Winston S. Churchill, Churchill's grandson, lovingly brought together and connected the American material for a Random House hardcover that was very well received, and the book is now available in paperback for a widened history audience.

The book masterfully and economically covers a wide swath of history: Churchill embarks from the discovery of America by Europe in the Age of Discovery; reckons with the rise and growth of the American colonies their increasing division from England; and recreates the personalities and events of the Revolutionary War in stirring fashion. He brilliantly explains the American Constitution and places it in the context of the heritage of British Common Law and the Parliamentary System out of which it emerged. He follows the growing pains of the new nation, including the War of 1812, and then increasing factional strife over westward expansion, industrialization and the slavery question.

Churchill recreates the American Civil War with vivid accounts of battles and still-unsurpassed portraits of the major figures, North and South, in one of the most stirring and profound short histories of theconflict ever written. He follows America through its painful Reconstruction, Westward expansion to the Pacific, and swelling economic might; and finally, he reckons with America's emergence as a preeminent power on the world stage in the days before World War I.