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Abraham Lincoln drew upon history in his political career and particularly when crafting the rhetorical masterpieces that still resonate in the present day. Jesse Derber explores how Lincoln's views of the limits of human understanding drove a belief in--and untiring pursuit of--historical truth. Lincoln embraced the traditional ideas that good history made good statesmanship and that an understanding of the past informed decision-making in the present. Seeing history as a source of wisdom, Lincoln strove for accuracy through a combination of research, reasoning ability, emotional maturity, and a willingness to admit his mistakes and challenge his biases. His philosophy flowed from an idea that authentic history could enlighten people about human nature. Though he revered precedents, Lincoln understood the past could be imperfect, and that progress through change was an ineffable part of building a better nation. Perceptive and revealing, Abraham Lincoln, Statesman Historian looks at how the Lincoln practiced history and applied its lessons to politics and leadership.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | #1 SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER'The must-read book of the summer'(Megyn Kelly) from New York Times bestseller Maureen Callahan: a'harrowing, incendiary'exposé of the real Kennedy Curse—the family's generations-long legacy of misogyny, murder, and mayhem (Karen Abbott). The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor, and—above all else—integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women and girls, leaving a trail of ruin and death in each generation's wake. Through decades of scandal after scandal—from sexual assaults to reputational slander, suicides to manslaughter—the family and their defenders have kept the Kennedy brand intact. Now, in Ask Not, bestselling author and journalist Maureen Callahan reveals the Kennedys'hidden history of violence and exploitation, laying bare their unrepentant sexism and rampant depravity while also restoring these women and girls to their rightful place at the center of the dynasty's story: from Jacqueline Onassis and Marilyn Monroe to Carolyn Bessette, Martha Moxley, Mary Jo Kopechne, Rosemary Kennedy, and many others whose names aren't nearly as well known but should be. Drawing on years of explosive reportage and written in electric prose, Ask Not is a long-overdue reckoning with this fabled family and a consequential part of American history that is still very much with us. At long last, Callahan redirects the spotlight to the women in the Kennedys'orbit, paying homage to those who freed themselves and giving voice to those who, through no fault of their own, could not.One of Town & Country's Must-Read Books of Summer 2024

A new biography of the 8th president of the United States, the first chief executive not born a British citizen and the first to use the party system to chart his way from tavern-keeper's son to the pinnacle of power. Martin Van Buren was one of the most remarkable politicians not only of his time but in American presidential history. The principal architect of the party system and one of the founders of the Democratic Party, he came to dominate New York-then the most influential state in the Union-and was instrumental in electing Andrew Jackson president. Van Buren's skills as a political strategist were unparalleled (he was known as the'Little Magician'), winning him a series of high-profile offices: US senator, New York's governor, US secretary of state, US vice president, and finally the White House. In his rise to power, Van Buren sought consensus and conciliation, bending to the wishes of slave interests and complicit in the dispossession of America's Indigenous population--two of the darkest chapters in American history. This new biography of Van Buren -- the first full-scale portrait in four decades -- charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.

Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an'unbought and unbossed'firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Chisholm spent her formative years moving between Barbados and Brooklyn, and the development of her political orientation did not follow the standard narratives of the civil rights or feminist establishments. Rather, Chisholm arrived at her Black feminism on her own path, making signature contributions to U.S. politics as an inventor and practitioner of Black feminist power—the vantage point centering Black girls and women in the movement that sought to transform political power into a broadly democratic force.Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building.

Lewis E. Lehrman's biography recounts a purposeful life of accomplishments. He was instrumental early on in building up the family business, Rite Aid. Later he formed a successful investment business, joined Morgan Stanley, and founded a hedge fund. To further his passion for study, he founded the Lehrman Institute and, with Richard Gilder, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, receiving the National Humanities Medal in 2005 for their groundbreaking work in history. Lehrman endowed the Lincoln Prize, partnered with Monticello, and created the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. His significant collection of historical documents and artifacts is housed on the ground floor of the New-York Historical Society. Also a political conservative who worked at the grassroots level to promote ideas and issues, he ran for governor of New York against Mario Cuomo, went on to work with and challenge the Reagan administration, and then formed Citizens for America. Filled with interviews, remembrances, quotes, and photographs of the many influential personalities, partners, and associates Lew has worked with throughout his life, they best testify to his significance. The sometimes unexpected choices Lew has made and delivered on sum up an exemplary life—wide, deep, and well lived. It's his story, told the way he wants it to be recorded.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In this illuminating and “scoop-rich biography…the tell-all tales rush forth” (Los Angeles Times) offering a “penetrating analysis of the ongoing Republican civil war through the eyes of one of its last embattled centrists” (Publishers Weekly).Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump's GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president's supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection. Despite these moments of public courage, Romney has shared very little about what he's witnessed behind the scenes over his three decades in politics—in GOP cloakrooms and caucus lunches, in his private meetings with Donald Trump and his family, in his dealings with John McCain, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema. Now, Romney provides a window to his most private thoughts. Based on dozens of interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals and private emails, this in-depth portrait by award-winning journalist McKay Coppins shows a public servant authentically wrestling with the choices he has made over his career. In lively, revelatory detail, the book traces Romney's early life and rise through the ranks of a fast-transforming Republican Party and exposes how a trail of seemingly small compromises by political leaders has led to a crisis in democracy. “A rare feat in modern-day political reporting” (The New Yorker), Romney: A Reckoning is a redemptive story about a complex politician who summoned his moral courage just as fear and divisiveness were overtaking American life.

2023 Big Other Book Award Nonfiction Finalist Populism has become a global movement associated with nationalism and strong-man politicians, but its root causes remain elusive. Mud, Blood, and Ghosts exposes one deep root in the soil of the American Great Plains. Julie Carr traces her own family's history through archival documents to draw connections between U.S. agrarian populism, spiritualism, and eugenics, helping readers to understand populism's tendency toward racism and exclusion. Carr follows the story of her great-grandfather Omer Madison Kem, three-term Populist representative from Nebraska, avid spiritualist, and committed eugenicist, to explore persistent themes in U.S. history: property, personhood, exclusion, and belonging. While recent books have taken seriously the experiences of poor whites in rural America, they haven't traced the story to its origins. Carr connects Kem's journey with that of America's white establishment and its fury of nativism in the 1920s. Presenting crucial narratives of Indigenous resistance, interracial alliance and betrayal, radical feminism, lifelong hauntings, land policy, debt, shame, grief, and avarice from the Gilded Age through the Progressive Era, Carr asks whether we can embrace the Populists'profound hopes for a just economy while rejecting the barriers they set up around who was considered fully human, fully worthy of this dreamed society.

