Most Popular Books by Thomas Fleming

Choosing the most important moments in the long history of the American presidency is difficult. But here, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming vividly recreates many of those hours of crisis - from George Washington''s fight for peace and the night Abraham Lincoln was almost shot to Ronald Reagan''s plea to "tear down this wall" and George W. Bush on September 11, 2001, "the day that changed everything."

The charge of treason pitted President Thomas Jefferson against his former vice president, Aaron Burr, and the chief justice of the United States, John Marshall. Here, in this essay by New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming, is the dramatic story of one of the most famous trials in American history.

Few writers have told the story of the American Revolution with more grace, clarity, or emotional power than New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming. Here, collected for the first time and posthumously, are Fleming''s favorite works. He takes us back to the days of the founders, detailing the surprising facts of American life in 1776, including its resemblance to today. He tells the seldom-told tale of the Loyalists, supporters of England who acted on their political convictions with impressive courage during the Revolution, and reveals little-known facets of men ranging from Franklin to Lafayette, Howe to Washington. He concludes with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when fifty-five men from twelve virtually autonomous states came to Philadelphia in a brave - some thought foolhardy - attempt to replace a loose and fragile confederation with a strong national government. Their astonishing achievement became a standard of enlightenment the world over.

With the War for Independence not long past, the United States found itself battling Native Americans in the West. With the encouragement of the British, the Indians were brutally massacring settlers and soldiers by the thousands. Enter "Mad" Anthony Wayne, a highly disciplined leader who was anything but mad. Here, in this short-form book, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming provides a fascinating look at the battle that opened the American West to peaceful settlement.

A fresh look at the nation’s formative years through the lens of the clash between Washington and Jefferson.

They called themselves Loyalists. The rebels called them Tories. This derogatory term had previously been reserved for the supporters of the predominantly Catholic line of Stuart kings, whose reign ended in England''s bloodless revolution of 1688. For well over 100 years, it was the fashion among American historians to accept Thomas Paine''s 1776 declaration that "Every Tory is a coward . . . fear is the foundation of Toryism." But more recent historical research has revealed many New England Loyalists acted on their political convictions with impressive courage during the American Revolution. Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is their story.

In Verdicts of History, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming highlights six courtroom dramas that changed the future of America. From unexpected verdicts, like the acquittal won by John Adams when he defended British soldiers charged with the Boston Massacre in 1770 to stirred passions when abolitionist John Brown was convicted of murder - a precedent to the Civil War - to the breakthrough in racial relations when Clarence Darrow won a stunning "not guilty" verdict for black physician Ossian Sweet - at a time when black Americans could hardly expect a fair trial. Fleming also includes the trials of Aaron Burr for treason and a well-known congressman for murder. In courtrooms throughout the nation''s history, vivid emotion and heated rhetoric have established consequential precedents and enlarged average men and women to historical dimensions.

On April 19, 1775, thirty-eight Americans formed two uneven lines on the wet grass of the two-acre common in Lexington, Massachusetts. They were summoned by the rolling beat of sixteen-year-old William Diamond''s brightly painted drum. The order to sound the call to arms had been given by Lexington''s militia captain, John Parker. A British column had been reported just fifteen minutes away. This is one of the vivid scenes New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming sets in First Stroke, his award-winning history of the opening days of the American Revolution, beginning with the Boston Tea Party.

The story of the Stapleton clan continues in this sequel to Remember the Morning. The Wage of Fame takes place between 1827 and the start of the Civil War. We follow George Stapleton, Hugh Stapleton''s grandson, and his circle of powerful friends through their romantic and political adventures. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Paradise Beach, New Jersey. The perfect place for Dick O''Gorman and Billy Kilroy to smuggle ashore Cuban missiles to be used in the Irish Republican Army''s war against England. Paradise Beach is an Irish American enclave, one that has no idea about the violent upheaval into which it will soon be thrown. It is 1984. Irish Americans, preoccupied with a loss of political power in the cities, have little sympathy for Ireland and the IRA. This is especially true of Mick O''Day, an ex-marine whose moral failure in Vietnam haunts him still. It is a combustible mix, as a British secret agent disguised as a priest sows suspicion between the Irish Americans and the IRA men that could ignite into a physical and spiritual explosion and could tear the community apart at its very seams. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

They called themselves Sons of Liberty--a revolutionary conspiracy that intended to form a new confederacy in the American heartland--and put an end to the American Civil War. Backed by the South, the Sons launch guerilla attacks against Union troops. The year is 1864, the place Indiana and Kentucky. A time of ruthless censorship, conscription, and a seemingly endless war that has left a half a million Americans dead. Union Major Paul Stapleton falls in love with Janet Todd, courier and evangelist for the Sons of Liberty. Another admirer, Colonel Adam Jameson, readies his Confederate cavalry division to support the Sons'' revolt. The battle for the future of America is about to begin. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Steely determination enabled Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I ace pilot, to survive twenty-four days drifting across the Pacific in a life raft. Here, in this essay by New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming, is the dramatic story.

