Henry Wiencek

Henry Wiencek is a prominent American historian and editor whose work has encompassed historically significant architecture, the Founding Fathers, various topics relating to slavery, and the Lego company. In 1999, The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, a biographical history which chronicles the racially intertwined Hairston clan of the noted Cooleemee Plantation House, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography.

Books in order of publication:

Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship that Built the Gilded Age. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2012.

The Moodys of Galveston and Their Mansion, 2010

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, 2003

The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, 1999

National Geographic Guide to America’s Great Houses, 1999

Virginia & the Capital Region Smithsonian Guides (Smithsonian Guides to Historic America), 1998

Smithsonian Guides to Historic America: Southern New England – Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island (Smithsonian Guides to Historic America), 1998

Old Houses, 1995

Plantations of the Old South (Great American Homes), 1990

The Smithsonian Guide to Historic America – Southern New England (The Smithsonian guide to historic America), 1989

World of Lego Toys, 1987

The Lords of Japan (Treasures of The World), 1982