Most Popular Books by Henry Wiencek

When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret". In this groundbreaking new biography, based on private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, National Book Critics Circle winning historian Henry Wiencek explores the founding father''s engagement with slavery at every stage of his life-as a planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.

The story of two Hairston families. One black that rose from slavery to success in mainstream America, the other white as it fell from wealth and power after the end of the Civil War.

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek''s eloquent, persuasive book—based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson''s papers—opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson''s world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money. So far, historians have offered only easy irony or paradox to explain this extraordinary Founding Father who was an emancipationist in his youth and then recoiled from his own inspiring rhetoric and equivocated about slavery; who enjoyed his renown as a revolutionary leader yet kept some of his own children as slaves. But Wiencek''s Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profits" gained from his slaves—and thanks to a skewed moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. We see Jefferson taking out a slave-equity line of credit with a Dutch bank to finance the building of Monticello and deftly creating smoke screens when visitors are dismayed by his apparent endorsement of a system they thought he''d vowed to overturn. It is not a pretty story. Slave boys are whipped to make them work in the nail factory at Monticello that pays Jefferson''s grocery bills. Parents are divided from children—in his ledgers they are recast as money—while he composes theories that obscure the dynamics of what some of his friends call "a vile commerce." Many people of Jefferson''s time saw a catastrophe coming and tried to stop it, but not Jefferson. The pursuit of happiness had been badly distorted, and an oligarchy was getting very rich. Is this the quintessential American story?

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year A Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography How the architect Stanford White and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens transcended scandal to enrich their times. Stanford White was a louche man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur—the creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator whose painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture. They met when Stan was walking down the street and heard Gus whistling Mozart in his studio. They pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained an intimate friendship and partnership that defined the art of the Gilded Age. Over the course of decades, White would help sustain his friend''s troubled spirits and vouch for Saint-Gaudens when he failed to complete projects. Meanwhile, Saint-Gaudens would challenge White to take his artistic gifts seriously—and so it went amid brilliant commissions and sordid debaucheries all the way to White’s sensational murder by an enraged husband in 1906. In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets the two men’s relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires’ commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs, new aesthetic ideas, and two ambitious young men to yield work of lasting beauty.

In 1900, just a few months after the deadly hurricane of September, W. L. Moody Jr. and his family moved into the four-story mansion at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-sixth Street in Galveston. For the next eight decades, the Moody family occupied the 28,000-square-foot home: raising a family, creating memories, building business empires, and contributing their considerable wealth and influence for the betterment of their beloved city. In 1983, Hurricane Alicia damaged the mansion, and Mary Moody Northen, eldest child of W. L. Moody Jr., moved out so a major restoration could begin. When the mansion opened to the public as a museum, education center, and location for community gatherings in 1991, it had been restored to its original grandeur. The Mary Moody Northen Endowment then commissioned award-winning author Henry Wiencek to write a history of the Moodys of Galveston and their celebrated home. Robert L. Moody Sr., grandson of W. L. Moody Jr. and nephew of Mary Moody Northen, contributes a foreword, giving a brief introduction and personal tone to the book, which also features fifteen color photographs of the Moodys and their home. An epilogue by E. Douglas McLeod summarizes the family’s accomplishments and developments associated with the mansion since Northen’s death in 1986. The Moodys of Galveston and Their Mansion is a must-read for Galvestonians, for the thousands of visitors who tour the mansion each year, and for anyone interested in the captivating tale of this influential and generous family and their magnificent house.

Covers Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

From an unrestored masterpiece such as the Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston, South Carolina, to a farmhouse in upstate New York, inhabited only by a bird nesting in the bathroom sink, Old Houses profiles 20 houses whose peeling paint, faded fabrics, and antique furniture impart a surprising elegance and beauty. An unusual volume, this book will appeal to historians, restoration specialists, and style-conscious homeowners lookingfor new ideas form examples of the past. Over 250 full-color photographs.

Covers Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

A beautifully illustrated guide to museums and historical sites in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

More than 150 mansions open to the public.

Text and lavish photographs present antiquities from the Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec cultures of ancient Mexico.

Text and lavish photographs present Japanese history 710-1868 and the associated artistic treasures.

Text and lavish photographs present antiquities from the Chavin, Paracas, Moche, Inca, Chimu and Columbian Indian cultures that flourished in ancient Columbia and Peru.

A history of the successful toys, LEGO bricks, describing some of the things that can be built with them.

From The Hermitage, outside Nashville, Tennessee, with its mixture of Georgian and Greek Revival, to a traditional Creole house with classical detailing in Louisiana, Plantations of the Old South is a fond reminder of the refinement, innovation, and exquisite design found in these grand Southern originals. 100 full-color photos.

Shows and describes six historic mansions, including Monticello and Mount Vernon, and describes the furnishings, grounds, and background of each home