Most Popular Books by Thomas Fleming

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.

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.

From The Louisiana Purchase Like many other major events in world history, the Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity. . . . Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter . . . the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he ""very early saw"" Louisiana was a ""speck"" that could turn into a ""tornado."" He added that the public never knew how near ""this catastrophe was."" But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and ""endure"" Napoleon's aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy ""saved us from the storm."" Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with ""what ifs"" that might have changed the outcome-and the history of the world. The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition . . . electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean. . . . From the Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the ""Manifest Destiny"" of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on the Louisiana Purchase. TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.

"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.

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

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.

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 life of the printer, inventor, and statesman who played an influential role in the early history of the United States.

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.

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. . . ."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

"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

Examines the growth of the conservative movement from a small band of dissidents after World War II to the dominant force in American politics in the 1980s. Clearly distinguishes between the old Right, the religious Right, the New Right, libertarians, and neoconservatives.