New Releases by Thomas Fleming

All school children know the story of the fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr - but do they really? In this remarkable retelling, Thomas Fleming takes the reader into the post-revolutionary world of 1804, a chaotic and fragile time in the young country as well as a time of tremendous global instability. The success of the French Revolution and the proclamation of Napoleon as First Consul for Life had enormous impact on men like Hamilton and Burr, feeding their own political fantasies at a time of perceived Federal government weakness and corrosion. Their hunger for fame spawned antagonisms that wreaked havoc on themselves and their families and threatened to destabilize the fragile young American republic. From that poisonous brew came the tangle of regret and anger and ambition that drove the two to their murderous confrontation in Weehawken, New Jersey. Readers will find this is popular narrative history at its most authoritative, and authoritative history at its most readable.

Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is the gripping - and all too timely - account of the great stock market crash of 1929.

Even his abolitionist allies thought his attack on Harpers Ferry insane, but, as this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming points out, John Brown sensed that his trial and death would ignite the nation's conscience.

When Sir William Howe, commander-in-chief of the British Army in America, and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, cornered General George Washington’s army on Manhattan Island, they politely asked the Americans if they wanted to surrender. The British gave the Americans two weeks to think it over, time Washington used to strengthen his troops for another round of fighting. Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is the surprising story of how William and Richard Howe guaranteed British defeat and American independence by choosing peacemaking over bloodletting.

A biography of the surveyor, militia major, and aide to the British General Braddock, who became leader of the American forces during the Revolution and first President of the new nation.

Sally Fairfax stole George Washington's heart long before he met Martha. Here, in this essay by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is their love story.

A sweeping and insightful grand strategic overview of the American Revolution, highlighting Washington's role in orchestrating victory and creating the US Army Led by the Continental Congress, the Americans almost lost the war for independence because their military thinking was badly muddled. Following the victory in 1775 at Bunker Hill, patriot leaders were convinced that the key to victory was the home-grown militia -- local men defending their families and homes. But the flush of early victory soon turned into a bitter reality as the British routed Americans fleeing New York. General George Washington knew that having and maintaining an army of professional soldiers was the only way to win independence. As he fought bitterly with the leaders in Congress over the creation of a regular army, he patiently waited until his new army was ready for pitched battle. His first opportunity came late in 1776, following his surprise crossing of the Delaware River. In New Jersey, the strategy of victory was about to unfold. In The Strategy of Victory, preeminent historian Thomas Fleming examines the battles that created American independence, revealing how the creation of a professional army worked on the battlefield to secure victory, independence, and a lasting peace for the young nation.

It is a curious historical anomaly that the United States, for generations the greatest steel producer on the planet, the nation that invented the airplane and a staggering array of other technological marvels, never managed to design and build a good tank before the MIA1 Abrams of the 1991 Gulf War. The history of tanks has seldom attracted the attention it deserves, New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming argues in this essay. Here is the overlooked and fascinating story of America's tanks.

Seventy-year-old Benjamin Franklin charmed Paris and pulled off a diplomatic miracle that led to the British defeat in the American Revolution. Here, in this essay from New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming is the little-told story.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln often learned the results and tolls of battles from reporters, not generals. The newsmen of the time were courageous and dedicated, but the best of them was Henry Wing - at least that was Lincoln's opinion. Wing never used his position as the president's favorite reporter to gain access to confidential information. Instead, he became Lincoln's junior partner in the struggle to win America's bloodiest war. Here, in this essay by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is his surprising story.

This vivid, deeply moving book begins in London in 1620 as Pilgrim representatives sign a contract to purchase the freighter Mayflower. We accompany them on their harrowing voyage across the Atlantic, through the rigors of the first New England winter and the threat of Indian attack as they desperately search for the home they eventually find at Plymouth. Once there, they must continue the struggle against brutal weather and disease. With masterly skill, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming gives us life-size portraits of the Pilgrim leaders. The Pilgrims' unique achievements - the Mayflower Compact, their tolerance of other faiths, the strict separation of church and state - are discussed in the context of the first year's anxieties and crises. Fleming writes admiringly of the younger men who emerged in that year as the real leaders of the colony - William Bradford and Miles Standish. And he provides new insights into the humanity and tolerance of the Pilgrims' spiritual shepherd, Elder William Brewster. On the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims are already aware that they are the forerunners of a great nation. It is implicit in William Bradford's words, "As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shone unto many. . . ."

