“peter charles hoffer”

Three and a half decades before the city of New York witnessed the first great battle waged by the new United States of America for its independence, rumors of a massive conspiracy among the city's slaves spread panic throughout the colony. On the testimony of frightened bondsmen and a handful of wh... More

Aaron Burr was an enigma even in his own day. Founding father and vice president, he engaged in a duel with Alexander Hamilton resulting in a murder indictment that effectively ended his legal career. And when he turned his attention to entrepreneurial activities on the frontier he was suspected of ... More

How did American colonists transform British law into their own? What were the colonies' first legal institutions, and who served in them? Did the special issue of gender play a significant role? Why did early Americans develop a passion for litigation that continues to this day? In Law and People i... More

Over the past half-century, historians have greatly enriched our understanding of America's past, broadening their fields of inquiry from such traditional topics as politics and war to include the agency of class, race, ethnicity, and gender and to focus on the lives of ordinary men and women. We no... More

'The Law's Conscience' is a history of equity in Anglo-American jurisprudence from the inception of the chancellor's court in medieval England to the most recent civil rights and affirmative action decisions of the United States Supreme Court."The Law's Conscience" is a history of equity in Anglo-Am... More

a C]onsistently amusing and edifying throughout. Hoffer] demonstrates an extraordinary mastery of a wide variety of materials. Heas a mature historian at peak form.a --Peter Onuf, author of "The Mind of Thomas Jefferson"aHoffer has a knack for using contemporary situations that will eventually be t... More

At a time when the writing of history has never been more contentious and its interpreters never more publicly at war, a renowned American historian provides an evocative examination of his profession.Woodrow Wilson, a practicing academic historian before he took to politics, defined the importance ... More

Historian Peter Charles Hoffer reexamines a notorious episode in American history and presents many of its legal details in true perspective for the first time. Hoffer also shows how rights we take for granted today did not exist in colonial times, and he demonstrates how these cases relate to curre... More

For more than a year, between January 1692 and May 1693, the men and women of Salem Village lived in heightened fear of witches and their master, the Devil. Hundreds were accused of practicing witchcraft. Many suspects languished in jail for months. Nineteen men and women were hanged; one was presse... More

The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to creation of the new nation. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive, lively narrative brings together the most recent ... More