George Washington insisted that his portrait be painted with one. Daniel Boone created a legend with one. Abraham Lincoln shot them on the White House lawn. And Teddy Roosevelt had his specially customized.
In this first-of-its-kind book, historian Alexander Rose delivers a colorful, engrossing biography of an American icon: the rifle. Drawing on the words of foot soldiers, inventors, and presidents, based on extensive new research, and spanning from the Revolution to the present day, American Rifle is a balanced, wonderfully entertaining history of the rifle and its...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Turn: Washington's Spies, now an original series on AMC

Based on remarkable new research, acclaimed historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors--including the spymaster at the heart of it all.

In the summer...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil War—and the Union agent resolved to stop him. “Entertaining and deeply researched…with a rich cast of spies, crooks, bent businessmen and drunken sailors…Rose relates the tale with gusto.” -The New York Times In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a Confederate, the other his Union rival—were dispatched to neutral Britain, each entrusted with a vital mission. The South’s James...