Allen C Guelzo

Winner of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

The Battle of Gettysburg has been written about at length and thoroughly dissected in terms of strategic importance, but never before has a book taken readers so close to the experience of the individual soldier.
Two-time Lincoln Prize winner Allen C. Guelzo shows us the...

Five days after Abraham Lincoln was buried in Springfield, Illinois, John Locke Scripps, who had convinced Lincoln to write his first campaign autobiography, asserted that the 16th president had become, "the Great American Man - the grand central figure in American (perhaps the World's) History." Historians still find it hard to quibble with Scripps's opinion. Lincoln was the central figure in the nation's greatest crisis, the Civil War. His achievements...

Why did 13 colonies believe they could defeat the most powerful nation on the planet? And how did they eventually manage such an impressive feat? Get the real story on the battle for American independence with Professor Guelzo's 24 gripping lectures. With a focus on the war's strategy, military tactics, logistics, and most fascinating people, these lectures are a must own for anyone curious about the origins of the greatest nation in modern history....

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures...

Professor Guelzo takes you inside Alexander Hamilton's views about the American Republic: the fictions of hierarchy and aristocracy; the voluntary compact between rulers and ruled; the division of power into small packets; and his suspicions of the behavior of the Confederation Congress.

Could the American experiment succeed? George Washington, one of the most iconic Founders, had strong doubts. After explaining the importance of getting a well-rounded understanding of the Founders, Professor Guelzo explores Washington's fears about post-Revolutionary America and his concerns about how people could administer their own affairs.

Turn now to the next great issue facing the Convention: the shape of the new national executive. After pondering some of the concerns and fears the delegates had about executive power, you'll focus on James Wilson's argument for the need of an executive chosen not by Congress but by national election.

American cities were often badly planned and became overcrowded with ethnic and linguistic neighborhoods. Cities were severely polluted with smoke and ash; contaminated water supplies, poor sanitation, and large numbers of horses worsened public health conditions and shortened life expectancy. Reformers tried to Americanize urban immigrants and campaigned for city government reform.

World War II caused a dramatic redistribution of income. Consumer-goods manufacturers and advertisers took advantage of steady rises in available discretionary income. America sprawled in the 1950s and became the wealthiest society in the history of the world. The Soviet Union's surprise victory in the space race led to a new American dedication to education in science and technology.

Reconstruction improved many aspects of black Southerners' lives, at least for a number of years, and left deep scars on a white South that labored diligently to project an image of Northern oppression. The episode closes with an assessment of whether Reconstruction should be judged a success or a moment of lost opportunity for African Americans in the United States.