American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America - Paperback

by Edmund S. Morgan (Author)

From the best-selling author of Benjamin Franklin comes this remarkable work that will help redefine our notion of American heroism. Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes, but the men and women dramatically portrayed here are not celebrated for the typical banal reasons contained in Founding Fathers hagiography. Effortlessly challenging those who persist in revering the American history status quo and its tropes and falsehoods, Morgan, now ninety-three, continues to believe that the past is just not the way it seems.

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These revelatory stories of American heroes and their undaunted courage will forever alter our understanding of American history. From the best-selling author of Benjamin Franklin comes a remarkable work that will help redefine our notion of American heroism. As Edmund S. Morgan, the recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize, explains, Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes, but the men and women dramatically portrayed here are not celebrated for the typical banal reasons contained in founding father hagiography. Effortlessly challenging those who persist in revering the tropes and myths of American history, Edmund S. Morgan demonstrates here that the past is just not the way it seems. Praise for American Heroes and Edmund S. Morgan: "Edmund Morgan is not just the foremost American historian writing today; he is also one of the wisest and most humane of scholars. This splendid collection, including craftsmanship from some seventy years, beautifully conveys the lucidity, learning, and intellectual wonder of Morgan's work at its finest."-Sean Wilentz "For clarity, scholarly depth, and sheer insight, there is simply no historian of early America comparable to Edmund Morgan. Here again, astonishingly, are an amazing array of essays that shed new light on the founding era and its range of personalities. They are indeed 'heroes, ' but Morgan sees them from a delightfully subversive, witty, even edgy, sense of history."-David W. Blight, Yale University, author of A Slave No More "To Edmund S. Morgan, for his brilliant scholarship as one of America's most distinguished historians. With elegant prose, fresh perspective, and exhaustive research, he has enhanced our understanding of American colonial history by challenging traditions and assumptions about the birth of our nation and by bringing to life the people and ideas that shaped America's destiny."-2000 National Humanities Medal