This vivid, deeply moving book begins in London in 1620 as Pilgrim representatives sign a contract to purchase the freighter Mayflower. We accompany them on their harrowing voyage across the Atlantic, through the rigors of the first New England winter and the threat of Indian attack as they desperately search for the home they eventually find at Plymouth. Once there, they must continue the struggle against brutal weather and disease. With masterly skill, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming gives us life-size portraits of the Pilgrim leaders. The Pilgrims' unique achievements - the Mayflower Compact, their tolerance of other faiths, the strict separation of church and state - are discussed in the context of the first year's anxieties and crises. Fleming writes admiringly of the younger men who emerged in that year as the real leaders of the colony - William Bradford and Miles Standish. And he provides new insights into the humanity and tolerance of the Pilgrims' spiritual shepherd, Elder William Brewster. On the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims are already aware that they are the forerunners of a great nation. It is implicit in William Bradford's words, "As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shone unto many. . . ."

Here in this essay from New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming is the harrowing account of a true hero of the Korean War, Commander Gene Clark. Without Clark, General Douglas MacArthur's daring plan to invade South Korea from the sea would almost surely have failed.

In 1970, Margaret Truman and bestselling author Thomas Fleming spent eight days with her father, President Harry Truman, as part of their research for a biography of the thirty-third president of the United States. Truman had personally chosen Fleming as Margaret's collaborator. He had read and admired Fleming's biography of Thomas Jefferson. In this essay, Fleming recounts that amazing time, during which the elder statesman sets the record straight on Douglas MacArthur, Charles de Gaulle, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Joseph Stalin, the atomic bomb, and, most important, the American presidency.

For many Americans, George Washington is just the face on a dollar bill. This book changes that perception. George Washington, Revolutionary War general, Founding Father, and first president of the United States was a warm and fascinating man. He suffered the agony of adolescent passion, fell in love with his best friend's wife, and married the wealthy widow Martha Custis. He poured out his political and military woes to his brother Jack in the dark days of 1776, and in the midst of a miserable winter camped with his troops in Valley Forge, he wrote a chatty letter to a friend in England. All these incidents are here in Washington's own words. Only through what Washington called his "letters of friendship" can we fully understand this complex man. They show him joking with his favorite Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, advising his younger relatives on love and marriage, writing with emotion to the unobtainable woman he loved, and reconnecting with her in his old age. Selected and edited by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming from the thirty-seven volumes of Washington's collected writings, this book will be a revelation to all.

"A superb retelling of the story of Valley Forge and its aftermath, demonstrating that reality is far more compelling than myth." - Gordon S. Wood The defining moments of the American Revolution did not occur on the battlefield or at the diplomatic table, writes New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming, but at Valley Forge. Fleming transports us to December 1777. While the British army lives in luxury in conquered Philadelphia, Washington's troops huddle in the barracks of Valley Forge, fending off starvation and disease even as threats of mutiny swirl through the regiments. Though his army stands on the edge of collapse, George Washington must wage a secondary war, this one against the slander of his reputation as a general and patriot. Washington strategizes not only against the British army but against General Horatio Gates, the victor in the Battle of Saratoga, who has attracted a coterie of ambitious generals devising ways to humiliate and embarrass Washington into resignation. Using diaries and letters, Fleming creates an unforgettable portrait of an embattled Washington. Far from the long-suffering stoic of historical myth, Washington responds to attacks from Gates and his allies with the skill of a master politician. He parries the thrusts of his covert enemies, and, as necessary, strikes back with ferocity and guile. While many histories portray Washington as a man who has transcended politics, Fleming's Washington is exceedingly complex, a man whose political maneuvering allowed him to retain his command even as he simultaneously struggled to prevent the Continental Army from dissolving into mutiny at Valley Forge. Written with his customary flair and eye for human detail and drama, Thomas Fleming's gripping narrative develops with the authority of a major historian and the skills of a master storyteller. Washington's Secret War is not only a revisionist view of the American ordeal at Valley Forge - it calls for a new assessment of the man too often simplified into an American legend. This is narrative history at its best and most vital.

