By exposing the sickening conditions people with mental illness endured in jails, almshouses, and basement cells, Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) single-handedly transformed the U.S. system of mental health care in the 19th century. Dix traveled from state to state, describing the hideous suffering people who were both poor and mentally ill endured at the hands of their captors. Her tireless research and personal lobbying of legislators led to construction of asylums for the mentally ill in state after state.
Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives...

In Earl Warren, Christine Compston examines how a man with little judicial experience became one of the greatest Supreme Court chief justices in the history of the United States. A natural leader, Warren rose from a working-class childhood to become governor of California before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. Warren had the courage to make decisions that were politically unpopular yet constitutionally sound and morally right, such as his first major opinion Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools. By examining the life of this extraordinary judge, Earl Warren...

At a time when women were regarded as second-class citizens, Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) led a life of many "firsts." She was the first woman stockbroker, the first woman to speak before Congress, and the first woman to run for President of the United States.
Oxford Portraits are informative and insightful biographies of people whose lives shaped their times and continue to influence ours. Based on the most recent scholarship, they draw heavily on primary sources, including writings by and about their subjects. Each book is illustrated with a wealth of photographs, documents,...

In this new concise biography Thomas Jefferson historian R.B. Bernstein finds the key to this enigmatic Founder not as a great political figure, but as leader of a "revolution of ideas that would make the world over again."
Bernstein examines Jefferson's strengths and weaknesses, his achievements and failures, his triumphs, contradictions, and failings. Thomas Jefferson details his luxurious (and debt-burdened) life as a Virginia gentleman to his passionate belief in democracy, from his tortured defense of slavery to his relationship with Sally Hemings. An architect, inventor, writer,...