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

Edmund S. Morgan

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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 Fathers hagiography. He reexamines the lives of bona-fide American heroes such as George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, and reevaluates the legacies of religious figures such as Anne Hutchinson, whose trial for heresy and banishment riveted the colonies in 1637. Morgan also plucks from obscurity unknown martyrs such as Mary Easty and Giles Cory, “perhaps as brave a man as any in American history”; both were charged with witchcraft, and both were executed proclaiming their innocence while refusing to name others.

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.

Edmund S. Morgan is the Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale University and the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Pulitzer Prize, and the American Academy’s Gold Medal. The author of The Genuine Article, Morgan lives with his wife in New Haven.

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