The separation from his mother at an early age appears to have left a permanent scar on young Isaac Newton that followed him through the rest of his life. He never married or had any children and had but a few close friends. He would work frantically for days on end, seemingly without food or rest, resting only when the creative spirit left him. However, the work of this ponderous man would have a profound effect on the world as we know it today.

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of America and had an enormous impact on America as it is today. In addition to that, there are many little-known facts about the man who is Benjamin Franklin. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, he started out in humble circumstances. From a young age, Benjamin Franklin fought for the rights of America at home and abroad. Yet, he bore the burdens of leadership and never shirked nor faltered in his mission. His greatest asset was his charm and friendliness, but he had his detractors as well and felt the emotional impact of that.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.

No two men are more responsible for the shaping of American than these two powerhouses. From "trust-busting" and the "square deal" to abolishing slavery so that all Americans can enjoy the freedoms of this country, these two embody exactly what it means to be “American”. In this two-book set, you'll learn not only what made them legends, but also what shaped their early years and made them who they are - from their childhood struggles and what kept them moving forward to their early years in politics and the personal battles they fought. It’s all here.

He wasn’t always the Great Showman. In fact, Phineas Taylor Barnum grew up in relative poverty with only his wits to help him along. When his father died, the 15-year-old boy entered the working world as a shopkeeper’s assistant. In leaps and bounds, he worked his way from assistant to shop owner, lottery office owner, and, eventually, entertainment promoter. The bulk of his career was focused on his beloved American Museum, where thousands of ticket holders flocked every day to look at the human oddities, stuffed animals, live whale, and American memorabilia.

The urgent need to honor the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence came to Douglas MacKinnon, fittingly enough, on the Fourth of July. While doing research for a column meant to remind the American people of that date’s critical importance, he came across example after example of those from the left and the far left—be they in the mainstream media, activists, or anarchists—calling for not only the “canceling” of the Fourth of July, but the continued smearing, censorship, and canceling of our Founding Fathers.

This cultural biography tells the enthralling story of the high-achieving Black elites who thrived in the nation's capital during Reconstruction. Daniel Murray (1851-1925), an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, was a prominent member of this glorious class. Murray's life was reflective of those who were well-off at the time. This social circle included African American educators, ministers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, US senators and representatives, and other government officials.

In Father Michael McGivney (1852-1890), born and raised in a Connecticut factory town, the modern era's ideal of the priesthood hit its zenith. The son of Irish immigrants, he was a man to whom "family values" represented more than mere rhetoric. And he left a legacy of hope still celebrated around the world.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.

Fierce Convictions weaves together world and personal history into a stirring story of life that intersected with Wesley and Whitefield's Great Awakening, the rise and influence of Evangelicalism, and convulsive effects of the French Revolution. A woman of exceptional intellectual gifts and literary talent, Hannah More was above all a person whose faith compelled her both to engage her culture and to transform it.

Thomas Edison was born into a hard-working but attentive family. He struggled in school and became deaf at an early age. Born on February 11, 1847, Edison would become, arguably, the best-known American inventor of all time. His invention of the light bulb was one of more than 1,000 patents he held during his lifetime. Others included the phonograph, the electrical grid, and motion pictures. His work changed the way we see and hear the world around us.

Obsessive, brilliant, and tortured, Nikola Tesla was lauded for his invention of the alternating current (AC) and other significant contributions to science. His claim that “harnessing the forces of nature was the only worthwhile scientific endeavor" both impressed and enraged the scientific community. Eventually his peers could no longer dismiss his eccentricities and began to view him as a crackpot - a potentially dangerous one.

Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".

Benjamin Franklin was not a gambling man. But at the end of his illustrious life, the Founder allowed himself a final wager on the survival of the United States: a gift of two thousand pounds to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out to tradesmen over the next two centuries to jump-start their careers. Each loan would be repaid with interest over ten years. If all went according to Franklin’s inventive scheme, the accrued final payout in 1991 would be a windfall.

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of America and had an enormous impact on America as it is today. In addition to that, there are many little-known facts about the man who is Benjamin Franklin. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, he started out in humble circumstances. From a young age, Benjamin Franklin fought for the rights of America at home and abroad. Yet, he bore the burdens of leadership and never shirked nor faltered in his mission. His greatest asset was his charm and friendliness, but he had his detractors as well and felt the emotional impact of that.

Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.

Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".

Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world.

Human history has seen many surprising and profound turning points. The ways that humans learned to use raw materials to create activity and resources set the stage for the most compelling and life-altering phase of the modern era, the Industrial Revolution. Born during this time on different continents but connected by similar interests, two men indelibly marked their generation and those that followed with their genius and foresight. This audiobook covers the war of currents and the individual lives of Tesla and Edison.

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama, one of the greatest, played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths.

Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.

Award-winning author Philip Dray delves into the lesser-known side of an American icon in Stealing God's Thunder. Benjamin Franklin, more often viewed as a statesman and founding father than as a man of science, challenged religion, science, and reason with his inventions. But in a time when everything was blamed on sin, it was the lightning rod, Franklin's attempt to control the heavens, that caused the greatest controversy.

Discover the stories of 12 women who heard the call to settle the West and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journeys. As a slave Clara watched helplessly as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter as a free woman six decades later. As a young girl, Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver who ever lived. As a Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice and to educate leaders about the ways and importance of America's native people.

As presidential candidates sling dirt at each other, America desperately needs a few real heroes. Tragically, liberal historians and educators have virtually erased traditional American heroes from history. According to the Left, the Founding Fathers were not noble architects of America but selfish demagogues, and self-made entrepreneurs like Rockefeller were robber barons and corporate polluters.

Over the course of his distinguished career, David McCullough has spoken before Congress, colleges and universities, historical societies, and other esteemed institutions. Now, at a time of self-reflection in America following a bitter election campaign that has left the country divided, McCullough has collected some of his most important speeches in a brief volume designed to identify important principles and characteristics that are particularly American.

Rosalind Franklin was what can only be called an overlooked genius. Although she was not fully credited for the feat at the time, her work led to major breakthroughs in our understanding of DNA. In fact, she took the first X-ray photo of DNA in all of its double helix glory. By the time her former colleagues were being showered with accolades for results they made at least partially based on her findings, Franklin would not be around to see it. Sadly, it’s believed that her use of X-ray equipment gave her terminal cancer, cutting her life short at age 37.

By the time he was 30, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment.