Political Biographies

William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States. Learn about his childhood, education, and work as president.

Can you name a real spy from history? Meet Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were communist spies for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Learn about their work on the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb for the US, and their eventual trial for espionage. Do you think these historical spies were guilty for sharing secrets with the Soviets?

Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin as part of American history. As one of the founding fathers, he is a fundamental part of our history—but he was once a kid, just like you! Learn what he was like as a child and how his childhood included hard work, listening to others, writing and reading—all helped him become one of the most influential men we learn about in school.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James MacGregor Burns devoted his legendary career to the study of leadership in all its aspects - from politics to business. Leadership, Burns' pioneering study, introduces the highly influential theory of "transformational leadership", stating that the best leaders are those who inspire others to come together toward the achievement of higher aims.

Guy Burgess is the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - the group of British men recruited to pass intelligence to the Soviets during World War Two and the Cold War. Burgess' story takes us from his student days in 1930s Cambridge, where he was first approached by Soviet scouts, through his daring infiltration of the BBC and the British government to his final escape to Russia and lonely, tragic-comic exile there.

Just in time for the kickoff of the 2012 presidential campaign, Joe McGinniss, the author of the classic account of the packaging of a presidential candidate, The Selling of the President; of the acclaimed search for the essence of Alaska, Going to Extremes; and of the best-selling study of the dark family secrets of an American patriarch, Fatal Vision; presents his already controversial investigative chronicle of Sarah Palin as an individual, politician, and cultural phenomenon.

The fascinating, improbable true story of Maxwell Knight - the great MI5 spymaster and inspiration for the James Bond character M. Maxwell Knight was perhaps the greatest spymaster in history. He did more than anyone in his era to combat the rising threat of fascism in Britain during World War II, in spite of his own history inside this movement. He was also truly eccentric - a thrice-married jazz aficionado who kept a menagerie of exotic pets - and almost totally unqualified for espionage. Yet he had a gift for turning practically anyone into a fearless secret agent.

Robert Rubin, former secretary of the Treasury and co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, shares thoughts on decision-making developed over more than six decades in markets, business, government, and politics, and offers listeners an astute and original guide for navigating uncertain times.

There is growing evidence that Trump has spent decades cultivating ties to corrupt Russians and the post-Soviet state. In Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, Seth Hettena chronicles the many years Trump has spent wooing Russian money and power. From the collapse of his casino empire - which left Trump desperate for cash - and his first contacts with Russian deal makers and financiers, on up to the White House, Hettena reveals the myriad of shady people, convoluted dealings, and strange events that suggest how indebted to Russia our 45th president might be.

Justice Gorsuch draws on his 30-year career as a lawyer, teacher, judge, and justice to explore essential aspects our Constitution, its separation of powers, and the liberties it is designed to protect. He discusses the role of the judge in our constitutional order, and why he believes that originalism and textualism are the surest guides to interpreting our nation’s founding documents and protecting our freedoms. He explains, too, the importance of affordable access to the courts in realizing the promise of equal justice under law.

Before Pearl Harbor, before the Nazi invasion of Poland, America teetered between the desire for isolation and the threat of world war. May 1938. Franklin Delano Roosevelt - recently reelected to a second term as president - sat in the Oval Office and contemplated two possibilities: the rule of fascism overseas, and a third term.

Sprawling and illuminating, Dan Gretton’s I You We Them is an unprecedented study of perpetrators of crimes against humanity: the “desk killers” who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the last century. From Albert Speer’s Nazi complicity to Royal Dutch Shell’s role in the murder of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, Gretton probes the depths of the figure “who, by giving orders, uses paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun.”

After standing at Donald Trump’s side on Election Night, Cliff Sims joined him in the West Wing as special assistant to the president and director of White House message strategy. He soon found himself pulled into the president’s inner circle as a confidante, an errand boy, an advisor, a punching bag, and a friend. This is the story of what it was really like in the West Wing as a member of the president’s team. It's a story of power and palace intrigue, backstabbing and bold victories, as well as painful moral compromises, occasionally with yourself.

The instant New York Times best-selling memoir from the outspoken former governor - an "explosive" (Guardian) "must read" (Hugh Hewitt) account of Chris Christie's life in politics including his "not to miss" (Entertainment Weekly) insights into Donald Trump. In Let Me Finish, Christie sets the record straight about his tenure as a corruption-fighting prosecutor and a Republican running a Democratic state, as well as what really happened on the 2016 campaign trail and inside Trump Tower.

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end.

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature - human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life.

New York Times best-selling author and legendary political insider Roger Stone lashes out with a blistering indictment that exposes the true history and monumental hypocrisy of the Bushes. In his usual "go for the jugular" style, Stone collaborates with Saint John Hunt - author, musician, and son of legendary CIA operative E. Howard Hunt - to make this a "no-holds-barred" history of the Bush family.

With The Fighting Soul, Ari Rabin-Havt takes us where no profiles or televised interview have been able to go. As a close advisor and deputy campaign manager on Bernie Sanders's most recent—and likely last—presidential campaign, the tireless Rabin-Havt spent more hours between 2017 and 2020 with the Vermont senator than anyone else. Traveling the country for rallies and to support striking workers, the two visited thirty-six states, drove tens of thousands of miles, and ate in countless chain restaurants.

In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows how the experience of the Weimar Republic’s collapse and the rise of Nazism informed Hans Speier’s work as an American policymaker and institution builder. Bessner delves into Speier’s intellectual development, illuminating the ideological origins of the expert-centered approach to foreign policymaking and revealing the European roots of Cold War liberalism.

On the morning of January 31, 2009, Roxana Saberi, a brilliant and fearless Iranian American journalist working in Iran, was dragged from her home by four men and secretly arrested. The intelligence agents who captured her accused her of espionage---a charge she denied. For 11 days, Saberi was cut off from the outside world, forbidden even a phone call. For weeks, neither her family, friends, nor colleagues had any knowledge of her whereabouts.