From one of our most acclaimed new biographers--the first full life of the leader of Lincoln's "team of rivals" to appear in more than forty years.
William Henry Seward was one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century. Progressive governor of New York and outspoken US senator, he was the odds-on favorite to win the 1860 Republican nomination for president. As secretary of state and Lincoln's closest adviser during the Civil War, Seward not only managed foreign affairs but had a substantial role in military, political, and personnel matters.
Some of Lincoln's critics even saw Seward, erroneously, as the power behind the throne; this is why John Wilkes Booth and his colleagues attempted to kill Seward as well as Lincoln. Seward survived the assassin's attack, continued as secretary of state, and emerged as a staunch supporter of President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's controversial successor. Through his purchase of Alaska ("Seward's Folly"), and his groundwork for the purchase of the Canal Zone and other territory, Seward set America on course to become a world empire.
Seward was not only important, he was fascinating. Most nights this well-known raconteur with unruly hair and untidy clothes would gather diplomats, soldiers, politicians, or actors around his table to enjoy a cigar, a drink, and a good story. Drawing on hundreds of sources not available to or neglected by previous biographers, Walter Stahr's bestselling biography sheds new light on this complex and central figure, as well as on pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath.

John Jay was one of America's greatest Founding Fathers. First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Secretary for Foreign Affairs during the Confederation, President of the Continental Congress, Governor of New York -- the only surprise is that he never became President. A New York lawyer, Jay (1745-1829) negotiated (with Franklin and Adams) the treaty that ended the War of Independence and later, in Jay's Treaty of 1794, the first commercial agreement with Britain. Actively engaged in the Revolutionary War, and a major contributor to the development and ratification of the Constitution, he was a central figure in the early history of the American Republic. A slave owner himself, he was nevertheless an early exponent of the gradual abolition of slavery. John Jay is the first biography for over sixty years of this remarkable man. Drawing on substantial new material, Walter Stahr has written a full and highly readable portrait of both the public and the private man.