Thomas Fleming Books In Order

Novels

  1. King of the Hill (1966)
  2. The Good Shepherd (1974)
  3. Liberty Tavern (1976)
  4. All Good Men (1976)
  5. Rulers of the City (1980)
  6. One Small Candle (1980)
  7. A Passionate Girl (1980)
  8. Officer’s Wives (1981)
  9. Promises to Keep (1982)
  10. Dreams of Glory (1983)
  11. The Spoils of War (1985)
  12. Time and Tide (1987)
  13. Over There (1992)
  14. Loyalties (1994)
  15. Remember the Morning (1997)
  16. The Wages of Fame (1998)
  17. Hours of Gladness (1999)
  18. When This Cruel War Is Over (2001)
  19. Conquerors of the Sky (2003)
  20. The Louisiana Purchase (2003)
  21. West Point Blue and Grey (2006)

Non fiction

  1. Now We Are Enemies (1960)
  2. Beat the Last Drum (1963)
  3. The Trial of John Brown (1967)
  4. The Man from Monticello (1969)
  5. West Point (1969)
  6. The Man Who Dared the Lightning (1971)
  7. Thomas Jefferson (1971)
  8. The Forgotten Victory (1973)
  9. 1776, Year of Illusions (1975)
  10. First in Their Hearts (1984)
  11. Harry S. Truman, President (1993)
  12. Liberty! (1997)
  13. The New Dealers’ War (2001)
  14. The War Within World War II (2001)
  15. The Illusion of Victory (2003)
  16. Mysteries of My Father (2005)
  17. The First Stroke (2005)
  18. Washington’s Secret War (2005)
  19. The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee (2006)
  20. Everybody’s Revolution (2006)
  21. Ben Franklin (2007)
  22. Way of the Pilgrims (2009)
  23. The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers (2009)
  24. George Washington: Spymaster Extraordinaire (2012)
  25. Truman (2012)
  26. What America Was Really Like In 1776 (2012)
  27. The Battle of New Orleans (2012)
  28. Matthew Ridgway (2013)
  29. A Disease in the Public Mind (2013)
  30. Lincoln’s Reporter (2013)
  31. The Loyalists (2013)
  32. The Flight of The Pearl (2014)
  33. How the British Lost the American Revolution (2014)
  34. Yorktown (2014)
  35. JFK’s War (2014)
  36. Affectionately Yours, George Washington (2014)
  37. Commander Gene Clark (2014)
  38. The Great Divide (2015)
  39. Young Jefferson (2015)
  40. Bunker Hill (2015)
  41. Storms Over the Presidency (2016)
  42. Verdicts of History (2016)
  43. 1776 (2017)
  44. The Stormtroopers (2017)
  45. The Trial of Aaron Burr (2017)
  46. The Enigma of General Howe (2017)
  47. Pershing’s War (2017)
  48. The Strategy of Victory (2017)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Thomas Fleming Books Overview

A Passionate Girl

Beautiful, rebellious Bess Fitzmaurice is mesmerized by Dan McCaffrey, an American of Irish descent who has come to Ireland to aid the Fenian revolt against British tyranny. He appears in her home on May Eve 1865, fleeing British forces. To Bess, Dan is the mythical Donal Ogue, the hero of a famous Irish poem, returned to rescue Ireland but right now, he is an American Civil War veteran on the run. Bess and her brother, Michael, get Dan to a ship, and they flee to America. In 1865, America is a nation ravaged by four years of Civil War. Bess discovers that among the Irish American Fenians money and power and patriotism are entangled in bewildering and demoralizing ways, while Dan McCaffrey surrenders to the corruption of New York City politics. The Fenians’ invasion of Canada and their goal of holding the English colony hostage for a free Ireland become a hot issue in a power struggle between Democrats and Republicans. When the American federal government double crosses the Fenians, forcing thousands of Irish Civil War veterans to abandon the Canadian invasion after winning the first battle, acrimony engulfs the movement, leading to feuds, name calling and murder. In despair, Bess quits the Fenians and finds love in the arms of former Union General Jonathan Stapleton. Their idyll, however, is soon interrupted by Dan McCaffrey, who forces her to choose between him and her new lover. A Passionate Girl is a riveting novel that takes the reader into a forgotten chapter in Irish American history and provides an eye opening look at the devastating impact of America’s Civil War.

