James Monroe

This history rows us across the Styx and into a time very like our own. It takes a golden-voiced narrator to bring the shades to life. Thus, narrator Arthur Morey literally holds his breath when James Monroe takes command at Trenton and stops a musket ball. The spurting artery is clamped. The fifth president will carry Hessian lead throughout a life that would be stupendous, even if he hadn't been critical of the purchase of Louisiana and Florida. An abolitionist, Monroe agonized over the country's original sin, but kept his slaves. Morey narrates this superb biography as if it were a thriller, though our fledgling nation has yet to reach the happy shores Americans--at least since Disney--have come to expect. B.H.C. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine