Geoffrey C. Ward

From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The Roosevelts, and others: a richly illustrated, human-centered history of America's founding struggle--expanding on the landmark, six-part PBS series to be aired in November 2025 "From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished." --Thomas Paine In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the American Revolution turned the world upside down. Thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired independence movements and democratic reforms around the globe. The American Revolution was at once a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. In this sumptuous volume, historian Geoffrey C. Ward ably steers us through the international forces at play, telling the story not from the top down but from the bottom up--and through the eyes of not only our "Founding Fathers" but also those of ordinary soldiers, as well as underrepresented populations such as women, African Americans, Native Americans, and American Loyalists, asking who exactly was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Enriched by guest essays from lauded historians such as Vincent Brown, Maya Jasanoff, Jane Kamensky, and Alan Taylor, and by an astonishing array of prints, drawings, paintings, texts, and pamphlets from the time period, as well as newly commissioned art and maps--and woven together with the words of Thomas Paine-- The American Revolution reveals a nation still grappling with the questions that fueled its remarkable founding.

**The New York Times Bestseller****The book of the landmark documentary, The Vietnam War, by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick**The definitive work on the Vietnam War, the conflict that came to define a generation, told from all sides by those who were there.

From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The Roosevelts, and others: a vivid, uniquely powerful history of the conflict that tore America apart--the companion volume to the major, multipart PBS film to be aired in September 2017. More than forty years after it ended, the Vietnam War continues to haunt our country. We still argue over why we were there, whether we could have won, and who was right and wrong in their response to the conflict. When the war divided the country, it created deep political fault lines that continue to divide us today. Now, continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed collaborations, the authors draw on dozens and dozens of interviews in America and Vietnam to give us the perspectives of people involved at all levels of the war: U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers and their families, high-level officials in America and Vietnam, antiwar protestors, POWs, and many more. The book plunges us into the chaos and intensity of combat, even as it explains the rationale that got us into Vietnam and kept us there for so many years. Rather than taking sides, the book seeks to understand why the war happened the way it did, and to clarify its complicated legacy. Beautifully written and richly illustrated, this is a tour de force that is certain to launch a new national conversation.

In this classic of American biography, based upon thousands of original documents, many never previously published, the prize-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward tells the dramatic story of Franklin Roosevelt's unlikely rise from cloistered youth to the brink of the presidency with a richness of detail and vivid sense of time, place, and personality usually found only in fiction. In these pages, FDR comes alive as a fond but absent father and an often unfeeling husband--the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's struggle to build a life independent of him is chronicled in full-as well as a charming but pampered patrician trying to find his way in the sweaty world of everyday politics and all-too willing willing to abandon allies and jettison principle if he thinks it will help him move up the political ladder. But somehow he also finds within himself the courage and resourcefulness to come back from a paralysis that would have crushed a less resilient man and then go on to meet and master the two gravest crises of his time.

Before Pearl Harbor, before polio and his entry into politics, FDR was a handsome, pampered, but strong-willed youth, the center of a rarefied world. In Before the Trumpet, the award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward transports the reader to that world--Hyde Park on the Hudson and Campobello Island, Groton and Harvard and the Continent--to recreate as never before the formative years of the man who would become the 20th century's greatest president. Here, drawn from thousands of original documents (many never previously published), is a richly-detailed, intimate biography, its central figure surrounded by a colorful cast that includes an opium smuggler and a pious headmaster; Franklin's distant cousin, Theodore and his remarkable mother, Sara; and the still-more remarkable young woman he wooed and won, his cousin Eleanor. This is a tale that would grip the reader even if its central character had not grown up to be FDR.

A New York Times Notable Book The compelling behind-the-scenes story of the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age, whose villainy bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and stunned the world of finance--told by his great-grandson, award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward. Ferdinand Ward, the son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor, moved to New York at twenty-one and, in less than a decade, made himself the business partner of a former president and established himself as the "Young Napoleon of Finance." In truth, he was running a massive pyramid scheme. Drawing from thousands of family documents never before examined, Geoffrey C. Ward traces his great-grandfather's rapid rise to riches and fame, and his even more dizzying fall from grace, in a narrative populated with mistresses, crooked bankers, corrupt New York officials, and a desperate kidnapping scheme. Here is a great story about a classic American con artist.

