Revolution & Founding

Benjamin Franklin is one of the most delightful of the Founding Fathers to read. He is quick to point out both his successes and failures. A man of many talents, his wisdom is still relevant today.

In this memoir, Harriet Jacobs describes slave life and the sexual exploitation with accompanies it from a distinctly female perspective. To elude the clutches of her master, Jacobs becomes the mistress of another white man and has two children by him. When herlover reneges on his promise to free her, Jacobs begins an elaborate escape that will take seven years to complete.

This unique version also includes the following bonus annotations:

- Biography of the author
- Historical context of the book
- Literary critique


Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Before his election in 1860 as the first Republican president, Lincoln had been a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated.

Lincoln had closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded that he handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders of each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate. Lincoln successfully defused the Trent affair, a war scare with Britain late in 1861. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war. Additionally, he managed his own reelection in the 1864 presidential election.

Copperheads and other opponents of the war criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, the Radical Republicans, an abolitionist faction of the Republican Party, criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these opponents, Lincoln successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and speeches; his Gettysburg Address (1863) became an iconic symbol of the nation's duty. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation. Lincoln has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest of all U.S. Presidents.

This is a new edition of the classic text, the papers of Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison written in support of the then-proposed Constitution of the United States. In addition to the supplementary materials provided (including a copy of the Constitution and an Index of Ideas), this revised edition also contains a new introduction, historical glossary, selected bibliography, the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

This Elibron Classics book is a reprint of a 1901 edition published in Norwood, Mass.. Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery details his journey from childhood slavery to his struggle to attain an education, and finally to his success as an educator (as president of the Tuskegee Institute) and national leader. The work also outlineshis support of vocational training for blacks and acceptance of racial segregation, viewsthat his contemporary, W.E.B. DuBois, did not share.

New, Unabridged on 4 CD’s; Shrinkwrapped. Narrated by Pete Papageorge.

Narrator: Pete Papageorge is an actor who has appeared in movies such as Hannibal and Tuck Everlasting. He is also a professional musician.

George Washington's Mount Vernon brings together--for the first time--the details of Washington's 45-year endeavor to build and perfect Mount Vernon. In doing so it introduces us to a Washington few of his contemporaries knew, and one little noticed by historians since.
Here we meet the planter/patriot who also genuinely loved building, a man passionately human in his desire to impress on his physical surroundings the stamp of his character and personal beliefs. As chief architect and planner of the countless changes made at Mount Vernon over the years, Washington began by imitating accepted models of fashionable taste, but as time passed he increasingly followed his own ideas. Hence, architecturally, as the authors show, Mount Vernon blends the orthodox and the innovative in surprising ways, just as the new American nation would. Equally interesting is the light the book sheds on the process of building at Mount Vernon, and on the people--slave and free--who did the work. Washington was a demanding master, and in their determination to preserve their own independence his workers often clashed with him. Yet, as the Dalzells argue, that experience played a vital role in shaping his hopes for the future of American society--hope that embraced in full measure the promise of the revolution in which he had led his fellow citizens.
George Washington's Mount Vernon thus compellingly combines the two sides of Washington's life--the public and the private--and uses the combination to enrich our understanding of both. Gracefully written, with more than 80 photographs, maps, and engravings, the book tells a fascinating story with memorable insight.

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

At the center of the drama, with Washington, are two young American patriots, who, at first, knew no more of war than what they had read in books -- Nathanael Greene, a Quaker who was made a general at thirty-three, and Henry Knox, a twenty-five-year-old bookseller who had the preposterous idea of hauling the guns of Fort Ticonderoga overland to Boston in the dead of winter.

But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost -- Washington, who had never before led an army in battle. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.

Did you know...

Sybil Ludington's daring midnight ride in 1777 saved the American colonists, though no epic poem was ever written about her?

George Washington defied his own mother, who deemed him a traitor?

Caesar Rodney determined to cast the deciding vote for independence despite the cancer ravaging his body?

Daring! Defiant! Determined!

Discover the extraordinary contributions of many well-known, little-known, and unknown American patriots who established a new nation unlike any other! Each of these brief biographies will inspire today's citizens to become the extraordinary patriots of the future.