former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams...

Pulitzer-winning American historian Joseph Ellis tells an old story in a new way, with a freshness at once colorful and compelling. The summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events in the story of our country's founding. While the thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire, the British were dispatching the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic to crush the rebellion in the cradle. The Continental...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of "Founding Brothers" and "His Excellency" brings America's preeminent first couple to life in a moving and illuminating narrative that unfolds in the context of America's birth as a nation.--