The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced--and helped to win--the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost. Focusing on the citizens of four towns--Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama--The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Woven largely from their memories, the compelling, unflinching narrative unfolds month by bloody month, with the outcome always in doubt. All the iconic events are here, from Pearl Harbor to the liberation of the concentration camps--but we also move among prisoners of war and Japanese American internees, defense workers and schoolchildren, and families who struggled simply to stay together while their men were shipped off to Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa. Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, including many never published before, this is an intimate, profoundly affecting chronicle of the war that shaped our world.

In this vivid biography Geoffrey C. Ward brings back to life the most celebrated -- and the most reviled -- African American of his age. Jack Johnson battled his way out of obscurity and poverty in the Jim Crow South to win the title of heavyweight champion of the world. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled simply to exist, he reveled in his riches and his fame, sleeping with whomever he pleased, to the consternation and anger of much of white America. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure prison and seven years of exile. This definitive biography portrays Jack Johnson as he really was--a battler against the bigotry of his era and the embodiment of American individualism.

A companion book to the acclaimed PBS series by the team who wrote The Civil War and Baseball furnishes a lavish photographic essay that celebrates the contributions of such artists as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and John Coltrane. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Shorn of the 400-plus images that illustrated the TV tie-in edition, the text of The West is an outstanding work of scholarly synthesis and a feat of storytelling. It is a book that will enthrall readers of popular history as well as students of the North American West. Essays by seven noted writers and historians, complement Geoffrey Wards compelling narrative.

Based on the celebrated PBS television series about the men and women who lived through the cataclysmic trial of our nationhood--the complete text of the magisterial illustrated work of history that The New York Times hailed as "a treasure for the eye and mind." "The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things.... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads: the suffering, the enormous tragedy of the whole thing." --Shelby Foote, from The Civil War Now Geoffrey Ward's magisterial work of history is available in a text-only edition that interweaves the author's narrative with the voices of the men and women who lived through the cataclysmic trial of our nationhood: not just Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Robert E. Lee, but genteel Southern ladies and escaped slaves, cavalry officers and common foot soldiers who fought in Yankee blue and Rebel gray. The Civil War also includes essays by our most distinguished historians of the era: Don E. Fehrenbacher, on the war's origins; Barbara J. Fields, on the freeing of the slaves; Shelby Foote, on the war's soldiers and commanders; James M. McPherson, on the political dimensions of the struggle; and C. Vann Woodward, assessing the America that emerged from the war's ashes.

"A treasure for the eye and mind" (The New York Times) about the greatest war in American history--and a magnificent companion volume to the celebrated PBS television series by one of our most treasured filmmakers. - With more than 500 illustrations: rare Civil War photographs--many never before published--as well as paintings, lithographs, and maps reproduced in full color. It was the greatest war in American history. It was waged in 10,000 places--from Valverde, New Mexico, and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont, and Fernandina on the Florida coast. More than 3 million Americans fought in it and more than 600,000 men died in it. Not only the immensity of the cataclysm but the new weapons, the new standards of generalship, and the new strategies of destruction--together with the birth of photography--were to make the Civil War an event present ever since in the American consciousness. Thousands of books have been written about it. Yet there has never been a history of the Civil War quite like this one. A wealth of documentary illustrations and a narrative alive with original and energetic scholarship combine to present both the grand sweep of events and the minutest of human details. Here are the crucial events of the war: the firing of the first shots at Fort Sumter; the battles of Shiloh, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; the siege of Vicksburg; Sherman's dramatic march to the sea; the surrender at Appomattox. Here are the superb portraits of the key figures: Abraham Lincoln, claiming for the presidency almost autocratic power in order to preserve the Union; the austere Jefferson Davis, whose government disappeared almost before it could be formed; Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, seasoned generals of fierce brilliance and reckless determination. Here is the America in which the war was fought: The Civil War is not simply the story of great battles and great generals; it is also an elaborate portrait of the American people caught up in the turbulence of the times. An additional resonance is provided by four essays by prominent Civil War historians, and Shelby Foote talks to filmmaker Ken Burns about wartime life on the battlefield and at home.