Aaron Burr, Would-Be American Emperor

If you feel that our contemporary politics are off the rails, you should read David O. Stewart’s vivid account of 19th-century American machinations: in 1805, the sitting vice president of the United States was under indictment for murder while simultaneously presiding over a politically motivated Senate impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, of whom President Thomas Jefferson had grown weary. The cantankerous and overtly partisan judge (sound familiar?) was acquitted in a cakewalk.