Wiencek, Henry

Henry Wiencek (born 1952) is an American journalist, 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 George Washington and slavery as a result of his 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 released The Moodys of Galveston and Their Mansion, a history of the prominent Galveston family and their celebrated home. Wiencek originally compiled the manuscript after the Moody Mansion opened to the public as a museum, education center, and location for community gatherings in 1991.