With the eye of a novelist and the rigor of a historian, New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming delivers a fascinating and vivid account of the Siege of Yorktown. Along with French General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, George Washington made an astonishing march through New Jersey and trapped British General Charles Cornwallis and his forces in Yorktown, Virginia, where they unleashed a tremendous artillery assault, with the support of the French navy. But victory was never certain - both sides made a series of dramatic attacks and counterattacks. Using the diaries and letters of participants in the siege, Fleming creates a moving and exciting depiction of the days in October 1781 that ended the American Revolution and changed the world.

The Heart of Liberty, a New York Times bestselling novel by Thomas Fleming, has been hailed as "The Gone with the Wind of the American Revolution." Told from the perspective of James, "Jemmy" Kemble, writing for his grandchildren, the opening of the book reads, "Let me caution in strictest terms against publishing what I write. The nation is not ready to face the truth about itself that an honest story of the Revolution must mirror." Kemble thus recalls the great event of his life - the upheaval that created the United States of America. His honest story unflinchingly depicts the panic and cowardice, the greed and brutality that were part of the war for independence. It also celebrates the Americans who struggled to cope with the chaos of a war most of them never wanted. Fleming expertly blends his fictional characters with the great men of the Revolution - George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Sir William Howe - as well as a host of other vivid characters. With a historian's insight and a novelist's skill, Fleming has produced a panorama that vividly recreates and matches the complexity and drama of America's first war.

"Loaded with provocative insights, this book is a well-argued answer to that persistent question: Why did Americans fight the Civil War." — America By the time John Brown hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper's Ferry, Northern abolitionists had made him a "holy martyr" in their campaign against Southern slave owners. This Northern hatred for Southerners long predated their objections to slavery. They were convinced that New England, whose spokesmen had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern "slavocrats" like Thomas Jefferson. This malevolent envy exacerbated the South's greatest fear: a race war. Jefferson's cry, "We are truly to be pitied," summed up their dread. For decades, extremists in both regions flung insults and threats, creating intractable enmities. By 1861, only a civil war that would kill a million men could save the Union. In this riveting, character-driven history, respected historian Thomas Fleming traces the diseases in the public mind—the distortions of reality—that destroyed George Washington's vision of a united America and inflicted the tragedy that still divides the nation's soul. "Makes a convincing case that the polarization that divided the North and South and led to the Civil War began decades earlier than most historians are willing to admit. A Disease in the Public Mind is an attempt to offer understanding and forgiveness for both sides of a war the continues to challenge the country's founding principles of liberty and equality." — Philadelphia Tribune

A compelling, intimate look at the founders—George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—and the women who played essential roles in their lives With his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, Tom Fleming examines the women who were at the center of the lives of the founding fathers. From hot-tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien Hamilton, the founding fathers' mothers powerfully shaped their sons' visions of domestic life. But lovers and wives played more critical roles as friends and often partners in fame. We learn of the youthful Washington's tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, wife of his close friend; of Franklin's two "wives," one in London and one in Philadelphia; of Adams's long absences, which required a lonely, deeply unhappy Abigail to keep home and family together for years on end; of Hamilton's adulterous betrayal of his wife and then their reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison was jilted by a flirtatious fifteen-year-old and went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson's controversial relationship to Sally Hemings is also examined, with a different vision of where his heart lay. Fleming nimbly takes us through a great deal of early American history, as his founding fathers strove to reconcile the private and public, often beset by a media every bit as gossip seeking and inflammatory as ours today. He offers a powerful look at the challenges women faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While often brilliant and articulate, the wives of the founding fathers all struggled with the distractions and dangers of frequent childbearing and searing anxiety about infant mortality—Jefferson's wife, Martha, died from complications following labor, as did his daughter. All the more remarkable, then, that these women loomed so large in the lives of their husbands—and, in some cases, their country.

