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

xvi, 278 pp. The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in the founding fathers so intense that a reader or television viewer of today might imagine that America was the creation of beings who were flawless in their wisdom and courage. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edmund S. Morgan shows here, Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes. But, drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, he presents a different cast of characters―among them Indians, witches, heretics, and naysayers―men and women who went against the grain, in addition to the stock figures of our national hagiography.