Dreams of Glory

As the British scheme to kidnap George Washington and bring the Revolutionary War to an end in one bold stroke, a tide of espionage ebbs and flows between the two opposing armies. It is 1780, and two very different men are sucked into these vicious currents. Tides that pull the men towards the bewitching embrace of Flora Kuyper, the beautiful spy who holds the future of America in her hands. This is a world of plot and counterplot, where a night of passion could lead to an act of treason and a man’s avowed ideals could fashion a noose around his neck.

Over There

During the First World War, Polly Warden, a feminist and former pacifist, acts both as a nurse in a frontline French hospital and an ambulance driver on the British and American fronts, while friends and former lovers fight.Tour.

Remember the Morning

Catalyntie is a Dutch woman living in pre Revolutionary America, struggling to come to terms with the conflicts created by growing up captive in a Seneca Indian village. She shared her captivity with Clara Flowers, an extraordinarily gifted black woman who remains deeply involved in her life. They also share a love for the same man, a brooding giant who, with their help, will slowly discover his American identity.

The Wages of Fame

‘Fleming continues the epic saga of the Stapleton clan in this fiery sequel to Remember the Morning. This riveting narrative, set between 1827 and the onset of the Civil War, recounts the romantic and political exploits of Hugh Stapleton’s grandson, George, and his powerful circle of friends.’ Booklist ‘Fleming’s in depth knowledge of the period and the culture, his ability to separate the myth from the reality, all help you discover the very essence of what it means to be an American.’ Margaret Truman ‘With his powerful and dramatic The Wages of Fame, Thomas Fleming adds a fascinating new volume to his saga of the Stapleton clan and their intimate involvement in the pivotal moments of our nation’s history.’ Charles Bracelen Flood, author of Lee: The Last Years

When This Cruel War Is Over

They called themselves Sons of Liberty a revolutionary conspiracy that intended to form a new confederacy in the American heartland and put an end to the American Civil War. Backed by the South, the Sons launch guerilla attacks against Union troops. The year is 1864, the place Indiana and Kentucky. A time of ruthless censorship, conscription, and a seemingly endless war that has left a half a million Americans dead. Union Major Paul Stapleton falls in love with Janet Todd, courier and evangelist for the Sons of Liberty. Another admirer, Colonel Adam Jameson, readies his Confederate cavalry division to support the Sons’ revolt. The battle for the future of America is about to begin.

Conquerors of the Sky

A novel that crowns Thomas Fleming’s forty year career, Conquerors of the Sky takes readers on a gripping insider’s journey into the lives and loves, the hopes and heartbreaks of the men and women who make America’s planes. When Adrian Van Ness, the enigmatic chairman of Buchanan Aircraft, dies of a heart attack, a struggle for control of the aerospace giant erupts between burly Dick Stone, the tough talking money man from New York, and Californian Cliff Morris, CEO and supersalesman. Sarah Morris, Cliff’s estranged English born wife, knows all the company’s secrets. With her at the controls, Conquerors of the Sky becomes a time trip to the early years of the twentieth century, when flight was seen as spiritual ascent and idealistic Frank Buchanan began designing planes. New York aristocrat Adrian Van Ness is equally fascinated by these new machines as a financial bonanza. In 1930, Adrian’s amoral business genius and Frank’s visions of ever swifter sleeker planes form a precarious alliance. Soon Buchanan Aircraft is competing with Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop for contracts to build airliners and bombers and fighters. As corrupt connections between generals and congressmen and presidents multiply, Frank sees some of his greatest planes scuttled by dirty political deals. He watches Adrian grow rich and powerful preaching the gospel of air power in the century’s wars. When Dick Stone joins Buchanan he sees Adrian as his American father. But he soon shifts his spiritual allegiance to Frank Buchanan. Cliff Morris’s flamboyant style conceals a ruinous moral collapse in the deadly skies over World War II Germany. His fear of discovery is worsened by the sardonic shadow of his stepbrother, Billy McCall, the supreme pilot Cliff will never become. Sarah loves all three men and ultimately has to choose between them, knowing that in the macho world of Buchanan Aircraft, women are objects to be enjoyed or used to sell the latest bomber or airliner. For women like Amanda Van Ness, Adrian’s wife and Frank Buchanan’s lover, this leads to madness. For Sarah it leads to power at a terrible price. Spanning the history of flight from the clumsy fabric planes of 1911 to the whizzing stealth fighters of today, Conquerors of the Sky is a page turning drama of the struggle to mesh aerodynamic visions with the harsh realities of cashflow and profits and with the desires and dreams of the men and women who inhabit this unique world. Told by a master of the historical imagination, it is a must read book that will launch America into the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of flight.

