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. Wiencek has come to be particularly associated with his work on Washington and slavery as a result of his most recent book, An Imperfect God: George... Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, which earned him the Los Angeles Times Book Award for history. Partly as a result of this book, Wiencek was named the first-ever Washington College Patrick Henry Fellow, inaugurating a program designed to provide writing fellowships for nationally prominent historians. In 2003 Wiencek was appointed to the board of trustees for the Library of Virginia. In June, 2010, Texas A&M University Press will release The Moodys of Galveston and Their Mansion, a history of the prominent Galveston family and their celebrated home.
more