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Start giftingHenry Clay
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Learn moreA compelling new biography of America’s most powerful Speaker of the House, who held the divided nation together for three decades and who was Lincoln’s guiding light
In a little known chapter of early American history, a fearless Kentucky lawyer rids Congress of corruption and violence in an era when congressmen debated with bullets as well as ballots. Harlow Giles Unger reveals how Henry Clay, the youngest congressman ever elected Speaker of the House, rewrote congressional rules and established the Speaker as the most powerful elected official after the president.
During five decades of public service—as congressman, senator, secretary of state, and four-time presidential candidate—Clay produced historic compromises that postponed civil war for fifty years. Lincoln called Clay “the man for whom I fought all my life.”
An action-packed narrative history, Henry Clay is the story of one of the most courageous congressmen in American history.
Acclaimed historian Harlow Giles Unger is a former Distinguished Visiting Fellow at George Washington's Mount Vernon. He is the author of twenty-six previous books, including twelve biographies of America's Founding Fathers and three histories of the early Republic. He lives in New York City.
John Lescault has been an audiobook narrator for over twenty-five years and has recorded more than three hundred titles, spanning works of fiction and nonfiction. He has also provided narration for NPR’s Performance Today, Nightline, and Deaf Mosaic. He has appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra as Beethoven and Dvorak at the Kennedy Center.
Reviews
“A comprehensive biography of the statesman whom Abraham Lincoln called ‘the ideal politician’…In this lucid, exemplary biography, Unger focuses on not just Clay, but also on the formation of the early republic, a time too little studied today. An excellent introduction to a turbulent era.”
“In this nimble portrayal of ‘the first true American leader,’ prolific biographer Unger depicts Clay as a consummate politician and a champion of the union…Unger’s political biography layers a veneer of stability over a tumultuous and divisive time in American history.”
“A competent accounting of Clay’s arc, Unger’s work deserves a slot in the history collection.”
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