The clash of religion and politics has been a steady source of polarization in North America. In order to think wisely and constructively about the spiritual dimension of our political life, there is need for an approach that can both maintain the diversity of belief and foster values founded on the principles of religion. In Spiritualizing Politics without Politicizing Religion, James R. Price and Kenneth R. Melchin provide a possible framework, approaching issues in politics via a profile of Sargent Shriver (1915-2011), an American diplomat, politician, and a driving force behind the creation of the Peace Corps. Focusing on the speeches Shriver delivered in the course of his work to advance civil rights and build world peace, Price and Melchin highlight the spiritual component of his efforts to improve institutional structures and solve social problems. They contextualize Shriver's approach by contrasting it with contemporary, landmark decisions of the U.S Supreme Court on the role of religion in politics. In doing so, Spiritualizing Politics without Politicizing Religion explains that navigating the relationship of religion and politics requires attending to both the religious diversity that politics must guard and the religious involvements that politics needs to do its work.

Jesse Jackson has spent much of his life working for social justice and peace. Today he remains a key figure in civil rights affairs. This engaging biography details the origins of his activism, his close ties to fellow civil rights heroes, and his actions in the fight for civil rights. Readers use historical photographs, a timeline, and critical thinking questions to closely examine Jackson's place in the civil rights movement. They'll survey his work following that historical era, and his legacy today, developing a comprehensive view of one of the leading figures in the fight for racial justice.

In Longshot, Andrew Yang's campaign manager takes you on a tour through the ups, the downs, and the math of Yang's 2020 campaign for president, and shares the playbook his team used to navigate the attention economy. Andrew Yang did not win the 2020 Democratic primary, let alone the presidency of the United States. But chances are you know who Andrew Yang is, and you may well be part of the 75 percent of Americans who now support Universal Basic Income—both facts that would have seemed beyond unlikely at the start of Yang's campaign. That campaign was helmed by Zach Graumann: entrepreneur, marketing expert, and, at the time, political nonentity. In fact, when Graumann joined Yang 2020, no one on the team was an expert in campaigning, but they all shared a fervent desire to change the future. Yet, despite that inexperience, by the time Yang dropped out of the race in early 2020, he'd not only outlasted six senators, four governors, and three members of Congress, he'd become one of the most recognizable, popular political figures in the country. Now, for the first time, Graumann tells the story of how Yang went from nobody to national presence, breathing life into the behind-the-scenes antics of the unusual campaign that started a movement. In the process, he demystifies the world of political campaigns and provides takeaways that will help not only the next generation of campaign managers, but anyone who wants to break into a new industry—or stand out in their current one. A book for everyone from members of the Yang Gang who want the inside story to businesspeople looking for self-improvement to anyone who has ever had a dream that felt bigger than they were, Longshot reminds you that sometimes, longshots aren't quite as long as you think.

This'glorious'revelatory biography from a Pulitzer Prize winner is about the most essential Founding Father (Ron Chernow)—the one who stood behind the change in thinking that produced the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a singular moment, Adams amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams's improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation. ONE OF WALL STREET JOURNAL'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF LOS ANGELES TIMES TOP 5 NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2022 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 And named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The New Yorker, TIME, Oprah Daily, USA Today, New York Magazine, Air Mail, Boston Globe, and more!'A glorious book that is as entertaining as it is vitally important.” —Ron Chernow'A beautifully crafted, invaluable biography…Schiff ingeniously connects the past to our present and future, underscoring the lessons of Adams while reclaiming our nation's self-evident truths at a moment when we seemed to have forgotten them.'—Oprah Daily

This definitive, single-volume edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography delivers “a Lincoln whom no other man... could have given us” (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).Celebrated for his vivid depictions of the nineteenth-century American Midwest, Carl Sandburg brings unique insight to the life of Abraham Lincoln in this distinguished biography. He captures both the man who grew up on the Indiana prairie and the president who held the country together through the turbulence and tragedy of the Civil War.Based on a lifetime of research, Sandburg's biographywas originally published as a monumental, six-volume study. The author later distilled the work down to this single-volume edition that is considered by many to be his greatest work of nonfiction.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom political wunderkind and former army intelligence officer Jason Kander comes a haunting, powerful memoir about impossible choices—and how sometimes walking away from the chance of a lifetime can be the greatest decision of all.“A truly special book. This combination of honesty, thoughtfulness, urgency, and vulnerability is not common in leaders, and Jason demonstrates boundless occupancy of all of these traits.” —Wes Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Wes MooreIn 2017, President Obama, in his final Oval Office interview, was asked who gave him hope for the future of the country, and Jason Kander was the first name he mentioned. Suddenly, Jason was a national figure. As observers assumed he was preparing a run for the presidency, Jason announced a bid for mayor of Kansas City instead and was headed for a landslide victory. But after eleven years battling PTSD from his service in Afghanistan, Jason was seized by depression and suicidal thoughts. He dropped out of the mayor's race and out of public life. And finally, he sought help.In this brutally honest second memoir, following his New York Times bestselling debut Outside the Wire, Jason Kander has written the book he himself needed in the most painful moments of his PTSD. In candid, in-the-moment detail, we see him struggle with undiagnosed illness as he considered a presidential bid; witness his family buoy him through challenging treatment; and, giving hope to so many of us, see him heal.

In this New York Times bestselling book, learn the incredible story of Illinois senator and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth and see what inspired her to follow the path that made her who she is today.​ In Every Day Is a Gift, Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing—and amazingly true—stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift, that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns. The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war—all before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii. Through these experiences, she developed a fierce resilience that would prove invaluable in the years to come. Duckworth joined the Army, becoming one of a handful of female helicopter pilots at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She served eight months in Iraq before an insurgent's RPG shot down her helicopter, an attack that took her legs—and nearly took her life. She then spent thirteen months recovering at Walter Reed, learning to walk again on prosthetic legs and planning her return to the cockpit. But Duckworth found a new mission after meeting her state's senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. After winning two terms as a U.S. Representative, she won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. And she and her husband Bryan fulfilled another dream when she gave birth to two daughters, becoming the first sitting senator to give birth. From childhood to motherhood and beyond, Every Day Is a Gift is the remarkable story of one of America's most dedicated public servants.

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life: he was once described as “one of the most dangerous men in Canada.” In 1890, Kingsley was working as a railway brakeman in Montana when an accident left him a double amputee, and politically radicalized. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt trace Kingsley's political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada. They examine Kingsley's endeavours for justice against the Northern Pacific Railway, and how his life intersected with immigration law and free-speech rights. Able to Lead highlights Kingsley's profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A lively and bold blueprint for moving beyond the “era of institutional failure” by transforming our outmoded political and economic systems to be resilient to twenty-first-century problems, from the popular entrepreneur, bestselling author, and political truth-teller “A vitally important book.”—Mark Cuban Despite being written off by the media, Andrew Yang's shoestring 2020 presidential campaign—powered by his proposal for a universal basic income of $1,000 a month for all Americans—jolted the political establishment, growing into a massive, diverse movement. In Forward, Yang reveals that UBI and the threat of job automation are only the beginning, diagnosing how a series of cascading problems within our antiquated systems keeps us stuck in the past—imperiling our democracy at every level. With America's stagnant institutions failing to keep pace with technological change, we grow more polarized as tech platforms supplant our will while feasting on our data. Yang introduces us to the various “priests of the decline” of America, including politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve. The machinery of American democracy is failing, Yang argues, and we need bold new ideas to rewire it for twenty-first-century problems. Inspired by his experience running for office and as an entrepreneur, and by ideas drawn from leading thinkers, Yang offers a series of solutions, including data rights, ranked-choice voting, and fact-based governance empowered by modern technology, writing that “there is no cavalry”—it's up to us. This is a powerful and urgent warning that we must step back from the brink and plot a new way forward for our democracy.

Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H. Earle, III – a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania governor, Ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian, playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue, Farrell's deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with Earle became inconvenient, resulting in Earle's exile to an administrative post in American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States, renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who underestimated the threat as a “bugaboo.” Now, over four decades following Earle's death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know should never have been dismissed.

The first fully illustrated book on Kamala Harris's life and work, a retrospective that celebrates and honors her barrier-breaking achievements.When Kamala Harris became vice president of the United States, she made history as the first woman, first Black person, first South Asian American, and first Caribbean American to hold the office. This stunning book covers Harris's life from her childhood in Berkeley to her Howard College years, charting the many firsts she has carried with her throughout her legal and senatorial careers. It also explores Harris's presidential campaign, her family (her husband, Doug Emhoff, is the first Second Gentleman and the first Jewish vice presidential spouse), the inauguration and her first months in the White House, and includes sidebars giving historical context to Black and female representation in government. Harris's inspiring journey is brought to life with 120 photographs, quotes, highlights from notable speeches, and insightful commentary from Malaika Adero.

Elected in 1960 as the 35th President of the USA, John Fitzgerald Kennedy remains to this day the office's youngest incumbent and he was its first Roman Catholic. His term in office was short, but arguably no US President has inspired more people around the globe than JFK. Even today, for generations born decades after his death, President Kennedy's legacy has an enduring appeal. This insightful book contains specially commissioned pieces by a range of respected academic and political figures, including former Obama speechwriter, Cody Kennan, the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organisation, Kerry Kennedy, and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, Tad Devine. With the presidency of Joe Biden seeing a renewed focus on broader themes within Irish, American and global politics, From Whence I Came is a fascinating and timely collection that offers a fresh perspective on the Kennedy legacy and the politics of Ireland and the United States.

A deep dive into Joe Biden's history and the origins of his political valuesYesterday's Man exposes the forgotten history of Joe Biden, one of the United States's longest-serving politicians, and one of its least scrutinized. Over nearly fifty years in politics, the man called “Middle-Class Joe” served as a key architect of the Democratic Party's rightward turn, ushering in the end of the liberal New Deal order and enabling the political takeover of the radical right. Far from being a liberal stalwart, Biden often outdid even Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush, assisting the right-wing war against the working class, and ultimately paving the way for Trump. The most comprehensive political biography of someone who has tried for decades to be president, Yesterday's Man is an essential read for anyone interested in knowing the real Joe Biden and what he might do in office.

Congressman Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) was a New York City congressman who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1923 to 1973. Celler's almost fifty-year career was highlighted by his long fight to eliminate national origin quotas as a basis for immigration restrictions and his battles for civil rights legislation. In Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion, author Wayne Dawkins introduces new readers to a figure integral to our contemporary political system. Celler's own immigrant background framed his lifelong opposition to immigration restrictions and his corresponding support for reducing barriers for immigrant entry into the United States. After decades of struggle, he proposed and steered through the House the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which eliminated national origins as a consideration for immigration, profoundly shaping modern America. Celler was also a consistent advocate for civil rights. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1973 (except for a break from 1953 to 1955), Celler was involved in drafting and passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. During his career he was also deeply involved in landmark antitrust legislation, the establishment of US ties with the state of Israel, and the Gun Control Act of 1968, and was the author of three constitutional amendments, including the 25th that established presidential succession. Dawkins profiles a complex politician who shaped the central tenets of Democratic Party liberalism for much of the twentieth century and whose work remains central to the nation, and our political debates, today.From author Wayne Dawkins:Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) could be the most significant US legislator of the twentieth century. He cosponsored three Constitutional amendments—the twenty-third (voting rights for District of Columbia residents), the twenty-fourth (poll taxes banned), and the twenty-fifth (clear succession established if the president is removed from office). And, as a longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he reluctantly cosponsored a fourth—the twenty-sixth amendment (18-year-old voting rights).He is also linked to three-hundred laws, notably the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and his masterpiece, the Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act of 1965.Over the past decade, Celler, who served fifty years in Congress, has been a supporting cast member in at least a dozen books about immigration or civil rights. He was frequently cited in One Mighty and Irresistible Tide (2020) and noted in two key moments of The Guarded Gate (2019). And he was cited generously in Goliath (2019), a book about Celler's other passion—antitrust and monopoly busting.But this fall, he will at last be the focus of a full-length biography, Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion. And I believe it will become the go-to book for anyone wanting to know more about this history-making legislator.

