Noll endorsement of Patrick Henry bio

So grateful for this endorsement of my Patrick Henry biography:  

“Patrick Henry is well known for crying ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ at a crucial moment in the struggle for American independence.  This well-researched biography shows that there was a great deal more to this strangely neglected founding father.  Thomas Kidd is especially compelling on why Henry’s life-long devotion to liberty could never move him to free his own slaves and why that same devotion led him to OPPPOSE the United States Constitution of 1787.  The book is accessible history at its best.”

—Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and author of America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Endorsement for Patrick Henry bio

Richard Beeman, John Welsh Centennial Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, says of my Patrick Henry bio:


“Thomas Kidd’s account of the life of Patrick Henry combines first-rate scholarship with a lively and elegant gift for story-telling. It makes a powerful case for the Virginia orator’s pre-eminent role in the fight to limit central government power during the era of the Revolution and early republic.”

Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots will be out in November with Basic Books.

Document reader on faith and the Founding

The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America: A History in Documents, co-edited by me and Matthew Harris (Colorado State) will be out in November with Oxford University Press.