Reviews
Advance Praise forThe First American "A vivid yet thorough account, endlessly fascinating, of America's most multidimensional 18th-century man, in all his diverse roles." -James MacGregor Burns, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winningRoosevelt: The Lion and the Fox "H. W. Brands is a master storyteller. With a wit, originality, and erudition to rival his subject's, Brands gives us Benjamin Franklin living. This is biography at its most riveting-as intimate as a dinner party, albeit one attended by the greatest figures of their age." -Richard Norton Smith, author of Patriarch: George Washington and theNew American Nation, director of the Gerald R. Ford Museum "H. W. Brands, tucked away in America's Texas heartland, has quietly been establishing himself as a chronicler of the American experience, with understated and comprehensive books about the Cold War, the 1890s, and Teddy Roosevelt.The First Americanis an extension of that effort. Brands, somewhat like the late Barbara Tuchman, understands that the public interest is best served by general, narrative histories-not by arcane monographs." -Robert D. Kaplan, author of theNew York TimesbestsellerBalkan Ghosts, winner of the Pulitzer Prize "The First Americanis a fast-paced, skillfully written biography of the always glittering Benjamin Franklin. The reader can only marvel at the multifarious Renaissance hats Franklin wore simultaneously: journalist, father, inventor, provocateur, moralist, ladies' man, diplomat, propagandist, revolutionary, tinkerer, and humorist. Another truly inspired work by one of America's best historians." -Douglas Brinkley, author of Dean Acheson:The Cold War Years, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, professor of history at the University of New Orleans Critical Acclaim forT.R: The Last Romantic "H. W. Brands has written a rip-roaring life of Theodore Roosevelt. Every red-blooded American should read this entertaining book." -Paul Johnson,The Wall Street Journal "An energetic and capacious biography...Brands has mined the prodigious treasure of letters, diaries, and published writings of the man more assiduously than anyone else I can think of. T.R. will stand for some time as the standard one-volume life." -Washington Post Book World
