Eminent lives

Challenges opinions about the Civil War general's presidency, explaining how Grant enabled the country to achieve a sense of post-war calm and applied constructive political strategies in favor of less effective occupation tactics.

By far the most important figure in the history of the United States, George Washington liberated the thirteen colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire against all military odds, and presided over the production and ratification of a constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than two hundred years. Yet today Washington remains a distant figure to many Americans-a failing that acclaimed author Paul Johnson sets out to...

Referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis," Sigmund Freud is credited with championing the "talking cure" and charting the human unconscious. Both revered and reviled, he was a brilliant innovator but also a man of troubling contradictions-sometimes tyrannical, often misrepresenting the course and outcome of his treatments to make the "facts" match his theories. Peter D. Kramer-acclaimed author, practicing psychiatrist, and a leading national authority...

The author of The Prince-his controversial handbook on power, which is one of the most influential books ever written-Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was no prince himself. Born to an established middle-class family, Machiavelli worked as a courtier and diplomat for the Republic of Florence and enjoyed some small fame in his time as the author of bawdy plays and poems. In this discerning new biography, Ross King rescues Machiavelli's legacy from...