The first biography of a man who was at the center of American foreign policy for a generation Few have ever enjoyed the degree of foreign-policy influence and versatility that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. did—in the postwar era, perhaps only George Marshall, Henry Kissinger, and James Baker. Lodge, however, had the distinction of wielding that influence under presidents of both parties. For three decades, he was at the center of American foreign policy, serving as advisor to five presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford, and as ambassador to the United Nations, Vietnam, West Germany, and the Vatican. Lodge's political influence was immense. He was the first person, in 1943, to see Eisenhower as a potential president; he entered Eisenhower in the 1952 New Hampshire primary without the candidate's knowledge, crafted his political positions, and managed his campaign. As UN ambassador in the 1950s, Lodge was effectively a second secretary of state. In the 1960s, he was called twice, by John F. Kennedy and by Lyndon Johnson, to serve in the toughest position in the State Department's portfolio, as ambassador to Vietnam. In the 1970s, he paved the way for permanent American ties with the Holy See. Over his career, beginning with his arrival in the U.S. Senate at age thirty-four in 1937, when there were just seventeen Republican senators, he did more than anyone else to transform the Republican Party from a regional, isolationist party into the nation's dominant force in foreign policy, a position it held from Eisenhower's time until the twenty-first century. In this book, historian Luke A. Nichter gives us a compelling narrative of Lodge's extraordinary and consequential life. Lodge was among the last of the well†‘heeled Eastern Establishment Republicans who put duty over partisanship and saw themselves as the hereditary captains of the American state. Unlike many who reach his position, Lodge took his secrets to the grave—including some that, revealed here for the first time, will force historians to rethink their understanding of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

Now with an all-new bonus chapter—in the bestselling The House of Kennedy, “James Patterson applies his writerly skills to real-life history... re-telling the political clan's rise and fall and rise again (and fall again) with novelistic style” (People). The Kennedys have always been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel, living by the dual family mottos:'To whom much is given, much is expected'and'Win at all costs.'And they do—but at a price. Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have occupied a unique place in the American imagination: charmed, cursed, at once familiar and unknowable. The House of Kennedy is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most storied family, as told by America's most trusted storyteller.

Steve Inskeep tells the riveting story of John and Jessie Frémont, the husband and wife team who in the 1800s were instrumental in the westward expansion of the United States, and thus became America's first great political couple John C. Frémont, one of the United States's leading explorers of the nineteenth century, was relatively unknown in 1842, when he commanded the first of his expeditions to the uncharted West. But in only a few years, he was one of the most acclaimed people of the age – known as a wilderness explorer, bestselling writer, gallant army officer, and latter-day conquistador, who in 1846 began the United States's takeover of California from Mexico. He was not even 40 years old when Americans began naming mountains and towns after him. He had perfect timing, exploring the West just as it captured the nation's attention. But the most important factor in his fame may have been the person who made it all possible: his wife, Jessie Benton Frémont. Jessie, the daughter of a United States senator who was deeply involved in the West, provided her husband with entrée to the highest levels of government and media, and his career reached new heights only a few months after their elopement. During a time when women were allowed to make few choices for themselves, Jessie – who herself aspired to roles in exploration and politics – threw her skill and passion into promoting her husband. She worked to carefully edit and publicize his accounts of his travels, attracted talented young men to his circle, and lashed out at his enemies. She became her husband's political adviser, as well as a power player in her own right. In 1856, the famous couple strategized as John became the first-ever presidential nominee of the newly established Republican Party. With rare detail and in consummate style, Steve Inskeep tells the story of a couple whose joint ambitions and talents intertwined with those of the nascent United States itself. Taking advantage of expanding news media, aided by an increasingly literate public, the two linked their names to the three great national movements of the time—westward settlement, women's rights, and opposition to slavery. Together, John and Jessie Frémont took parts in events that defined the country and gave rise to a new, more global America. Theirs is a surprisingly modern tale of ambition and fame; they lived in a time of social and technological disruption and divisive politics that foreshadowed our own. In Imperfect Union, as Inskeep navigates these deeply transformative years through Jessie and John's own union, he reveals how the Frémonts'adventures amount to nothing less than a tour of the early American soul.

In 1844, the USS'Princeton'was the most technologically sophisticated warship in the world. Its captain, Robert Stockton, and President John Tyler were both zealous expansionists, and they hoped that it would be the forerunner in a formidable steam-powered fleet. On a Potomac cruise intended to impress power brokers, the ship's main gun--the Peacemaker--exploded as the vessel neared Mount Vernon. Eight died horribly, while twenty others were injured. Two of Tyler's most important cabinet members were instantly lost, and the president himself had a near miss--making it the worst physical disaster to befall a presidential administration. The tragedy set off an unpredictable wave of events that cost Tyler a second term, nearly scuttled plans to add Texas to the Union and stirred up sectional rancor that drove the nation closer to civil war. Author Kerry Walters chronicles this little-known disaster that altered the course of the nation's history.

Since mid-2018, when she registered one of the biggest primary election upsets in the nation, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as one of the most influential voices of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.Few politicians have experienced a rise as meteoric as the one that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC, as she is commonly known) has experienced since her June 2018 Democratic primary upset victory over a powerful, longtime incumbent and her subsequent triumph in the November 2018 midterms. This book examines how the telegenic lawmaker—a life-long New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent—engineered that startling victory, why her life story and ideas made her such a focus of national attention, how she has used Twitter and other social media to amplify her calls for economic justice and civil rights equality, and why, since she took office in January 2019, she has come to be regarded as one of the most consequential and influential lawmakers in Congress. It will also help readers understand AOC's most deeply held political convictions, policymaking priorities, and personal principles.

Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden exposes the forgotten history of Joe Biden, one of the United States'longest-serving politicians, and one of its least scrutinized.Over nearly fifty years in politics, the man called'Middle-Class Joe'served as a key architect of the Democratic Party's rightward turn, ushering in the end of the liberal New Deal order and enabling the political takeover of the radical right.Far from being a liberal stalwart, Biden often outdid even Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush, assisting the right-wing war against the working class, and ultimately paving the way for Trump.The most comprehensive political biography of someone who has tried for decades to be president, Yesterday's Man is an essential read for anyone interested in knowing the real Joe Biden and what he might do in office.

What is “democratic socialism?'Educate yourself on Bernie Sanders, the liberal independent from Vermont and the 2016 underdog turned 2020 Democratic favorite. Bernie Sanders shocked the establishment in 2016 with his self-described “political revolution,” mobilizing grassroots fundraising and campaigning to nearly secure the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton (even in the face of Democratic National Convention opposition). The Vermont senator and longest-serving independent in congressional history hopes to do the same with a better result in 2020. Meet the Candidates 2020: Bernie Sanders: A Voter's Guide will help you decide if Sanders's brand of democratic socialism is for you and if he is the right candidate to take on Donald Trump.A vocal critic of Donald Trump, Sanders advocates for sweeping reform: single-payer, universal health care, labor and economic inequality reform, taxes on the wealthy, the Green New Deal, marijuana legalization, free higher education. Sanders has had an undeniable influence on how campaigns are run and has moved the Democratic party to the left, but how will his liberal platforms play in a Democratic primary and against Trump in a general election? After reading Meet the Candidates 2020: Bernie Sanders: A Voter's Guide you'll be able to analyze those chances, explain his positions, and decide if they are what you believe is right for America. The Meet the Candidates 2020 series is the informed voter's guide to making a decision in the 2020 Democratic primary and presidential election. Each book gives an unbiased, political insider's analysis of each contender, featuring: candidate interviews; an introduction by campaign advisor, Democratic Coalition co-founder, and Dworkin Report host Scott Dworkin; and compilation and writing by Occupy Democrats Editor at Large Grant Stern. In two hours of reading, you'll understand their defining characteristics, credentials, campaign issues, challenges, presidential chances, and everything else you need to know to decide who should challenge Donald Trump. Whether it's for Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, or another, Meet the Candidates is what you need to make an informed vote for president in 2020.

A lively portrait of Horace Greeley, one of the nineteenth century's most fascinating public figures.The founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley was the most significant—and polarizing—American journalist of the nineteenth century. To the farmers and tradesmen of the rural North, the Tribune was akin to holy writ. To just about everyone else—Democrats, southerners, and a good many Whig and Republican political allies—Greeley was a shape-shifting menace: an abolitionist fanatic; a disappointing conservative; a terrible liar; a power-hungry megalomaniac.In Horace Greeley, James M. Lundberg revisits this long-misunderstood figure, known mostly for his wild inconsistencies and irrepressible political ambitions. Charting Greeley's rise and eventual fall, Lundberg mines an extensive newspaper archive to place Greeley and his Tribune at the center of the struggle to realize an elusive American national consensus in a tumultuous age. Emerging from the jangling culture and politics of Jacksonian America, Lundberg writes, Greeley sought to define a mode of journalism that could uplift the citizenry and unite the nation. But in the decades before the Civil War, he found slavery and the crisis of American expansion standing in the way of his vision. Speaking for the anti-slavery North and emerging Republican Party, Greeley rose to the height of his powers in the 1850s—but as a voice of sectional conflict, not national unity. By turns a war hawk and peace-seeker, champion of emancipation and sentimental reconciliationist, Greeley never quite had the measure of the world wrought by the Civil War. His 1872 run for president on a platform of reunion and amnesty toward the South made him a laughingstock—albeit one who ultimately laid the groundwork for national reconciliation and the betrayal of the Civil War's emancipatory promise.Lively and engaging, Lundberg reanimates this towering figure for modern readers. Tracing Greeley's twists and turns, this book tells a larger story about print, politics, and the failures of American nationalism in the nineteenth century.

The wild, combative inside story of the most stunning upset in the history of presidential elections—Harry Truman's victory over Tom Dewey: “Outstanding.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune In this lively account, award-winning historian David Pietrusza unpacks the most ingloriously iconic headline in the history of presidential elections—DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN—to reveal the 1948 campaign's backstage events and recount the down-to-the-wire brawl fought against the background of an erupting Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the birth of Israel, and a post-war America facing exploding storms over civil rights and domestic communism. “Coherent, compelling…A skillful, authoritative investigation.”—Kirkus Reviews “A terrific book…a must-read.”—Ron Faucheux, former editor-in-chief, Campaigns & Elections magazine “Brilliantly portrays President Harry Truman's successful efforts to stave off the challenge of New York Gov. Tom Dewey, who was making a repeat bid as the Republican nominee.”—David Mark, author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning “Sweeping…compelling.”—Library Journal “Gripping detail.”—The New York Journal of Books

Julian Castro, 2020 Presidential candidate, keynote speaker at the 2012 DNC, and former San Antonio mayor and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, tells his remarkable and inspiring life story. In the spirit of a young Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father comes a candid and compelling memoir about race and poverty in America. In many ways, there was no reason Julian Castro would have been expected to be a success. Born to unmarried parents in a poverty-stricken neighborhood of a struggling city, his prospects of escaping his circumstance seemed bleak. But he and his twin brother Joaquin had something going for them: their mother. A former political activist, she provided the launch pad for what would become an astonishing ascent. Julian and Joaquin would go on to attend Stanford and Harvard before entering politics at the ripe age of 26. Soon after, Joaquin become a state representative and Julian was elected mayor of San Antonio, a city he helped revitalize and transform into one of the country's leading economies. His success in Texas propelled him onto the national stage, where he was the keynote speaker at the 2012 DNC -- the same spot President Obama held three conventions prior -- and then to Washington D.C. where he served as the Obama Administration's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. After being shortlisted as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton, he became a 2020 Presidential candidate. Julian Castro's story not only affirms the American dream, but also resonates with millions, who in an age of political cynicism and hardening hearts are searching for a new hero. No matter one's politics, this book is the transcendent story of a resilient family and the unlikely journey of an emerging national icon.

Life of Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator From Illinois. With His Most Important Speeches and Reports is a biography of the 1860 Democratic nominee for president. Heraklion Press has included a linked table of contents.

