Political History Biography

President George W. Bush leads our nation in a time of unprecedented peril. But how well do we really know him or his remarkable family, whose history often mirrors the history of America? Now, in the first full-scale biography of the Bushes, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer trace the extraordinary trajectory of their rise to power. Through a series of exclusive, surprisingly candid interviews with members of the family and close friends, the inner workings of this very private family are revealed.

Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the "muckraking" press, Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that gave power away to the Democrats.

They were the political odd couple - the two most powerful men in the country, a pair who "couldn't be more different or more the same." For six years, Matthews was on the inside, watching the evolving relationship between President Reagan and Speaker of the House O’Neill. Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice.

Here's the third volume in Dumas Malone's distinguished study of Thomas Jefferson and his time. It deals with one of the most fascinating and controversial periods of Jefferson's life, including the final and most crucial phase of his tenure as secretary of state; his retirement to Monticello; his assumption of the leadership of the opposition party; and the crisis during the "half-war" with France, when political oppression was threatened and the freedom of individuals imperiled.

Fifty years after John F. Kennedy's assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek, whom The New York Times calls "Kennedy's leading biographer", delivers a riveting new portrait of this president and his inner circle of advisors, their rivalries, personality clashes, and political battles. In Camelot's Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy's administration - including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam - were indelible.

Dr Kalam, who was India's 11th president and has been a scientist and a teacher, has written more than 20 books. Ranging from inspirational and spiritual thoughts, to autobiographical reflections, to his vision statements for a developed India, these works bear the imprint of a mind that is deeply reflective. For the first time, some of the most thoughtful, inspiring and educative of these writings have been compiled in one place in The Righteous Life.

Having found fame and success as a model, Christine's short affair with the minister for war, John Profumo, led to his downfall at the end of Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, and was at the heart of the social and political earthquake that followed. She became the subject of scandal, intrigue and gossip and was tried for perjury and briefly jailed following the death of Stephen Ward, the socialite who had introduced her to Profumo.

Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice". Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen? In The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past 70 years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy.

"No more dramatic courtroom scene has ever been enacted," reported the Syracuse Herald on May 22, 1915, as it covered "the greatest libel suit in history", a battle fought between former President Theodore Roosevelt and the leader of the Republican party. Roosevelt, the boisterous and mostly beloved legendary American hero, had accused his former friend and ally, now turned rival, William Barnes of political corruption. The furious Barnes responded by suing Roosevelt for an enormous sum that could have financially devastated him.

On August 8, 1993, a single bullet to the head killed Freddie Woodruff, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Within hours, police had a suspect - a vodka-soaked village bumpkin named Anzor Sharmaidze. A tidy explanation quickly followed: It was a tragic accident. US diplomats hailed Georgia’s swift work. Yet the bullet that killed Woodruff was never found, and key witnesses have since retracted their testimony, saying they were beaten and forced to identify Sharmaidze. But if he didn’t do it, who did?

In June 2017, an earthquake shook the very foundations of British politics. With Labour widely predicted to suffer a crushing defeat in the general election, Jeremy Corbyn instead achieved a stunning upset - a hung parliament, the humiliation of Theresa May's government, and more than 40 percent of the vote. A lifelong and uncompromising socialist, Corbyn had, against all expectations, been dramatically elected leader of the party in September 2015. How these events came about is the subject of Alex Nunns' highly listenable and richly researched account.

On 6 February 1918, after campaigning for over 50 years, British women were finally granted the vote. In November 1919, the first woman MP, Lady Nancy Astor, was elected to the House of Commons. History was made. A hundred years on, it is time to reflect on the daring and painful struggle women undertook to break into a political system that excluded them.

The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a US president faced such opportunities and challenges. As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this hard-to-pause history, behind closed doors, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly.

Cody Wilson, a self-described crypto-anarchist and rogue thinker, combines the controversial yet thrilling story of the production of the first ever 3D printable gun with a startling philosophical manifesto that gets to the heart of the 21st-century debate over the freedom of information and ideas.

In this highly anticipated follow-up to his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The Amateur, former New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Edward Klein delves into the rocky relationship between the Obamas and the Clintons. An old-school reporter with incredible insider contacts, Klein reveals just how deep the rivalry between the Obamas and the Clintons runs, with details on closed-door meetings buttressed by hundreds of interviews.

This is the remarkable story of the final public and private years of the 37th president, based on full reconstructions of the conversations he had with Monica Crowley, his foreign-policy assistant and personal confidante.

A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives. The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become personal.

As a general, Ulysses S. Grant is routinely described in glowing terms: the man who turned the tide of the Civil War, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox; the man who had the stomach to see the war through to final victory. But his presidency is another matter. The most common word used to characterize it is "scandal."

Freedom’s Detective reveals the untold story of the Reconstruction-era US Secret Service and their battle against the Ku Klux Klan, through the career of its controversial chief, Hiram C. Whitle.

Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful and fiercely opinionated, and Ali, shy and tender, had fallen in love. Defying their families, sectarian differences, cultural conventions, and Afghan civil and Islamic law, they ran away together only to live under constant threat from Zakia's large and vengeful family, who have vowed to kill her to restore the family's honor.