Three great historians write compelling, relevent biographies of three of our most important and famous presidents in this collection of Eminent Lives Michael Korda brings his acclaimed storytelling talents to the life of Ulysses S. Grant—a man who managed to end the Civil War on a note of grace, serve two terms as president, write one of the most successful military memoirs in American literature, and is today remembered as a brilliant general but a failed president. Paul Johnson gives us his concise portrait of the great founding American, George Washington, in a brilliant, sharply etched portrait that is full of surprising insights. Washington is seen as one of the most important authors of the Constitution, in addition to his pivotal leadership of the Revolutionary War and a magisterial executive in the formative years of the new United States. Christopher Hitchens delves into the biographical subject of Thomas Jefferson —Thomas Jefferson did not "invent" or "dream" America: he more or less designed and built it. The design and the building both outstripped, and fell short of, the "vision". Hitchens proposes that we dwell within this architecture of the practical and the ideal, and we are not the only ones to notice the compromise.