From Fox News'politics editor Chris Stirewalt -- a fun and lively account of America's populist tradition, from Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, to Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Donald Trump. Whatever the ideological fad of the moment, American populism has always been home to a fascinating assortment of charismatic leaders, characters, kooks, cranks, and sometimes charlatans who have - with widely varying degrees of success - led the charge of ordinary folks who have gotten wise to the ways of the swamp. This attitude of skeptical resentment also makes populism a fertile field for the work of conspiracy theorists and other enthusiastic apostates from civic convention. After all, if the people in power are found to be rigging one part of the system, why not the rest? Every Man a King tells the stories of America's populist leaders, from an elderly Andrew Jackson brutally caning his would-be-assassin, to William Jennings Bryan's pre-speech routine that combined equally prodigious quantities of prayer and food, to Ross Perot's military-style campaign that made even volunteers wear badges with stars to show rank. It is a rollicking history of an American attitude that has shaped not only our current moment, but also the long struggle over who gets to define the truths we hold to be self evident.

This collection offers a front seat view of the rise, reign, and fall of powerful modern political families and examines the effects they have had on political, social, and economic issues in American society.Modern American Political Dynasties: A Study of Power, Family, and Political Influence is a unique research resource and fascinating read that explores the dynamics and modern America's most influential political families. It provides a thorough study of approximately 20 of the best-known surnames in 20th-century American politics. More than just a biography, it highlights how these families'dynamics have influenced political practice and thought, providing a holistic context for the evolution of political dynasties in the United States.The text includes a historically grounded examination of the crossroads of family and politics as it charts the origins, development, peak strength, and decline of each family. It is the only published volume to include biographical and contextual information on major political dynasties in addition to fascinating research on high-profile personalities.

In 1912, a group of ambitious young men, including future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and future journalistic giant Walter Lippmann, became disillusioned by the sluggish progress of change in the Taft Administration. The individuals started to band together informally, joined initially by their enthusiasm for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign. They self-mockingly called the 19th Street row house in which they congregated the'House of Truth,'playing off the lively dinner discussions with frequent guest (and neighbor) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. about life's verities. Lippmann and Frankfurter were house-mates, and their frequent guests included not merely Holmes but Louis Brandeis, Herbert Hoover, Herbert Croly - founder of the New Republic - and the sculptor (and sometime Klansman) Gutzon Borglum, later the creator of the Mount Rushmore monument. Weaving together the stories and trajectories of these varied, fascinating, combative, and sometimes contradictory figures, Brad Snyder shows how their thinking about government and policy shifted from a firm belief in progressivism - the belief that the government should protect its workers and regulate monopolies - into what we call liberalism - the belief that government can improve citizens'lives without abridging their civil liberties and, eventually, civil rights. Holmes replaced Roosevelt in their affections and aspirations. His famous dissents from 1919 onward showed how the Due Process clause could protect not just business but equality under the law, revealing how a generally conservative and reactionary Supreme Court might embrace, even initiate, political and social reform. Across the years, from 1912 until the start of the New Deal in 1933, the remarkable group of individuals associated with the House of Truth debated the future of America. They fought over Sacco and Vanzetti's innocence; the dangers of Communism; the role the United States should play the world after World War One; and thought dynamically about things like about minimum wage, child-welfare laws, banking insurance, and Social Security, notions they not only envisioned but worked to enact. American liberalism has no single source, but one was without question a row house in Dupont Circle and the lives that intertwined there at a crucial moment in the country's history.

Before Washington, before Jefferson, before Franklin or John Adams, there was Lee--Richard Henry Lee, the First Founding FatherRichard Henry Lee was first to call for independence, first to call for union, and first to call for a bill of rights to protect Americans against government tyranny. A towering figure in America's Revolutionary War, Lee was as much the'father of our country'as George Washington, for it was Lee who secured the political and diplomatic victories that ensured Washington's military victories. Lee was critical in holding Congress together at a time when many members sought to surrender or flee the approach of British troops. Risking death on the gallows for defying British rule, Lee charged into battle himself to prevent British landings along the Virginia coast--despite losing most of his left hand in an explosion.A stirring, action-packed biography, First Founding Father will startle most Americans with the revelation that many historians have ignored for more than two centuries: Richard Henry Lee, not Thomas Jefferson, was the author of America's original Declaration of Independence.

The story of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., a fortunate son who proved himself on the battlefields of two world wars.General Omar Bradley said of him, “I have never known a braver man or a more devoted soldier.” But for much of his life, Theodore Roosevelt's son Ted seemed born to live in his father's shadow. With the same wide smile, winning charm, and vigorous demeanor, Ted possessed limitless potential, with even the White House within his reach. In the First World War, Ted braved gunfire and gas attacks in France to lead his unit into battle. Yet even after returning home a hero, he was unable to meet the expectations of a public that wanted a man just like his father. A diplomat, writer, and man of great adventure, Ted remained frustrated by his lack of success in the world of politics, witnessing instead the rise of his cousin, Franklin, to the office that had once seemed his for the taking.Then, with World War II looming, Ted reenlisted. In his mid-fifties with a gimpy leg and a heart condition, he was well past his prime, but his insistence to be in the thick of combat proved a vital asset. Paired with the irascible Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr., Ted soon distinguished himself as a front-line general in a campaign that often brought him into conflict with another hard fighter, George Patton. On D-Day, Ted became the oldest soldier and the only general in the Allied forces to storm the beach in the first wave, hobbling across the sand with his cane in one hand and a pistol in the other. His valor and leadership on Utah Beach became the stuff of legends—and earned him the Medal of Honor.His Father's Son delves into the life of a man as courageous, colorful, and unwavering as any of the Roosevelt clan, and offers up a definitive portrait of one of America's greatest military heroes.INCLUDES PHOTOS

'This book is very tough.'- President Donald TrumpThe Bush Crime Family smashes through the layers of lies and secrecy that have surrounded and protected our country's most successful political dynasty for nearly two centuries. New York Times bestselling author Roger Stone lashes out with a blistering indictment, exposing the true history and monumental hypocrisy of the Bushes. In Stone's usual “go for the jugular” style, this is a no-holds-barred history of the Bush family, comprised of smug, entitled autocrats who both use and hide behind their famous name. They got a long-overdue taste of defeat and public humiliation when Jeb's 2016 presidential bid went down in flames.Besides detailing the vast litany of Jeb's misdeeds — including receiving a $4 million taxpayer bailout when his father was vice president as well as his startlingly-close alignment with supposed “enemy” Hillary Clinton — Stone travels back to Bush patriarchs Samuel and Prescott, right on through to presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush to weave an epic story of privilege, greed, corruption, drug profiteering, assassination, and lies. A new preface to this paperback edition features explosive information, including the family's Machiavellian plan to propel Jeb's son George Prescott Bush forward as the family's next political contender.The Bush Crime Family will have readers asking, “Why aren't these people in prison?”

