Showing results by author "John Avlon" in All Categories

George Washington's Farewell Address was a prophetic letter from a "parting friend" to his fellow citizens about the forces he feared could destroy our democracy: hyper-partisanship, excessive debt, and foreign wars. Once celebrated as civic scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address is now almost forgotten. Its message remains starkly relevant. In Washington's Farewell, John Avlon offers a stunning portrait of our first president and his battle to save America from self-destruction.

As the tide of the Civil War turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous two-week trip to visit the troops on the front lines accompanied by his young son, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves in the ruins of Richmond, and comforting wounded Union and Confederate soldiers.

Whats a wingnut? A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum professional partisans, unhinged activists, and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Barack Obama campaigned as an antidote to the politics of polarization, promising to transcend the old divides of left and right, black and white, red states and blue. But in the first year of his presidency, he is presiding over an eruption of hate and hyper-partisanship that threatens to mock the promise upon which he was elected.

How the Best Did It is an accessible and insightful explanation of how the most important leadership traits from America's eight greatest presidents can be implemented by today's leaders.