The Louisiana Purchase

From The Louisiana Purchase Like many other major events in world history, The Louisiana Purchase is a fascinating mix of destiny and individual energy and creativity…
. Thomas Jefferson would have been less than human had he not claimed a major share of the credit. In a private letter…
the president, reviving a favorite metaphor, said he ‘very early saw’ Louisiana was a ‘speck’ that could turn into a ‘tornado.’ He added that the public never knew how near ‘this catastrophe was.’ But he decided to calm the hotheads of the west and ‘endure’ Napoleon’s aggression, betting that a war with England would force Bonaparte to sell. This policy ‘saved us from the storm.’ Omitted almost entirely from this account is the melodrama of the purchase, so crowded with ‘what ifs’ that might have changed the outcome and the history of the world. The reports of the Lewis and Clark expedition…
electrified the nation with their descriptions of a region of broad rivers and rich soil, of immense herds of buffalo and other game, of grassy prairies seemingly as illimitable as the ocean…
. From The Louisiana Purchase would come, in future decades, the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and large portions of what is now North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, and Louisiana. For the immediate future, the purchase, by doubling the size of the United States, transformed it from a minor to a major world power. The emboldened Americans soon absorbed West and East Florida and fought mighty England to a bloody stalemate in the War of 1812. Looking westward, the orators of the 1840s who preached the ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the United States to preside from sea to shining sea based their oratorical logic on The Louisiana Purchase. TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time.

West Point Blue and Grey

Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, William Sherman, George McClellan, George Armstrong Custer-these and many other great generals who fought on both sides of the Civil War had one thing in common; they were all graduates of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. This is the fascinating story of friendships formed during cadet life that somehow endured through the bitter conflict that divided the nation. Through failure and triumph, West Point Blue and Gray reveals the skill, daring, and character displayed by the West Point graduates as they waged war against each other. The book continues beyond the last shot fired, and reveals their efforts in rebuilding the country, showing that they were in the vanguard working on reconciliation, and demonstrating that special bond they shared.

1776, Year of Illusions

Provides a close up, illustrated study of a pivotal year in American and world history, as a group of American patriots draws up a Declaration of Independence and a military force, under the leadership of George Washington, embarks on a quest for freedom.

Liberty!

In a remarkable book that surges with the human drama that gave life and substance to America, Thomas Fleming captures the extraordinary events of America’s fight for freedom in all their intensity. A companion volume to the PBS series of the same name, beginning in the fall of 1997. 300 illustrations.

The New Dealers’ War

Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life the flawed and troubled FDR who struggled to manage WWII. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt’s famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR’s inept prewar diplomacy with Japan, and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers, led by FDR, strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. Unlike the familiar yet idealized FDR of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time, the reader encounters a Roosevelt in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds which he could not handle and frequently failed to understand some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe. Among FDR’s most dismaying policies, Fleming argues, were an insistence on ‘unconditional surrender’ for Germany a policy that perhaps prolonged the war by as many as two years, leaving millions more dead and his often uncritical embrace of and acquiescence to Stalin and the Soviets as an ally. For many Americans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is a beloved, heroic, almost mythic figure, if not for the ‘big government’ that was spawned under his New Deal, then certainly for his leadership through the War. The New Dealers’ War paints a very different portrait of this leadership. It is sure to spark debate.

