President Memoirs

1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In Revolution, Emmanuel Macron, the youngest president in the history of France, reveals his personal story and his inspirations and discusses his vision of France and its future in a new world that is undergoing a "great transformation" that has not been experienced since the invention of the printing press and the Renaissance. This is a remarkable book that seeks to lay the foundations for a new society - a compelling testimony and statement of values by an important political leader who has become the flag-bearer for a new kind of politics.

In 1940, against the explosive backdrop of the Nazi onslaught in Europe, two farsighted candidates for the U.S. presidency - Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, running for an unprecedented third term, and talented Republican businessman Wendell Willkie-found themselves on the defensive against American isolationists and their charismatic spokesman Charles Lindbergh, who called for surrender to Hitler's demands.

While there have been many biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower that focus on his military career or the time of his presidency, none clearly explores the important role faith played both in his personal life and in his public policy. This despite the fact that he is the only US president to be baptized as a Christian while in office. Alan Sears and Craig Osten invite you on a journey that is unique in American history and is essential to understanding one of the most consequential, admired, and complex Americans of the 20th century.

Harry Truman and Pablo Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers of the great events of the twentieth century—the man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians. But in most ways, they couldn’t have been more different. Picasso was a communist, and probably the only thing Truman hated more than communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer, and a millionaire. Truman was utterly devoted to his family. How did they come to be shaking hands in front of Picasso’s studio in the south of France?

When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas---what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado---belonged to Mexico.

As editor of the award-winning Library of America collection of George Washington's writings and a curator of the great man's original papers, John Rhodehamel has established himself as an authority of our nation's preeminent founding father. Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status.

The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career - 1958 to 1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin’s bullet to reach its mark.

In 1895, two young men destined to make their mark on American life, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, discovered they shared a common interest in the remarkable way ordinary Americans demonstrated the real character of the young nation. They were convinced that the brilliance of American liberty could best be found in the lives of everyday people, rather than in accounts of the famous and powerful.

Angela Merkel has always been an outsider. A pastor’s daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, she spent her twenties working as a research chemist, entering politics only after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And yet within fifteen years, she had become chancellor of Germany and, before long, the unofficial leader of the West. In this “masterpiece of discernment and insight” (The New York Times Book Review), acclaimed biographer Kati Marton sets out to pierce the mystery of Merkel’s unlikely ascent.

Robert A. Caro's life of Lyndon Johnson continues - one of the richest, most intensive, and most revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American President. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer/historian carries Johnson through his service in World War II and the foundation of his long-concealed fortune and the facts behind the myths he created about it. But the explosive heart of the book is Caro's revelation of the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election.

The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker—an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious.

Richard Nixon opens with young navy lieutenant "Nick" Nixon returning from the Pacific and setting his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon's finer attributes quickly gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. It is a stunning overture to John A. Farrell's magisterial portrait of a man who embodied postwar American cynicism.

How did a once faceless bureaucrat, a man whose own wife said he was born under the sign of the vampire, become the idealized face of Russian manhood and its authoritarian leader? Deputy Mayor Putin examines the man behind the myth. We will explore how Putin’s formative years shaped and drove him and how the supporting cast of characters he gathered along the way helped him get to the Kremlin’s inner sanctum.

The American president has come to be the most powerful figure in the world. And back in the 19th century, a great man held that office. William Lee Miller's new book closely examines that great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president.

In Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s New York Times bestselling autobiography, the prime minister of Israel tells the story of his family, his path to leadership, and his unceasing commitment to defending his country and securing its future. Through a host of vivid anecdotes, he narrates his own evolution from soldier to statesman, while providing a unique perspective on leadership, the fraught geopolitics of the Middle East, and his successful efforts to liberate Israel’s economy, which helped turn it into a global powerhouse of technological innovation.

The Missing JFK Assassination Film is not the typical JFK assassination book. This book does not attempt to answer the question of who killed John F. Kennedy; instead it addresses why we should question the actions of those involved and why the truth was withheld from the people. Though copies of Orville Nix's film exist, the original film is missing. Why? The FBI confiscated Orville's camera for several months, then returned it in pieces. Were these actions sinister, or were they just examples of governmental incompetence?

In this riveting, informative, and entertaining book, Stelzer draws on previously untapped material, diaries of guests, and a wide variety of other sources to tell of some of the key dinners at which Churchill presided before, during, and after World War II.

In Mandela, former foreign correspondent Bob Crew demystifies the icon and his legacy. After over a decade of travels in South Africa, Crew seeks truth in the unexpected details of the lives of Mandela and current South African president Jacob Zuma, comparing them to other world icons in order to bring a new understanding of their legacies to Western listeners.

Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America's approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations. Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is a must-listen for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.