David O. Stewart, formerly a lawyer, writes books of history and historical fiction, including most recently The New Land, which recounts the experience of the Louisbourg expedition of 1758 through the eyes of German immigrants to America and George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father. His other works are The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, winner of the Washington Writing Award as Best Book of 2007, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson, American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America, and Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America. He has also won the History Prize of the Society of the Cincinnati and the William H. Prescott Award of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America. Bloomberg View called David's The Lincoln Deception the best historical novel of 2013. Sequels include The Wilson Deception and The Babe Ruth Deception.
When they heard the news in 1757, some New Englanders smirked. Others grew angry. The British were mounting a major expedition against the powerful French fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, next to Nova Scotia. Sometimes called “the Gibraltar of the North,” Louisbourg was the key to the French empire in North America. New […]
William “Will” Costin was found dead in his own bed on the morning of May 31, 1842. Washington City’s leading newspaper, the Daily National Intelligencer, reported the passing of this “free colored man, aged 62 years,” then praised Costin’s years of service to the Bank of Washington, the capital’s largest. Costin’s job sounds modest today—he […]
Through four months in the summer of 1787, passionate arguments over political principles filled the Pennsylvania State House while hard-nosed political horse-trading buzzed in the taverns and drawing rooms of Philadelphia. Fifty-five American politicians were writing a new charter of government for the United States, the Constitution. They produced the longest-surviving constitutional republic in human […]
