Political Biographies

History remembers Robert F. Kennedy as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight of a bygone era of American politics. But Kennedy's enshrinement in the liberal pantheon was actually the final stage of a journey that had its beginnings in the conservative 1950s. In Bobby Kennedy, Larry Tye peels away layers of myth and misconception to paint a complete portrait of this singularly fascinating figure.

Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years in the U.S. Senate. At the heart of the book is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works in America, how the Senate works, and how Johnson, in his ascent to the presidency, mastered the Senate as no political leader before him had ever done. "There is something uniquely mesmerizing about the wily, combative Lyndon Johnson as portrayed by Caro," says Publishers Weekly.

As Barack Obama's presidential failures keep adding up, remembering them all can be a challenge. Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan have compiled everything you need to know about the presidency of Barack Obama (so far) into one book. Now you can easily find all the information that was ignored by the media and that Barack Obama would like you to forget.

The strength and prestige of the American presidency has waxed and waned since George Washington. Accidental Presidents looks at eight men who came to the office without being elected to it. It demonstrates how the character of the man in that powerful seat affects the nation and world.

From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number one best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.

As President Clinton's senior adviser, George Stephanopoulos saw it all: the endless arguments, the back-hall scheming, the protracted decisions, and the last minute flip-flops that somehow produced real accomplishments but also set in motion an almost tragic series of events that placed the fate of the president in the hands of the Senate. Now, with the natural ease of a born storyteller and the sensitive eye for detail of a novelist, Stephanopoulos tells his extraordinarily gripping story.

Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.

In the winter of 1967-68, Robert F. Kennedy, then a US Senator from New York, ventured deep into the heart of Appalachia. As acting chairman of a Senate subcommittee on poverty, RFK went to eastern Kentucky to gauge the progress of the War on Poverty. He was deeply disillusioned by what he found. Kennedy learned that job training programs were useless, welfare programs proved insufficient, and jobs were scarce and getting scarcer. Before he'd even left the state, Kennedy had determined the War on Poverty was a failure - and he blamed Lyndon Johnson.

As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president.

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East in 2011 were unlike any the world had ever seen. Brutal regimes that had been in power for many decades were suddenly swarmed by unstoppable mobs of freedom seekers. Now, one of the key figures behind the Egyptian uprising tells the riveting inside story of what happened and presents lessons for all of us on how to unleash the power of crowds. Wael Ghonim was a little-known 30-year-old Google executive in the fall of 2010 when he anonymously launched a Facebook page to protest the death of an Egyptian man at the hands of security forces....

In a time when Washington, DC and the country are more polarized than they have been for decades, John McCain is the rare public figure who has earned the respect of people on both sides of the aisle. He is a model for bipartisanship and political integrity. In his 40 years in politics, McCain has never been afraid to buck trends or ruffle a few feathers. His words are more important today than ever.

In Mr. Trump’s campaign against what he calls “Fake News”, CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, is public enemy number one. From the moment Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, he has attacked the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people”. Acosta presents a damning examination of bureaucratic dysfunction, deception, and the unprecedented threat the rhetoric Mr. Trump is directing has on our democracy. When the leader of the free world incites hate and violence, Acosta doesn’t back down, and he urges his fellow citizens to do the same.

When they first met at Harvard in 1946, young Kenny O’Donnell and Bobby Kennedy could not have imagined where their lives would take them. The friendship they built saw them through some of the most pivotal moments of the twentieth century - including Robert Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general and O’Donnell’s time spent as John F. Kennedy’s chief of staff - and only ended with RFK’s tragic death.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of All the President’s Men - the chronicle of the investigative report about the Watergate break-in and resultant political scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation - recalls his formative years as a teenage newspaper reporter in JFK’s Washington - a tale of adventures, scrapes, clever escapes, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he's collected more than one thousand tweets - a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take listeners through the different dimensions of Trump's infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby?

Frank Figliuzzi was the "Keeper of the Code," appointed the FBI’s Chief Inspector by then-Director Robert Mueller. Charged with overseeing sensitive internal inquiries, shooting reviews, and performance audits, he ensured each employee met the Bureau's exacting standards of performance, integrity, and conduct. Now, drawing on his distinguished career, Figliuzzi reveals how the Bureau achieves its extraordinary standard of excellence—from the training of new recruits in "The FBI Way" to the Bureau's rigorous maintenance of its standards up and down the organization.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Romanov Sisters, Caught in the Revolution is Helen Rappaport's masterful telling of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution through eyewitness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold.

Gopalganj to Raisina is the journey of India’s most colourful political leader. As the leader of a political party, as the chief minister of Bihar and as union minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav is known for his unique charisma, his popularity among the masses and his signature rustic wit and flair. This audiobook tells the story of his political journey.

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. In this masterful history, Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis. Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes.

This is the story of the most dangerous triple-agent in US history. Peter Lance, author of the highly acclaimed 1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up, returns to uncover the story of Ali Mohamed, a trusted security advisor of Osama bin Laden who hoodwinked the United States for more than a decade. As Lance reveals for this first time, this one man served in a series of high-security position within the United States security establishment, as a Special Forces advisor, FBI informant, and CIA operative.