President Memoirs

The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is one of the most frequently described political events of the 20th century, yet the accounts to date have been remarkably unbalanced. Far more attention is given to Kennedy's side than to Nixon's.

Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful - and underappreciated - command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes listeners inside FDR’s White House Oval Study - his personal command center - and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.

Upon assuming the presidency in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower came to be seen by many as a doddering lightweight. Yet behind the bland smile and apparent simplemindedness was a brilliant, intellectual tactician. As Evan Thomas reveals in his provocative examination of Ike's White House years, Eisenhower was a master of calculated duplicity. As with his bridge and poker games he was eventually forced to stop playing, Ike could be patient and ruthless in the con, and generous and expedient in his partnerships.

History called on Harry Truman to unite the Western world against Soviet communism, but first he had to rally Republicans and Democrats behind America’s most dramatic foreign policy shift since George Washington delivered his farewell address. How did one of the least prepared presidents to walk into the Oval Office become one of its most successful?

Donald Trump is unlike any president we've ever had. He is the only person ever elected to be commander in chief who has not first held public office or served as a general in the military. His principles grow out of five decades of business and celebrity success - not politics - so he behaves differently from traditional politicians.

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts", as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....

It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely 30 years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called "the mini-skirted lawyer" by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts - and prevailed.

More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's Reagan stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th president, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. Absorbing and richly detailed, it is a revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and successful run as California governor, and ultimately, his iconic presidency.

An historical exposé of the mysterious doctor who changed the course of the 20th century, with interviews by George Clooney, Yogi Berra, and others. Doctor Max Jacobson, whom the Secret Service under President John F. Kennedy code-named “Dr. Feelgood,” developed a unique “energy formula” that altered the paths of some of the 20th century’s most iconic figures, including President and Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis.

In a narrative that moves from Washington's headquarters on the Hudson River, to the wooded hillside in North Carolina where Nathanael Greene fought Lord Cornwallis to a vicious draw, to Lafayette's brilliant series of maneuvers across Tidewater Virginia, author Nathaniel Philbrick details the epic and suspenseful year through to its triumphant conclusion. A riveting and wide-ranging story, full of dramatic, unexpected turns, In the Hurricane's Eye reveals that the fate of the American Revolution depended, in the end, on Washington and the sea.

As former Prime Minister and our longest-serving Chancellor, Gordon Brown has been a guiding force for Britain and the world over three decades. This is his candid, poignant and deeply relevant story. In describing his upbringing in Scotland as the son of a minister, the near loss of his eyesight as a student and the death of his daughter within days of her birth, he shares the passionately held principles that have shaped and driven him, reminding us that politics can and should be a calling to serve.

A novel and brilliant look at how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership: acclaimed historian Michael J. Gerhardt, who appeared during the impeachment proceedings of President Trump, reveals how a group of five men mentored an obscure lawyer with no executive experience to become American’s greatest leader

The best-selling author of Nancy Reagan and His Way exposes all the secrets of the most powerful political dynasty in American history. From Ohio to Connecticut to Texas and to Washington, D.C., Bush men and women have made millions of dollars, dominated the U.S. government, and created a legacy unlike any other family.

He's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever," "Dead Last," "Unfit," and "Incompetent," to name but a few. Many contemporaries were equally cruel. H. L. Mencken called him a "nitwit." To Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he was a "slob."

Even today, almost five decades after John F. Kennedy was slain, the public continues to be captivated by the "Kennedy Curse" and new theories about what really happened on that fateful day in 1963. For nearly 50 years former Secret Service agent Clint Hill has lived with the unimaginable guilt of losing a president on his watch and has obeyed an honor code of silence, refusing to contribute to any books about the assassination. Until now.

In 1855, with the United States at odds over slavery, the lawyer Abraham Lincoln wrote a note to his best friend, the son of a Kentucky slaveowner. Lincoln rebuked his friend for failing to oppose slavery. But he added: “If for this you and I must differ, differ we must,” and said they would be friends forever. Throughout his life and political career, Lincoln often agreed to disagree. Democracy demanded it, since even an adversary had a vote.

The first elected woman president of an African country, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was also listed as one of the world’s 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes. This evocative memoir recounts Sirleaf ’s childhood upbringing and rise to political power in Liberia. More than a simple biography, Sirleaf ’s account details how she stood firm in the face of physical abuse early in life and carried that strength over into her career as a young economist in Samuel Doe’s regime.

« Le jour où on écrira l’Histoire, on dira que c’est une femme qui a permis à l’État juif de voir le jour » - David Ben Gourion. Née à Kiev en 1898, Golda Meir fuit avec sa famille la terreur des pogroms et trouve refuge aux États-Unis. En 1921, elle émigre en Palestine avec son mari et s’installe dans un kibboutz. Militante infatigable de la cause sioniste, elle signe la déclaration d’indépendance d’Israël le 14 mai 1948. Ministre du Travail, ministre des Affaires étrangères, secrétaire générale du Parti travailliste, elle est nommée Premier ministre en 1969, à l’âge de 71 ans.

Why They Stay explores the reasoning and motivation of wives who stay with their politician-husbands after they cheat. Hillary Clinton couldn't have known in 1998 how her husband's high-profile philandering would play out. Would he be rehabilitated in the public eye? She took the gamble. Had she left the marriage, today she might be the spurned wife of a retired politician instead of the first American woman to run for president on a major party ticket.