An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice is one of the most famous and widely read texts in all of modern literature, raising such issues as beauty and decadence, eros and irony, and aesthetics and morality.

In this illustrated collection of New York City lore, excerpts from the works of Truman Capote and A. J. Liebling stand side by side with selections from Washington Irving and Charles Dickens. In all, some 150 writers and artists are represented, including Thomas Wolfe, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Piri Thomas, O. Henry and F. Scott Fitzgerald, although some of the selections are too brief to be fully appreciated. Among the lesser-known material are an excerpt from W. Parker Chase's marvelous New York, The Wonder City, as well as a 19th century complaint about gridlock and an 1839 guide to New York brothels (thinly disguised as A Moral Reform Directory.

In 1826, Thomas Jefferson was laid to rest at Monticello beside his wife and daughters. His epitaph, which he composed, reads, "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."

Among the most influential authors and reformers of his age, Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was born in England but went on to play an important role in both the American and French Revolutions. In 1774, he emigrated to America where, for a time, he helped to edit the Pennsylvania Magazine. On January 10, 1776, he published his pamphlet Common Sense, a persuasive argument for the colonies' political and economic separation from Britain.