Recorded November 13, 2018

“Master storyteller” (Christian Science Monitor) H. W. Brands was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin (The First American) and Franklin Roosevelt (Traitor to His Class). Exploring such diverse subjects as Aaron Burr, Ronald Reagan, the California gold rush, Andrew Jackson, the Vietnam War, and Bill Gates, his more than two dozen books “weave together keen political history with anecdote and marvelous sense of place” (The Boston Globe). Brands returns with the story of the early 19thcentury political giants who took up the daunting challenge of completing the constitutional work begun by the Founding Fathers.