The Illusion of Victory

A best selling historian takes a scathing new look at Woodrow Wilson’s handling and mishandling of World War I, the war that spawned all the catastrophes of the twentieth century. The political history of the American experience in World War I is a story of conflict and bungled intentions that begins in an era dedicated to progressive social reform and ends in the Red Scare and Prohibition. Thomas Fleming tells this story through the complex figure of Woodrow Wilson, the contradictory president who wept after declaring war, devastated because he knew it would destroy the tolerance of the American people, but who then suppressed freedom of speech and used propaganda to excite America into a Hun hating mob. This is tragic history: inexperienced American military leaders drove their troops into gruesome slaughters; progressive politics were put on hold in America; an idealistic president’s dreams were crushed because of his own negligence. Wilson’s inability to convince Congress to ratify U.S. membership in the League of Nations was one of the most poignant failures in the history of the American presidency, but even more heartrending were Wilson’s concessions to his bitter allies in the Treaty of Versailles. In exchange for Allied support of the League of Nations, he allowed an unfair peace treaty to be signed, a treaty that played no small role in the rise of National Socialism and the outbreak of World War II. Thomas Fleming has once again created a masterpiece of narrative American history. This incomparable portrait shows how Wilson sacrificed his noble vision to megalomania and single mindedness, while paying homage to him as a visionary whose honorable spirit continues to influence Western politics.

Mysteries of My Father

A son comes of age in a fiercely political world

‘Thomas Fleming gives us an unforgettable story about an immigrant family his family as it struggles to find a place in the American century. He shares with us the dreams and heartaches of his parents, and, in the end, he reminds us of the mysterious and forgiving power of love.’
Terry Golway, author of The Irish in America

‘A truly moving story of a lifelong duel between father and son, Mysteries of My Father also vibrates with the great good humor that grows out of ward politics, and pulses with the heartfelt drama of a family just getting by. There were some bad times in the Fleming family story, but Tom Fleming prevails to the good times, and the best time is left to the reader. What a wonderful time I had reading this book.’
Dennis Smith, author of the Report from Engine Co. 82 and Report from Ground Zero

‘A well written, fascinating political history.’
Margaret Truman, author of Murder at Union Station

‘With a historian’s fidelity and a poet’s empathy, Tom Fleming has created a textured study of three generations of Irish Americans, whose clashing spiritual values inform their integration into New Jersey’s social and political hierarchy. Mysteries of My Father is an American classic achieved by a master storyteller’s talents for exploring the tensions and bonds between a father and his sons. Among the literary wonders of this brisk and moving memoir is the father’s emergence as a seminal American character brusque and pragmatic, yet capable of expected tenderness to his sons.’
Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie’s Son

‘If you care about what it means to be an Irish American, or about New Jersey political history, or about the relationships between fathers and sons, or about wonderful writing, run don’t walk out to buy Tom Fleming’s Mysteries of My Father.’
Nick Acocella, publisher of Politifax

The First Stroke

CONTENTS Gunfire at Dawn A Struggle to Unite Brinkmanship in Massachusetts March to Lexington The Capture of Concord Challenge at the Bridge The Road to Inevitable Destruction ‘A New and More Terrific Scene’ The Battle of Menotomy An Image of Free Men

