Henry William Brands Jr. was born in Portland, Oregon on August 7, 1953 and is an American historian. He grew up in the Portland metropolitan area.
He went to Jesuit High School, where he was a National Merit Scholar and a three-sport athlete. He enrolled at Stanford University and studied history and mathematics, getting an undergrad degree in history in the year 1975.
Books in order of publication:
Non-Fiction Books
| Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and the Making of American Foreign Policy | (1988) | |
| India and the United States: The Cold Peace | (1990) | |
| The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947-1960 | (1990) | |
| Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire 1918 – 1961 | (1991) | |
| Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines | (1992) | |
| The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War | (1993) | |
| Into The Labyrinth: The U.S. And The Middle East 1945-1993 | (1993) | |
| The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s | (1995) | |
| The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power | (1995) | |
| Since Vietnam: The United States in World Affairs, 1973-1995 | (1995) | |
| T.R.: The Last Romantic | (1997) | |
| What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy | (1998) | |
| The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam | (1999) | |
| Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey | (1999) | |
| The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin | (2000) | |
| The Strange Death of American Liberalism | (2001) | |
| The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt | (2001) | |
| The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream | (2002) | |
| Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence – And Changed America | (2003) | |
| Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times | (2005) | |
| The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years’ War Over the American Dollar | (2006) | |
| American Stories: A History of the United States (With: ) | (2008) | |
| Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | (2008) | |
| American Stories: A History of the United States, Volume 2 (With: ) | (2008) | |
| American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 | (2009) | |
| American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900 | (2010) | |
| Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It | (2011) | |
| The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age | (2011) | |
| America Since 1945 [with MySearchLab & eText Access Code] | (2011) | |
| The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr | (2012) | |
| Theodore Roosevelt and His Sagamore Hill Home: Historic Resource Study Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (With: ) | (2012) | |
| The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace | (2012) | |
| Revel for American Stories: A History of the United States, Combined — Access Card | (2014) | |
| Reagan: The Life | (2015) | |
| The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War | (2016) | |
| Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West | (2019) | |
| Haiku History: The American Saga Three Lines at a Time | (2020) | |
| The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom | (2020) | |
| Gus M. Hodges: An Oral History Interview | (2021) | |
| Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution | (2021) |
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