Club Book Episode 116 H.W. Brands

Chart-topping historian H.W. Brands is one of the foremost American Studies scholars writing today – and also one of the most prolific. With nearly 40 published books to date, his work spans more than three decades of dedicated scholarship and nearly every epoch of American history. Brands’ areas of speciality include economic history and global policy, as well as biographies on presidents and other change-makers who shaped our nation. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, for The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000) and Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008). Brands’ latest is The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom. Brands’ incisive look at the abolition of slavery gained wide acclaim. Library Journal calls it “a fascinating and wonderfully readable portrayal of the tensions between fiery militancy and determined-but-measured devotion in working toward a goal.”

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