Washington’s Secret War

‘Congress does not trust me. I cannot continue thus,’ George Washington confided to Congressman Francis Dana of Massachusetts on his first visit to Valley Forge. Though Congressman Dana assured the general that a majority in Congress still had faith in him, he was nonetheless stunned by Washington’s apparent defeatism. George Washington’s threat to resign during the fateful winter at Valley Forge is just one of the many revelations awaiting the reader in Thomas Fleming’s startling new book. Prize winning author of ‘Liberty The American Revolution’ and ‘1776: Year of Illusions,’ Thomas Fleming has returned to the American Revolution, demolishing long accepted fictions of Valley Forge and cutting through layers of myth to reveal a hitherto unknown side of George Washington. The defining moments of the Revolutionary War did not occur on the battlefield or at the diplomatic table, claims Fleming, but at Valley Forge. Fleming transports his readers to December 1777. While the British army lives in luxury in conquered Philadelphia, Washington’s troops huddle in the barracks of Valley Forge, fending off starvation and disease even as threats of mutiny swirl through the regiments. Though his army stands on the edge of collapse, Washington must wage a secondary war, this one against the slander of his reputation as a general and a patriot. Readers watch as Washington strategizes not only against the British army, but against the ambitions of General Horatio Gates, the victor in the battle of Saratoga. Gates has attracted a coterie of ambitious generals who are devising ways to humiliate and embarrass Washington into resignation. Using diaries and letters, Fleming creates anunforgettable portrait of an embattled Washington. Far from the long suffering stoic of historical myth, Washington responds to attacks from Gates and his allies with the dexterity of a master politician. He parries the thrusts of his covert enemies and, when necessary, strikes back with ferocity and guile. While many histories portray Washington as a man who transcended politics, Fleming’s Washington is an exceedingly complex man, a man whose political maneuvering allowed him to retain his command, even as he simultaneously struggled to prevent the Continental Army from dissolving into mutiny at Valley Forge. Written with his customary flair and eye for human detail and drama, Thomas Fleming’s gripping narrative develops with the authority of a major historian and the skills of a master storyteller. ‘Washington’s Secret War‘ is not only a revisionist view of the American ordeal at Valley Forge it calls for a new as*sessment of the man too often simplified into an unreal American legend. This is narrative history at its best and most vital.

Everybody’s Revolution

The dimensions of the patriot cause during the American Revolution were far more multicultural and multiethnic than we have for so long believed. Women, African Americans, Jews, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, European immigrants, and young adults played leading roles in the struggle for independence from Great Britain. Today it seems students and teachers want to know more about the past than what a few famous white men did. They want to understand how women and men of different cultures and backgrounds contributed to our early history, and to making America what it is today.

Ben Franklin

Perhaps more than even Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, Ben Franklin is the Founding Father who best exemplifies the authentic American spirit and values. Eminent historian Thomas Fleming paints a lively portrait of this self made man blessed with a wealth of talents: a best selling author, the most important newspaper publisher in America, and a world renowned scientist and inventor before he took on the task of becoming the true Father of American independence. Fleming’s remarkable story of how Franklin worked behind the scenes to ensure the success of the American Revolution will inspire readers of all ages.

The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

A compelling, intimate look at the founders George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison and the women who played essential roles in their lives With his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, Tom Fleming examines the women who were at the center of the lives of the founding fathers. From hot tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien Hamilton, the founding fathers’ mothers powerfully shaped their sons’ visions of domestic life. But lovers and wives played more critical roles as friends and often partners in fame. We learn of the youthful Washington’s tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, wife of his close friend; of Franklin’s two ‘wives,’ one in London and one in Philadelphia; of Adams’s long absences, which required a lonely, deeply unhappy Abigail to keep home and family together for years on end; of Hamilton’s adulterous betrayal of his wife and then their reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison was jilted by a flirtatious fifteen year old and went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson’s controversial relationship to Sally Hemings is also examined, with a different vision of where his heart lay. Fleming nimbly takes us through a great deal of early American history, as his founding fathers strove to reconcile the private and public, often beset by a media every bit as gossip seeking and inflammatory as ours today. He offers a powerful look at the challenges women faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While often brilliant and articulate, the wives of the founding fathers all struggled with the distractions and dangers of frequent childbearing and searing anxiety about infant mortality Jefferson’s wife, Martha, died from complications following labor, as did his daughter. All the more remarkable, then, that these women loomed so large in the lives of their husbands and, in some cases, their country.

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