This richly detailed biography of Andrew Jackson Donelson (1799-1871) sheds new light on the political and personal life of this nephew and namesake of Andrew Jackson. A scion of a pioneering Tennessee family, Donelson was a valued assistant and trusted confidant of the man who defined the Age of Jackson. One of those central but background figures of history, Donelson had a knack for being where important events were happening and knew many of the great figures of the age. As his uncle's secretary, he weathered Old Hickory's tumultuous presidency, including the notorious'Petticoat War.'Building his own political career, he served as US chargé d'affaires to the Republic of Texas, where he struggled against an enigmatic President Sam Houston, British and French intrigues, and the threat of war by Mexico, to achieve annexation. As minister to Prussia, Donelson enjoyed a ringside seat to the revolutions of 1848 and the first attempts at German unification. A firm Unionist in the mold of his uncle, Donelson denounced the secessionists at the Nashville Convention of 1850. He attempted as editor of the Washington Union to reunite the Democratic party, and, when he failed, he was nominated as Millard Fillmore's vice-presidential running mate on the Know-Nothing party ticket in 1856. He lived to see the Civil War wreck the Union he loved, devastate his farms, and take the lives of two of his sons.

Reverdy Johnson (1796–1876), Maryland senator, and Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York, were two influential opponents of Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans during the Civil War. But unlike the Copperheads, they staunchly supported the war to suppress the rebellion. The story of these two figures of the loyal opposition by Lincoln Prize–winning author William C. Harris provides a new way of understanding critical controversies relating to the purpose of the Civil War, its conduct, emancipation, white racial opinion, loyalty, military conscription, and civil liberties.Johnson, a distinguished lawyer, former Whig, and conservative Unionist, did not believe that the secessionist states had left the Union, an idea with broad implications for post-war reconstruction. Like Seymour, he opposed Republican efforts in Washington to end slavery, assuming such a policy would backfire against the Union. However, Johnson in 1864 spoke in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. Before the war, Seymour supported Stephen Douglas's popular sovereignty policies, allowing the territories to decide whether or not to permit slavery, and during the war he opposed any tampering with slavery. Two Against Lincoln explores how these two men negotiated issues of emancipation, reconstruction, and reconciliation, all while navigating the roiling currents of partisan politics. The book includes illuminating accounts of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, the ephemeral National Union (Democratic) Party of 1866, the role of Senator Johnson in the approval of the military reconstruction acts of 1867, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and, finally, the presidential election of 1868 in which Seymour as the Democratic candidate did better than expected against war hero U. S. Grant.Building on the author's award winning work on Lincoln and the border states, Two Against Lincoln illustrates the complexity of political divisions in the Union states, as embodied in two powerful, controversial leaders of the time.

This is the 30th anniversary edition of a book that was hailed on publication in 1966 as'fascinating'by Margaret L. Coit in the Saturday Review and as'masterly'by Henry F. Graff in the New York Times Book Review.The Constitution could not be more specific:'No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.'Yet, in over two centuries since these words were written, the American people, despite official disapproval, have chosen a political nobility. For generation after generation they have turned for leadership to certain families. They are America's political dynasties. Now, in the twentieth century, surprisingly, American political life seems to be largely peopled by those who qualify, in Stewart Alsop's phrase, as'People's Dukes.'They are all around us Kennedys, Longs, Tafts, Roosevelts.Here is the panorama of America's political dynasties from colonial days to the present in fascinating profiles of sixteen of the leading families. Some, like the Roosevelts, have shown remarkable staying power. Others are all but forgotten, such as the Washburns, a family in which four sons of a bankrupt shopkeeper were elected to Congress from four different states. America's Political Dynasties investigates the roles of these families in shaping the nation and traces the whole pattern of political inheritance, which has been a little considered but unique and significant feature of American government and diplomacy. And in doing so, it also illuminates the lives and personalities of some two hundred often engaging, usually ambitious, sometimes brilliant, occasionally unscrupulous individuals.

The Constitution states that'no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States,'yet it seems political nobility is as American as apple pie.America was founded in rebellion against nobility and inherited status. Yet from the start, dynastic families have been conspicuous in national politics. The Adamses. The Lodges. The Tafts. The Roosevelts. The Kennedys. And today the Bushes and the Clintons.Longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess offers an encyclopedic tour of the families that have loomed large over America's political history.Starting with John Adams, who served as the young nation's first vice president and earned the nickname'His Rotundity,'Hess paints the portraits of the men and women who, by coincidence, connivance, or sheer sense of duty, have made up America's political elite. There are the well-known dynasties such as the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, and the names that live on only in history books, such as the Bayards (six generations of U.S. senators) and the Breckinridges (a vice president, two senators, and six representatives).Hess fills the pages of America's Political Dynasties with anecdotes and personality-filled stories of the families who have given the United States more than a fair share of its presidents, senators, governors, ambassadors, and cabinet members.This book also tells us the stories of the Bushes and what looks to be a political dynasty in waiting, the Clintons. Emblematic of America's growing diversity, Hess also examines how women, along with ethnic and racial minorities, have joined the ranks of dynastic political families.

