Skip to main content

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands is a best-selling author, historian, and the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written thirty books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator, a dual biography of the abolitionist John Brown and President Abraham Lincoln, as well as The First American and Traitor to His Class, both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize. 

In addition to his books, Brands has also written articles and reviews for magazine and newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Smithsonian. 

Articles by this Author

As a young man, Theodore Roosevelt struggled through a brutal winter on a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory. The adventure launched a love affair with the western U.S.
Chief Justice Roger Taney made his contribution to the ideology of white supremacy when he asserted that blacks were a people apart, beyond the promise of the Declaration and the guarantees of the Constitution.