Professor Joanne Freeman is an award-winning historian who studies the politics and culture of America's past to better understand our history as a nation, and the roads and choices that have led us to the present day. Her work -- which spans the founding period through the Civil War -- centers on the doings of politics; political combat and violence; the making (and breaking) of the U.S. Congress; and the thoughts and writings of Alexander Hamilton. She is a professor of History and American