State Politics

When Annette Gordon-Reed's groundbreaking study was first published, rumors of Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings had circulated for two centuries. Among all aspects of Jefferson's renowned life, it was perhaps the most hotly contested topic. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings intensified this debate by identifying glaring inconsistencies in many noted scholars' evaluations of the existing evidence. In this study, Gordon-Reed assembles a fascinating and convincing argument that the evidence for the affair has been denied a fair hearing.

Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” was a favorite slogan of Hunter S. Thompson, and it pretty much defined both his work and his life. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone showcases the roller-coaster of a career at the magazine that was his literary home.

Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, is synonymous with the Kennedy family. It is where, for a hundred years, America’s most storied political family has come to celebrate, bond, play, and grieve. It is also the setting of so many events we remember: JFK giving his presidential acceptance speech, Jackie speaking with a Life magazine reporter just days after her husband’s assassination, Senator Edward Kennedy seeking refuge after the Chappaquiddick crash, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger tying the knot—and even Conor Kennedy courting pop star Taylor Swift.

The series weaves together more than 50 first-person interviews with an unprecedented collection of archival sound: a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela's life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his family secretly taped by a prison guard; marching songs of guerilla soldiers; government propaganda films; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress (ANC).

In American Scary, noted cultural historian and Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes the listener to the startling origins of the horror genre in the United States, drawing a surprising through-line between the lingering influence of the European Gothic, the enslaved insurrection tales propagated by slaveholders, and the apocryphal chronicles of colonial settlers kidnapped by Native Americans, among many others.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy throughout his presidency—from the long and grueling campaign to Kennedy's tragic and unexpected assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. In A Thousand Days, Schlesinger combines intimate knowledge as one of President Kennedy's inner circle with sweeping research and historic context to provide a look at one of the most legendary presidential administrations in American history.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9-11 Commission, was created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002. This independent, bipartisan commission had the task of producing a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the attack, including preparedness and immediate response, and providing recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.

What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.

Is the modern administrative state illegitimate? Unconstitutional? Unaccountable? Dangerous? Intolerable? American public law has long been riven by a persistent, serious conflict, a kind of low-grade cold war, over these questions. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the administrative state can be redeemed, as long as public officials are constrained by what they call the morality of administrative law. Law and Leviathan elaborates a number of principles that underlie this moral regime.

Barbara A. Res worked directly with Donald Trump for 18 years on some of his biggest projects and had nearly unlimited access to him. Trump selected Res to be in charge of construction of Trump Tower, his greatest success as a developer. In this insider’s look at how the ambitious real estate developer became the most divisive president in recent US history, Res takes us into closed-door meetings, boardrooms, limo rides, and helicopter flights to really understand what makes him tick and show us why his claim to be a great dealmaker and savvy businessman is just a mirage.

Victor Sebestyen's intimate biography is the first major work in English for nearly two decades on one of the most significant figures of the 20th century. In Russia, to this day, Lenin inspires adulation. Everywhere he continues to fascinate as a man who made history and who created a new kind of state that would later be imitated by nearly half the countries in the world.

Taken from writings, orations, and recorded observations of life, this audiobook selects the best of Native American wisdom and distills it to its essence in short, digestible quotes - perhaps even more timely now than when they were first written. In addition to the short passages, this edition includes the complete "Soul of an Indian", as well as other writings by Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman), one of the great interpreters of American Indian thought, and three great speeches by Chiefs Joseph, Seattle, and Red Jacket.

Despite considerable press coverage and a lengthy trial, the full story of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has remained largely untold. Only one man can reveal the whole, astounding truth: Sam Brower, the private investigator who devoted years of his life to breaking open the secret practices of the FLDS and bringing Warren Jeffs and his inner circle to justice.

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.

You've probably heard clips from Senator Clinton's interview with Barbara Walters. But now you can listen to her full account of her years in the White House. Hillary Clinton vividly describes her pain over her husband's betrayal with Monica Lewinky saying that former President Bill Clinton lied to her about the relationship until the weekend before he admitted the nature of it to a grand jury.

Murray Rothbard was known as the state's greatest living enemy, and this audiobook is his most powerful statement on the topic. He explains what a state is and what it is not. He shows how it is an institution that violates all that we hold as honest and moral, and how it operates under a false cover.

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama, one of the greatest, played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths.

A harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions. After the CPR is built in 1885, Yang Hok, a former coolie, treks along the railway to return his half-Chinese/half-Native son to the boy's mother, where he confronts the conflicts arising from road-building among the Chinese and Native peoples.