American Political Biography

Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.

Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: Her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives.

What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to US citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections.

In the year leading up to the Iowa caucuses, few thought a freshman senator named Barack Hussein Obama would be able to win the Democratic nomination - not to mention become the most popular leader in the world. But something was stirring. Hundreds of young people from all over the country began assembling first in Iowa. These "kids" became the foundation of one of the most improbable presidential campaigns of the modern era. Chris Liddell-Westefeld was one of those kids. He and thousands of other staff and volunteers dedicated their time, intelligence, and resources to help elect Barack Obama.

In 31 Days, Barry Werth takes listeners inside the White House during the tumultuous days following Nixon's resignation and the swearing-in of America's "accidental president", Gerald Ford. The congressional hearings, Nixon's increasing paranoia, and, finally, the devastating revelations of the White House tapes had torn the country apart. Within the White House and the Republican Party, Nixon's resignation produced new fissures and battle lines and new opportunities for political advancement.

You may know W. Kamau Bell from his new Emmy-nominated hit show on CNN, United Shades of America. Or maybe you've read about him in The New York Times, which called him "the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years." Or maybe from The New Yorker fawning over his brand of humor writing: "Bell's gimmick is intersectional progressivism: he treats racial, gay, and women's issues as inseparable."

When Patsy Mink won her seat the House of Representatives as a Democrat from Hawaii, she became the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. A co-author of the Title XI amendment of the Higher Education Act, she was a champion of rights for women, children, immigrants, and minorities throughout her twenty-four years in Congress. She helped paved the way for many other women to succeed.

After five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, naval aviator John McCain returned home a changed man. Regaining his health and flight-eligibility status, he resumed his military career, commanding carrier pilots and serving as the navy’s liaison to what is sometimes ironically called the world’s most exclusive club, the United States Senate. Accompanying Senators John Tower and Henry “Scoop” Jackson on international trips, McCain began his political education in the company of two masters, leaders whose standards he would strive to maintain upon his election to the U.S. Congress.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce listeners to some of those who’ve worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls, which is what Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore call themselves - are always focused on the larger goal of “hurrying history” so that every American - regardless of race, gender or religious background - can have a seat at the table. This audiobook tells their story.

At the end of the summer of 1859, 22-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than 3,000 cases - including more than 25 murder trials - during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him.

Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.

In his classic book Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently.

Inspired by Malcolm X, Russell Shoatz became a lifelong crusader for justice, a soldier in the most militant units of the Black Liberation Army. Shoatz was convicted to life in prison following a coordinated attack on a park police station that left one guard dead.The prison walls, however, could not deter Shoatz’s battle for personal and collective freedom. He escaped state prisons twice, making him a living legend, and endowed him with the moniker “Maroon,” once used to honor runaway slaves from plantations.

Political writer and official RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany spent months traveling throughout the United States conducting interviews with Americans whose powerful and moving stories were forgotten or intentionally ignored by our leaders. They discussed their deeply personal stories and the issues that are most important to them, such as illegal immigration. The New American Revolution chronicles both the losses of these grassroots voters as well as their ultimate victory in November 2016.

In November 2008, Hillary Clinton agreed to work for her former rival. As President Barack Obama's secretary of state, she set out to repair America's image around the world - and her own. For the following four years, BBC foreign correspondent Kim Ghattas had unparalleled access to Clinton and her entourage, and she weaves a fast-paced, gripping account of life on the road with Clinton in The Secretary.

Mazie Hirono is one of the most fiercely outspoken Democrats in Congress, but her journey to the U.S. Senate was far from likely. Raised on a rice farm in rural Japan, she was seven years old when her mother, Laura, left her abusive husband and sailed with her two elder children to Hawaii, crossing the Pacific in steerage in search of a better life. Though the girl then known as "Keiko" did not speak or read English when she entered first grade, she would go on to serve as a state representative and as Hawaii's lieutenant governor before winning election to Congress in 2006.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the national best seller Ghost Wars, Steve Coll presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, revealing new information to show how American influences changed the family and how one member's rebellion changed America.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of - Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world.

Since the death of Osama Bin Laden, interest in counterterrorism is at an all-time high. Most people don’t know that Bin Laden’s death is the culmination of years of covert operations and tactics largely overseen by Jose Rodriguez and built on by his successors. Rodriguez’s sometimes controversial tenure as Chief of the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center involved CIA officers capturing and detaining key senior Al Qaeda operatives and implementing Enhanced Interrogation Techniques....

You would have to live under a rock not to know who Alan Greenspan is. But that's probably about as much as you know. Leave it to investigative reporter Bob Woodward to uncover the story of Greenspan and the power he wields as head of the Federal Reserve.