A.J. Langguth

With meticulous research and page-turning suspense, Patriots brings to life the American Revolution—the battles, the treacheries, and the dynamic personalities of the men who forged our freedom.George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry—these heroes were men of intellect, passion, and ambition. From the secret meetings of the Sons of Liberty to the final victory at Yorktown and the new Congress, Patriots vividly re-creates one of history's great eras.

Langguth (journalism, U. of Southern California), author of The Men Who Started the American Revolution, provides a narrative of the War of 1812, tracing what led up to it, beginning with the resignation of George Washington from the Continental Army in 1783, to the peace treaty in 1815 and aftereffects up to 1861. He discusses roles played by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Tecumseh, and others, and relates the details of what happened during the war. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A brilliant evocation of the post-Civil War era by the acclaimed author of Patriots and Union 1812 . After Lincoln tells the story of the Reconstruction, which set back black Americans and isolated the South for a century.With Lincoln’s assassination, his “team of rivals,” in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase, was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson, a former slave owner from Tennessee, was challenged by Northern Congressmen, Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, who wanted to punish the defeated South. When Johnson’s policies placated the rebels at the expense of the black freed men, radicals in the House impeached him for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was saved from removal by one vote in the Senate trial, presided over by Salmon Chase. Even William Seward, Lincoln’s closest ally in his cabinet, seemed to waver.By the 1868 election, united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant, Lincoln's winning Union general. The night of his victory, Grant lamented to his wife, “I’m afraid I’m elected.” His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by post-war greed and corruption during his two terms.Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill with protections first proposed in 1872 by the Radical Senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Winner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius J. Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book, the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal for Nonfiction, and the PEN Center West Award for Best Research NonfictionTwenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, historian and journalist A. J. Langguth delivers an authoritative account of the war based on official documents not available earlier and on new reporting from both the American and Vietnamese perspectives. In Our Vietnam, Langguth takes us inside the waffling and deceitful White Houses of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; documents the ineptness and corruption of our South Vietnamese allies; and recounts the bravery of soldiers on both sides of the war. With its broad sweep and keen insights, Our Vietnam brings together the kaleidoscopic events and personalities of the war into one engrossing and unforgettable narrative.

By the acclaimed author of the classic Patriots and Union 1812, this major work of narrative history portrays four of the most turbulent decades in the growth of the American nation.After the War of 1812, President Andrew Jackson and his successors led the country to its manifest destiny across the continent. But that expansion unleashed new regional hostilities that led inexorably to Civil War. The earliest victims were the Cherokees and other tribes of the southeast who had lived and prospered for centuries on land that became Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.Jackson, who had first gained fame as an Indian fighter, decreed that the Cherokees be forcibly removed from their rich cotton fields to make way for an exploding white population. His policy set off angry debates in Congress and protests from such celebrated Northern writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Southern slave owners saw that defense of the Cherokees as linked to a growing abolitionist movement. They understood that the protests would not end with protecting a few Indian tribes.Langguth tells the dramatic story of the desperate fate of the Cherokees as they were driven out of Georgia at bayonet point by U.S. Army forces led by General Winfield Scott. At the center of the story are the American statesmen of the day—Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun—and those Cherokee leaders who tried to save their people—Major Ridge, John Ridge, Elias Boudinot, and John Ross.Driven West presents wrenching firsthand accounts of the forced march across the Mississippi along a path of misery and death that the Cherokees called the Trail of Tears. Survivors reached the distant Oklahoma territory that Jackson had marked out for them, only to find that the bloodiest days of their ordeal still awaited them.In time, the fierce national collision set off by Jackson’s Indian policy would encompass the Mexican War, the bloody frontier wars over the expansion of slavery, the doctrines of nullification and secession, and, finally, the Civil War itself.In his masterly narrative of this saga, Langguth captures the idealism and betrayals of headstrong leaders as they steered a raw and vibrant nation in the rush to its destiny.

Thru civil wars & world conflicts, the Roman Republic had survived 400 years, it stretching from Spain to Syria & beyond. But at the millennium, it seemed about to buckle. An entrenched Senate wouldn't & couldn't respond to the nation's precipitous decline; its leaders, locked in the status quo & fighting for privilege, were talking reform to death. As the Republic careened to the brink of ruin, the battlelines were drawn by three figures, all larger than life: Caesar, the bold, rash general; Cicero, the greatest orator of his time; & Pompey, a brilliantly successful campaigner, were locked in a fierce struggle for Rome's future. The contest began with debate in the Forum but led soon to violent riots, then armed revolt on the battlefield & bloodshed on the Senate steps. In the end, it was Octavian, Caesar's clever nephew & unmerciful political heir, who would claim victory. Rome was poised at the dawn of the Augustan Age. In a rich, scrupulously researched narrative history, Langguth captures this epic drama & brings to life the towering figures of the time. Capitalizing on a wealth of primary materials--from Caesar's war stories to Cicero's most intimate letters--he's gone to the heart of the political intrigues, calculated alliances & mortal rivalries that now seem especially vibrant & contemporary. We see Caesar, the aristocrat who championed the people's causes but was accused of wanting to be king, as he contends with Cicero, a newcomer to Rome with a sharp tongue but also a fatal eagerness to please patricians. Drawn into their struggle were Brutus, Pompey, Cassius, Mark Antony & the eventual victor, Octavian--lobbying causes, brokering deals, leading armies & grabbing at power. A Noise of War goes from Caesar's battlefields in Britannia to Cleopatra's Alexandrian bedroom.

Book by Langguth, A. J.

A reconstruction of the life and milieu of Dan Mitrione, his work as a U.S. police advisor in Brazil and other South American countries, and his kidnapping and murder by Uruguayan guerrillas

"Mr. Langguth has surmounted the problem that confronts any biographer of a writer like Saki. Without appearing to compete with his subject, he writes cleverly enough to hold his own against copious quotation from that witty subject's work." The Atlantic Monthly"Mr. Langguth, the author of Hidden Terrors, Macumba and Jesus Christs, is superb at stitching Saki's witticisms into a history of the fop who failed...(he) writes perfect sentences." The New York Times"A. J. Langguth, a novelist and an ex-New York Times correspondent in Saigon, now offers the first full biography (of Munro.) As biographer-critic, he proves knowing, balanced and blessedly brief." Time Magazine"Both subject and author have an aptitude for exactly the right word, the perfect choice. They are also both fine and perceptive observers of the world around them." The Los Angeles Times"More than once, the biographer approaches his subject's skill at the well-turned phrase." The Times Literary Supplement

Jack Langguth is a novelist and former New York Times reporter who became intrigued with Macumba, and set out on a quest to discover its secrets for himself. Beginning in Rio, where the magic is fairly sophisticated (there is a fair-haired witch of Copacabana, who was possessed at the age of twenty, to the horror of her Swiss parents), Langguth moves to the remote forests of Bahia, where the faith remains closer to its primitive African origins. Here the religion worships the good spirits of ancient gods and Indian chiefs from past centuries while giving full due to the Devil and propitiating evil with blood sacrifices. Since the celebrants court the possession of their bodies by these gods, every ritual ends in hysteria and frenzy. From that state, the spirits can heal a man, make him rich, destroy his enemies, or bring him love. Langguth finally comes to the village of Camamu, where both black and white magic abounds, and finds himself covered in blood as he awaits a spirit of his own. Despite this total immersion in the rituals, Langguth went on asking skeptical questions that allowed him to produce here the first objective book on Macumba in English. It is a completely fascinating approach to a phenomenon that has been left too long unexplored.

Vintage hardcover

LANGGUTH