History is about people. It's impossible to study or write history without considering the lives of people. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in studying the history of America, where diversity has encouraged so much individualism. Great social, economic, intellectual and political forces took shape in the minds of individual Americans. The stories of their lives record their personal actions, their failures and triumphs. All of these forces and ideas are bound up in the fortress of memory called history and are brought to life in biographies.

Biography enables the reader to approach the great mass of ideas, actions and struggles that historians have too often rendered impenetrable. We need some path or bridge to approach history and biographies provide that approach.

Writing about great men and women prompts us to discuss leadership, charisma, the relationships between leadership and power, between leaders and the people. But the lives of the not-so-great can also show us how people in everyday life react to the same events and problems. They provide case studies into the periods in which people lived.

Each biography puts us into another time and place, showing us how remarkable people faced their problems and, through their memories, provide us with touchstones between their times and ours.