Fergus M. Bordewich
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Fergus M. Bordewich

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FERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of ten non-fiction books: "Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future" (2026); "Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction" (2023); "Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America" (2020); "The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government" (2016); "America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union" (2012); "Washington: The Making of the American Capital" (2008); "Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America" (2005); "My Mother's Ghost," a memoir (2001); "Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century" (1996); and "Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China (1991). In his newest book, "Centennial", Bordewich interweaves the stories of the converging crises that beset the United States during its centennial year of 1876 -- a bitter and decisive presidential election, the demise of Reconstruction, renewed Indian war in the West, and mounting labor-management violence -- framing them against the nation's first World's Fair, celebrating the achievements of America's first century and foreshadowing the new century to come. His previous book, "Klan War," recounts the harrowing story of the mounting Ku Klux Klan terrorism that sought to destroy biracial democracy in the post-Civil War South, and the effort of Ulysses S. Grant to protect the freed people and their newly won political rights. Oiginal in concept and broad in scope, "Congress at War" shows how brilliant if largely under-appreciated Republican Radicals such as Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Wade, and William Fessenden crafted the policies that enabled the Union to win the Civil War "The First Congress" tells the story of the most momentous -- and most productive -- Congress in American history. When the members of the First Congress met in New York, in 1789, the new nation was still fragile, riven by sectional differences, hobbled by competing currencies, crushed by debt, and stitched together only tentatively by the Constitution. The Constitution provided a set of principles but offered few instructions about how the system should operate, leaving it to Congress and the president to create the machinery of government. Had Congress failed in its work, the United States as we know it might not exist. "America's Great Debate" unfolds an epic story of the nation's westward expansion, slavery and the Compromise of 1850, centering on the dramatic congressional debate of 1849-1850 - the longest in American history - when a gallery of extraordinary men including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Stephen A. Douglas, Jefferson Davis, William H. Seward, and others, fought to shape, and in the case of some to undermine, the future course of the Union. Bordewich has also published an illustrated children's book, "Peach Blossom Spring" (1994), and wrote the script for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson and the creation of the University of Virginia, "Mr. Jefferson's University." He also edited an illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, "Children of the Dragon" (1990). He is a frequent book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He divides his time between Washington, DC and Greensboro, North Carolina, where his wife Jean is the president of Guilford College. He has often served as a commentator on historical subjects for television and radio, and in documentary film productions. He is a member of the Society of American Historians, P.E.N., the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Organization of American Historians. In 2019, "The First Congress" won the D.B. Hardeman Prize in American History. In 2013, Bordewich was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "America's Great Debate." "Bound for Canaan" was selected as one of the American Booksellers Association's "ten best nonfiction books" in 2005, as the Great Lakes Booksellers' Association's "best non-fiction book" of 2005, as one of the Austin Public Library's Best Non-Fiction books of that year, and as one of the New York Public Library's "ten books to remember." "Washington" was named by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post as one of his "Best Books of 2008." Bordewich was born in New York City in 1947, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. As a youth, he often traveled to Native American reservations around the United States with his mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. This early experience helped to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race, and political power. He holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. He has been an independent writer and historian since the early 1970s. His articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, American Heritage, Atlantic, Harper's, New York Magazine, GEO, Reader's Digest. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects ranging from the civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Islamic fundamentalism, German reunification, the Irish economy, Kenya's population crisis, among many others. He also served for brief periods as an editor and writer for the Tehran Journal in Iran, in 1972-1973, a press officer for the United Nations, in 1980-1982, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to switch from a propaganda model to a western-style journalistic one.
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    • How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America
    • By: Fergus M. Bordewich
    • Narrated by: Sean Runnette
    • Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
    • Release date: 18-02-20
    • Language: English
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