The Ripple Effect: Memoirs from the Inside takes you on journey of one man''s choices and the consequences that resulted in years of living in a dark world. Only forgiveness from the most unlikely source would bring Thomas back into the light. The lessons of forgiveness, overcoming addiction, racism, low self-esteem, and violence are very powerful. It is a close look into the inside of a dark heart and mind and what it takes to survive over three decades in a bleak and dreary maximum-security prison. Thomas was dubbed one of the most dangerous inmates in the system''s history. How does he change the minds and hearts of those that never want to see him released or succeed within the prison system? He must first change his own mind and heart.

Today''s spectacle of an imperial Congress battling the president of the United States is unsettling to many Americans. But it should not come as a surprise. Since the earliest days of the republic, writes New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming in this essay, Congress has sought to seize power for itself and diminish the 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.

What were the French up to in the Ohio Valley in 1753? Setting out in search of an answer, a bold young major from Virginia named George Washington soon found himself skirting catastrophe, writes New York Times bestselling author and historian Thomas Fleming.

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.

The most famous collision in American Navy history took place on a hot, starless, moonless night in 1943. PT109 was idling off the South Pacific island of Kolombangara. With virtually no warning, a Japanese destroyer smashed into the boat, slicing it in half and igniting its thousands of gallons of gasoline. PT109''s commander and surviving crew were flung or leaped into the blazing water, beginning an ordeal that writers, relatives, and friends would use to create a drama that propelled John F. Kennedy to the presidency of the United States. Here, in this essay from New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is the story of what really happened that night.

New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming brings his extraordinary biographical talents to bear upon Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the least understood of America''s revolutionary giants. For this reappraisal, Fleming concentrates on the mature Franklin, the man who lived nearly thirty years beyond the point where he ended his famous Autobiography. The poor boy, the miserly young printer, has become a decidedly more complex and cultured man. In scene after vivid scene, Fleming shows us how Franklin''s unique blend of faith and courage, humor and wisdom presided over the birth of the American nation. Interwoven in this political history is a moving, almost forgotten personal drama - the conflict between Franklin and his son William, the royal governor of New Jersey, the "thorough courtier," as Franklin called him. Year by year, we watch the two men drift apart as the quarrel between America and England deepens - yet always reaching across the gulf with words of personal affection. Finally comes the climactic confrontation, when a fully disillusioned Franklin returns from eleven years in England to confront the son for whom independence is a hated word. With him, Franklin brings William''s son Temple, educated in England. The bitter political quarrel soon forces father and grandfather to fight for the boy''s loyalty. This personalization of history is Thomas Fleming''s hallmark. Almost as revealing as the dramatization of Franklin''s battle with his son is the chronicle of Franklin''s years in England before the Revolution. We see the network of friendships he created, the deep feeling with which he and William visited the ancestral village of Ecton, the fascinating blend of emotion and reason in his crucial testimony before Parliament at the height of the Stamp Act furor in 1766. Then we see this innate passion for England slowly fade during the next eight years as Franklin struggles to defend America from Parliament''s greedy prejudice and - another forgotten story - simultaneously to establish a fourteenth colony on the Ohio. As always, Fleming combines colorful anecdote and shrewd analysis of men and motives. And Franklin being Franklin, there is also the constant spice of humor. We see him stopping at a country inn and emptying the chairs by the fire by booming: "Boy, get my horse a quart of oysters." Solemnly, he informs historian Edward Gibbon that he would provide him with "ample materials" on the decline and fall of the British Empire. The war won, he cheerfully assures English friends that their only hope now was to dissolve Parliament for good and "send delegates to Congress." We see him using humor to cope with the egotism and paranoia of other Americans in Paris. Finally, we witness him as mon cher papa, the friend and aspiring lover of two beautiful French women, wooing them with the wittiest essays ever written by a seventy-six-year-old suitor. But in all the byplay, personal and political, one theme dominates: Franklin''s dedication to America - a commitment that transcended all others in his life and inspired him to dare the political lightning. It is what makes this book important reading now and in the future.