The acclaimed historian presents a "captivating account of a surprisingly little-known period" at the close of the American Revolution ( Kirkus, starred review). On October 19, 1781, Great Britain's best army surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown. But the future of the thirteen former colonies was far from clear. 13,000 British troops still occupied New York City, and another 13,000 regulars and armed loyalists were scattered from Canada to Georgia. Meanwhile, the American army had not been paid for years and was on the brink of mutiny. In Europe, America's only ally, France, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy and was soon reeling from a disastrous naval defeat in the Caribbean. A stubborn George III dismissed Yorktown as a minor defeat and refused to yield an acre of "my dominions" in America. In Paris, Ambassador Benjamin Franklin confronted violent hostility toward France among his fellow members of the American peace delegation. In The Perils of Peace, Thomas Fleming moves between the key players in this drama and shows that the outcome we take for granted was far from certain. With fresh research and masterful storytelling, Fleming breathes new life into this tumultuous but little known period in America's history.

Beautiful, rebellious Bess Fitzmaurice is mesmerized by Dan McCaffrey, an American of Irish descent who has come to Ireland to aid the Fenian revolt against British tyranny. He appears in her home on May Eve 1865, fleeing British forces. To Bess, Dan is the mythical Donal Ogue, the hero of a famous Irish poem, returned to rescue Ireland---but right now, he is an American Civil War veteran on the run. Bess and her brother, Michael, get Dan to a ship, and they flee to America. In 1865, America is a nation ravaged by four years of Civil War. Bess discovers that among the Irish-American Fenians money and power and patriotism are entangled in bewildering and demoralizing ways, while Dan McCaffrey surrenders to the corruption of New York City politics. The Fenians' invasion of Canada and their goal of holding the English colony hostage for a free Ireland become a pawn in a power struggle between Democrats and Republicans. When the American federal government double-crosses the Fenians, forcing thousands of Irish Civil War veterans to abandon the Canadian invasion after winning the first battle, acrimony engulfs the movement, leading to feuds, name-calling--and murder. In despair, Bess quits the Fenians and finds love in the arms of former Union General Jonathan Stapleton. Their idyll, however, is soon interrupted by Dan McCaffrey, who forces her to choose between him and her new lover. A Passionate Girl is a riveting novel that takes the reader into a forgotten chapter in Irish-American history and provides an eye-opening look at the devastating impact of America's Civil War. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life the flawed and troubled FDR who struggled to manage WWII. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt's famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR's inept prewar diplomacy with Japan, and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers, led by FDR, strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. Unlike the familiar yet idealized FDR of Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, the reader encounters a Roosevelt in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds which he could not handle-and frequently failed to understand-some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR's most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, were an insistence on "unconditional surrender" for Germany (a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as many as two years, leaving millions more dead) and his often uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally. For many Americans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a beloved, heroic, almost mythic figure, if not for the "big government" that was spawned under his New Deal, then certainly for his leadership through the War. The New Dealers' War paints a very different portrait of this leadership. It is sure to spark debate.

The political history of the American experience in World War I is a story of conflict and bungled intentions that begins in an era dedicated to progressive social reform and ends in the Red Scare and Prohibition. Thomas Fleming tells this story through the complex figure of Woodrow Wilson, the contradictory president who wept after declaring war, devastated because he knew it would destroy the tolerance of the American people, but who then suppressed freedom of speech and used propaganda to excite America into a Hun-hating mob. This is tragic history: inexperienced American military leaders drove their troops into gruesome slaughters; progressive politics were put on hold in America; an idealistic president's dreams were crushed because of his own negligence. Wilson's inability to convince Congress to ratify U.S. membership in the League of Nations was one of the most poignant failures in the history of the American presidency, but even more heartrending were Wilson's concessions to his bitter allies in the Treaty of Versailles. In exchange for Allied support of the League of Nations, he allowed an unfair peace treaty to be signed, a treaty that played no small role in the rise of National Socialism and the outbreak of World War II. Thomas Fleming has once again created a masterpiece of narrative American history. This incomparable portrait shows how Wilson sacrificed his noble vision to megalomania and single-mindedness, while paying homage to him as a visionary whose honorable spirit continues to influence Western politics.

