New Release Books by Ron Chernow

The #1 New York Times bestseller. Named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant''s life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don''t come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency. Before the Civil War, Grant was flailing. His business ventures had ended dismally, and despite distinguished service in the Mexican War he ended up resigning from the army in disgrace amid recurring accusations of drunkenness. But in war, Grant began to realize his remarkable potential, soaring through the ranks of the Union army, prevailing at the battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign, and ultimately defeating the legendary Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Along the way, Grant endeared himself to President Lincoln and became his most trusted general and the strategic genius of the war effort. Grant''s military fame translated into a two-term presidency, but one plagued by corruption scandals involving his closest staff members. More important, he sought freedom and justice for black Americans, working to crush the Ku Klux Klan and earning the admiration of Frederick Douglass, who called him "the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race." After his presidency, he was again brought low by a dashing young swindler on Wall Street, only to resuscitate his image by working with Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, which are recognized as a masterpiece of the genre. With lucidity, breadth, and meticulousness, Chernow finds the threads that bind these disparate stories together, shedding new light on the man whom Walt Whitman described as "nothing heroic... and yet the greatest hero." Chernow''s probing portrait of Grant''s lifelong struggle with alcoholism transforms our understanding of the man at the deepest level. This is America''s greatest biographer, bringing movingly to life one of our finest but most underappreciated presidents. The definitive biography, Grant is a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Grant''s life, explaining how this simple Midwesterner could at once be so ordinary and so extraordinary. Named one of the best books of the year by Goodreads * Amazon * The New York Times * Newsday * BookPage * Barnes and Noble * Wall Street Journal

A story of brilliant achievement, dazzling personalities and human frailty set against the dark background of European racism and paranoia. The Warburgs were bankers, patrons of the arts, scholars, socialites, philanthropists and politicians. This Jewish family from Westphalia became a German success story, and embraced German culture with a passion: they loved the art, music and literature of their country and never wavered from their patriotic identification with their homeland. They advised a German Kaiser;their American cousins advised two presidents. Their investment bank still exists and is one of the oldest in the world. The Warburgs endowed libraries, built mansions and collected paintings. But in 1933 the family became a prime target of the Nazis and the world they knew came crashing down.

The celebrated Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the first President of the USA and the father of America. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life, he carries the reader through Washington''s troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian Wars, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention and his magnificent performance as America''s first president. Despite the reverence his name inspires Washington remains a waxwork to many readers, seen as a laconic man of self-control, arousing more respect than affection. But in this groundbreaking work Chernow revises forever the uninspiring stereotype. He portrays Washington as a strapping, celebrated horseman, elegant dancer and tireless hunter, who guarded his emotional life with intriguing ferocity. Chernow brings to life a passionate man of fiery opinions. He also provides a portrait of his private life and his complex behaviour as a slave master. At the same time, Washington is an astute and surprising depiction of a canny operator In the world of politics, who knew how to inspire loyalty. Not only did Washington gather around himself the foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, he brilliantly orchestrated their actions to help realise his vision for the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and establish the office of the presidency. Ron Chernow takes us on a page-turning journey through all the formative events of America''s founding. This is a magisterial work from one of America''s foremost writers and historians.

Published to critical acclaim twenty years ago, and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about American finance. It is a rich, panoramic story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful, secretive firms they spawned, ones that would transform the modern financial world. Tracing the trajectory of J. P. Morgan’s empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the financial crisis of 1987, acclaimed author Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the family’s private saga and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved—a world that included Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, and Winston Churchill. A masterpiece of financial history—it was awarded the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction and selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century—The House of Morgan is a compelling account of a remarkable institution and the men who ran it, and an essential book for understanding the money and power behind the major historical events of the last 150 years.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medical centers. He was the terror of his competitors, the bogeyman of reformers, the delight of caricaturists—and an utter enigma. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rockefeller’s private papers, Chernow reconstructs his subjects’ troubled origins (his father was a swindler and a bigamist) and his single-minded pursuit of wealth. But he also uncovers the profound religiosity that drove him “to give all I could”; his devotion to his father; and the wry sense of humor that made him the country’s most colorful codger. Titan is a magnificent biography—balanced, revelatory, elegantly written.

The reader is taken on a fascinating tour of Anglo-American high finance over the past two centuries, with detours into Canadian, German and Japanese finance. As the point of departure for his colourful, panoramic survey, Ron Chernow poses a historic riddle: Why did the great financial dynasties - the Rothschilds, Barings, Morgans and Warburgs - flare so brilliantly in the 19th and 20th centuries and then enter into a precipitous decline? Why did such heavyweights give way to more anonymous financial conglomerates, And, most curious of all, why have small investors, banded together in mutual funds, suddenly inherited the financial earth?

Contains a lecture by Charles Johnson, ETHS alumnus of the class of 1967, on "The philosopher and the American novel," presented during National Book Week in 1991.

pick up this book and step into the story of this founding father Alexander Hamilton.