Most Popular Books by Henry Wiencek

The first biography of America''s Founding Father and premier president to address his relationship to slavery. 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 his groundbreaking An Imperfect God, Henry Wiencek explores the Founding Father''s engagement with slavery at every stage of his life—as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts. Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington''s attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but even before he became president, Washington had begun to see the system''s evil. Based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, Wiencek documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington''s determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility—as the oral history of Mount Vernon''s slave descendants has long asserted—that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus. George Washington''s heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait presenting Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

This "lovingly detailed history" chronicles the largest slaveholding family in the Old South, as its descendants—white and Black—grapple with its legacy ( The Dallas Morning News). A National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Spanning two centuries of one family''s history, The Hairstons tells the extraordinary story of the Hairston clan, once the wealthiest family in the Old South and the largest slaveholder in America. With several thousand black and white members, the Hairstons of today share a complex and compelling history: divided in the time of slavery, they have come to embrace their past as one family. For seven years, journalist Henry Wiencek combed the far-reaching branches of the Hairston family tree to piece together the experiences of both plantation owners and their slaves. Crisscrossing the old plantation country of Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi, The Hairstons reconstructs the triumphant rise of the remarkable children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the enslaved as they fought to take their rightful place in mainstream America. It also follows the white descendants through the decline and fall of the Old South, and uncovers the hidden history of slavery''s curse—and how that curse followed slaveholders for generations.

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.

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

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

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

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

Covers Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

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

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

More than 150 mansions open to the public.

Of all of Virginia''s treasures, its Colonial architecture is its greatest--a rich heritage of gracefulness in brick and wood, artistry in plaster embellishments, fine furnishings, and beautiful gardens.