Search results for ""author harlow giles unger""

In a critical and little-known chapter of early American history, a fearless young Kentucky lawyer threw open the doors of Congress during the nation's formative years and prevented dissolution of the infant American republic.The only freshman congressman ever elected Speaker of the House, Henry Clay brought an arsenal of rhetorical weapons to subdue feuding members of the House of Representatives and established the Speaker as the most powerful elected official after the President. During fifty years in public service-as congressman, senator, secretary of state, and four-time presidential candidate-Clay constantly battled to save the Union, summoning uncanny negotiating skills to force bitter foes from North and South to compromise on slavery and forego secession. His famous "Missouri Compromise" and four other compromises thwarted civil war "by a power and influence," Lincoln said, "which belonged to no other statesman of his age and times."Explosive, revealing, and richly illustrated, Henry Clay is the story of one of the most courageous -and powerful - political leaders in American history.

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Thomas Paine's words were like no others in history: they leaped off the page, inspiring readers to change their lives, their governments, their kings, and even their gods. In an age when spoken and written words were the only forms of communication, Paine's aroused men to action like no one else. The most widely read political writer of his generation, he proved to be more than a century ahead of his time, conceiving and demanding unheard-of social reforms that are now integral elements of modern republican societies. Among them were government subsidies for the poor, universal housing and education, pre- and post-natal care for women, and universal social security. An Englishman who emigrated to the American colonies, he formed close friendships with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and his ideas helped shape the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.However, the world turned against Paine in his later years. While his earlier works, Common Sense and Rights of Man, attacked the political and social status quo here on earth, The Age of Reason attacked the status quo of the hereafter. Former friends shunned him, and the man America had hailed as the muse of the American Revolution died alone and forgotten.Packed with action and intrigue, soldiers and spies, politics and perfidy, Unger's Thomas Paine is a much-needed new look at a defining figure.

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Before Washington, before Jefferson, before Franklin or John Adams, there was Lee--Richard Henry Lee, the First Founding Father.Richard Henry Lee was the first to call for independence, and the first to call for union. He was "father of our country" as much as George Washington, securing the necessary political and diplomatic victories in the Revolutionary War. Lee played a critical role in holding the colonial government together, declaring the nation's independence, and ensuring victory for the Continental Army by securing the first shipments of French arms to American troops. Next to Washington, Lee was arguably the most important American leader in the war against the British.Drawing on original manuscripts--many overlooked or ignored by contemporary historians--Unger paints a powerful portrait of a towering figure in the American Revolution.

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Dr. Benjamin Rush was the Founding Father of an America that other Founding Fathers forgot or ignored--an America of women, African-Americans, Jews, Quakers, Roman Catholics, indentured workers, and the poor. Ninety percent of the people lived in that other America, but none could vote and none had rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, either before or after independence from Britain. Alone among the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush heard their cries and stepped forth as the nation's first great humanitarian and social reformer.Known primarily as America's most influential and leading physician, Rush was also among the first to call for the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, free education and health care for the poor, slum clearance, city-wide sanitation facilities, an end to child labor, universal public education, humane treatment and therapy for the insane, prison reform, an end to capital punishment, and improved medical care for injured troops. Using archival material found in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, as well as significant new materials from Rush's descendants recently made available, Harlow Giles Unger's startling biography of Benjamin Rush is the first in more than a decade.Dr. Benjamin Rush is an important biography of the Founding Father who never forgot America's forgotten people.

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