A son comes of age in a fiercely political world "Thomas Fleming gives us an unforgettable story about an immigrant family—his family—as it struggles to find a place in the American century. He shares with us the dreams and heartaches of his parents, and, in the end, he reminds us of the mysterious and forgiving power of love." —Terry Golway, author of The Irish in America "A truly moving story of a lifelong duel between father and son, Mysteries of My Father also vibrates with the great good humor that grows out of ward politics, and pulses with the heartfelt drama of a family just getting by. There were some bad times in the Fleming family story, but Tom Fleming prevails to the good times, and the best time is left to the reader. What a wonderful time I had reading this book." —Dennis Smith, author of the Report from Engine Co. 82 and Report from Ground Zero "A well-written, fascinating political history." —Margaret Truman, author of Murder at Union Station "With a historian's fidelity and a poet's empathy, Tom Fleming has created a textured study of three generations of Irish-Americans, whose clashing spiritual values inform their integration into New Jersey's social and political hierarchy. Mysteries of My Father is an American classic achieved by a master storyteller's talents for exploring the tensions and bonds between a father and his sons. Among the literary wonders of this brisk and moving memoir is the father's emergence as a seminal American character—brusque and pragmatic, yet capable of expected tenderness to his sons." —Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son "If you care about what it means to be an Irish-American, or about New Jersey political history, or about the relationships between fathers and sons, or about wonderful writing, run—don't walk—out to buy Tom Fleming's Mysteries of My Father." —Nick Acocella, publisher of Politifax

"Discusses socialism as a political system, and details the history of socialist governments throughout the world"--Provided by publisher.

Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others. Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.

In the wake of the Civil War and the destruction of much of the South, a group of powerful men, led by Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, plans to convict and execute General Robert E. Lee for the crime of treason.

A novel that crowns Thomas Fleming's forty-year career, Conquerors of the Sky takes readers on a gripping insider's journey into the lives and loves, the hopes and heartbreaks of the men and women who make America's planes. When Adrian Van Ness, the enigmatic chairman of Buchanan Aircraft, dies of a heart attack, a struggle for control of the aerospace giant erupts between burly Dick Stone, the tough-talking money man from New York, and Californian Cliff Morris, CEO and supersalesman. Sarah Morris, Cliff's estranged English-born wife, knows all the company's secrets. With her at the controls, Conquerors of the Sky becomes a time trip to the early years of the twentieth century, when flight was seen as spiritual ascent and idealistic Frank Buchanan began designing planes. New York aristocrat Adrian Van Ness is equally fascinated by these new machines--as a financial bonanza. In 1930, Adrian's amoral business genius and Frank's visions of ever swifter sleeker planes form a precarious alliance. Soon Buchanan Aircraft is competing with Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop for contracts to build airliners and bombers and fighters. As corrupt connections between generals and congressmen and presidents multiply, Frank sees some of his greatest planes scuttled by dirty political deals. He watches Adrian grow rich and powerful preaching the gospel of air power in the century's wars. When Dick Stone joins Buchanan he sees Adrian as his American father. But he soon shifts his spiritual allegiance to Frank Buchanan. Cliff Morris's flamboyant style conceals a ruinous moral collapse in the deadly skies over World War II Germany. His fear of discovery is worsened by the sardonic shadow of his stepbrother, Billy McCall, the supreme pilot Cliff will never become. Sarah loves all three men and ultimately has to choose between them, knowing that in the macho world of Buchanan Aircraft, women are objects to be enjoyed -- or used to sell the latest bomber or airliner. For women like Amanda Van Ness, Adrian's wife (and Frank Buchanan's lover), this leads to madness. For Sarah it leads to power -- at a terrible price. Spanning the history of flight from the clumsy fabric planes of 1911 to the whizzing stealth fighters of today, Conquerors of the Sky is a page-turning drama of the struggle to mesh aerodynamic visions with the harsh realities of cashflow and profits -- and with the desires and dreams of the men and women who inhabit this unique world. Told by a master of the historical imagination, it is a must-read book that will launch America into the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of flight. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

From Lexington and Concord to Yorktown, Bruce Lancaster's classic, The American Revolution, covers the story of America's fight for independence in vivid detail. With an introduction by the critically acclaimed author Bruce Catton, and a new foreword by Thomas Fleming, The American Revolution is a highly readable and engaging volume.