Local attorney and author David O. Stewart appears at Washington DC’s Politics and Prose on Tuesday. The venerable Connecticut Avenue institution hosts Stewart on the day that he launches American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America.
Here’s an abbreviated version of the book’s synopsis:
In this vivid and brilliant biography, David Stewart describes Aaron Burr, the third vice president, as a daring and perhaps deluded figure who shook the nation's foundations in its earliest, most vulnerable decades… Stewart's vivid account of Burr's tumultuous life offers a rare and eye-opening description of the brand-new nation struggling to define itself.
American Emperor is the third book for Stewart, who, in his other life is a trial lawyer with over 25 years’ experience. When asked whether he is a lawyer who writes or a writer who happens to be a lawyer, Stewart says, “I think I’m on the path from the first (a lawyer who writes) to the second (a writer who happens to be a lawyer).”
Like American Emperor, Stewart’s other books – The Summer of 1787 and Impeached – examine what Stewart calls “incredibly difficult problems” in historical settings. Each of his books also contains a legal component. American Emperor, however, “is more a character study and adventure tale,” Stewart explains. “[It] really turns on a single character, Burr. Luckily, he was brilliant, mysterious, charismatic, and a bit of a bad boy.”
Though Stewart insists that he, a chronicler of history, is loath to proclaim its lessons, he does concede that “if you study enough history, you find many interpretations of the same events or personalities. It’s not algebra. There are few incontestably correct answers.”
Stewart’s Politics and Prose event begins at 7:00 PM. Nashville is the next stop on Stewart’s tour, which winds up in May of 2012.
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