No one is more qualified to write a history of this vital period in the rise of the United States than Wood, and Empire of Liberty shows him at his best.

Yet, back in 2005, historian and French Revolution specialist Pierre Serna identified, in La République des girouettes. 1789-1815 et au-delà.

Between 1789 and 1799, Turpin, a Rhode Island native whose family moved to South Carolina before the Revolution, and Thomas Wadsworth, a former state senator, acquired nearly two dozen slaves in ...