A provocative look at the evolution of America's political soul through the lives of six political figures who abandoned the left and joined the right—“thoughtful…engaging…political history at a very high level…and the pages fly by” (The New Republic).From the 1950s to the early 2000s millions of Americans moved left to right politically—a shift that forever changed the country. In Exit Right, Daniel Oppenheimer takes us from the height of the Communist Party's popularity in America in the 1920s and 30s, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and up through conservative resurgence of the 80s, before ending with 9/11 and the dawn of the Iraq War. Throughout, he tells the stories of six major political figures whose lives spanned these turbulent times and whose changing politics reshaped the American soul: Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. As he maps out the paths that these six individuals have taken to conservatism, Oppenheimer explores the questions of why and how we come to believe politically at all. How do we come to trust one set of truths, or one set of candidates, or associate with one crowd of people—over all other alternatives? Exit Right is an “absorbing” (The Atlantic) look at the roots of American politics. This is a book that will resonate with readers on the left and the right—as well as those stuck somewhere in the middle. Through six dramatic transformations of six enthralling characters, Oppenheimer “writes with the assurance and historical command of someone who has been thinking about his topic for a long time” (The New Yorker).

On the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, discover the true story of the man behind the scenes who made peace possible. Peacerunner is the must-read account of how ex-congressman Bruce Morrison rose from crushing defeat to become a crucial figure in the historic Irish Peace Process that ended centuries of warfare. The world celebrated the end of the fighting in Ireland, but just a handful know the full story of former congressman Bruce Morrison and how critical he was in bringing peace—and none can bring it to life better than author Penn Rhodeen. In Peacerunner, Rhodeen takes us on the journey of Morrison, who worked with Irish Americans to help elect Bill Clinton as the best hope for a new American policy on the ancient conflict. He then devised the political strategy that helped Clinton make that policy a reality. Despite having no official position, Morrison traveled tirelessly to meet with anyone—including those seen as terrorists—who could help end the fighting. In Northern Ireland, he showed that the US could be the honest broker for both sides—and blazed the trail on which Clinton and George Mitchell helped political leaders forge the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and a new beginning for a suffering land. This fast-paced and insightful narrative brimming with unforgettable characters—presidents and prime ministers, politicians of every stripe, activists and guerrilla fighters—reaches far beyond Ireland's bloody history to show that no conflict should be seen as too intractable to solve. Peacerunner isn't just for those curious about how peace came to Northern Ireland—it's a story for anyone eager to know how the world can actually get better.

True American heroes need not have superhuman abilities nor do they need to act alone. Heroism in a democracy is different from the heroism of myths and legends, writes Gerald Pomper in this original contribution to the literature of U.S. politics. Through the remarkable stories of eight diverse Americans who acted as heroes by'just doing their jobs'during national crises, he offers a provocative definition of heroism and fresh reasons to respect U.S. institutions and the people who work within them. This new paperback edition includes photographs, an introductory chapter on American heroism after 9/11, a survey of the meanings of heroism in U.S. popular culture, and an original concluding theory of'ordinary'heroism.

Earl Warren and the Strugglefor Justice explores the remarkable life of one of the leading public figures and jurists of twentieth century America. Based on newly available source materials, it traces Warren's progressive vision of government from its origins in the fight against urban corruption in Oakland, California during the 1930s to its culmination in the effort to professionalize public school administration, law enforcement, and the management of the electoral process under the auspices of the U.S. Constitution. Although Warren's major social justice decisions strengthened democracy at a crucial juncture in American and world history, in times of crisis his excessive deference to national security officials sometimes jeopardized other core human rights, as shown in his approaches to the Japanese internment and the investigation into the assassination of President John Kennedy. The book offers accessible and fresh insights into the dynamics of the Supreme Court and the accomplishments of Earl Warren, the man, jurist, and political leader.

A history of religion's role in the American liberal tradition through the eyes of seven transformative thinkersToday we associate liberal thought and politics with secularism. When we argue over whether the nation's founders meant to keep religion out of politics, the godless side is said to be liberal. But the role of religion in American politics has always been far more nuanced and complex than today's debates would suggest and closer to the heart of American intellectual life than is commonly understood. American democracy was intended by its creators to be more than just a political system, and in The Religion of Democracy, historian Amy Kittelstrom shows how religion and democracy have worked together as universal ideals in American culture—and as guides to moral action and the social practice of treating one another as equals who deserve to be free.The first people in the world to call themselves “liberals” were New England Christians in the early republic, for whom being liberal meant being receptive to a range of beliefs and values. The story begins in the mid-eighteenth century, when the first Boston liberals brought the Enlightenment into Reformation Christianity, tying equality and liberty to the human soul at the same moment these root concepts were being tied to democracy. The nineteenth century saw the development of a robust liberal intellectual culture in America, built on open-minded pursuit of truth and acceptance of human diversity. By the twentieth century, what had begun in Boston as a narrow, patrician democracy transformed into a religion of democracy in which the new liberals of modern America believed that where different viewpoints overlap, common truth is revealed. The core American principles of liberty and equality were never free from religion but full of religion.The Religion of Democracy re-creates the liberal conversation from the eighteenth century to the twentieth by tracing the lived connections among seven thinkers through whom they knew, what they read and wrote, where they went, and how they expressed their opinions—from John Adams to William James to Jane Addams; from Boston to Chicago to Berkeley. Sweeping and ambitious, The Religion of Democracy is a lively narrative of quintessentially American ideas as they were forged, debated, and remade across our history.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Founding Brothers tells the unexpected story of America's second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison.Ellis explains of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. These men, with the help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation, manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention, conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia, orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions, and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement, created the new republic. Ellis gives us a dramatic portrait of one of the most crucial and misconstrued periods in American history: the years between the end of the Revolution and the formation of the federal government. The Quartet unmasks a myth, and in its place presents an even more compelling truth—one that lies at the heart of understanding the creation of the United States of America.

The Anti-Federalist Luther Martin of Maryland is known to us—if he is known at all—as the wild man of the Constitutional Convention: a verbose, frequently drunken radical who annoyed the hell out of James Madison, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, and the other giants responsible for the creation of the Constitution in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. In Bill Kauffman's rollicking account of his turbulent life and times, Martin is still something of a fitfully charming reprobate, but he is also a prophetic voice, warning his heedless contemporaries and his amnesiac posterity that the Constitution, whatever its devisers'intentions, would come to be used as a blueprint for centralized government and a militaristic foreign policy.In Martin's view, the Constitution was the tool of a counterrevolution aimed at reducing the states to ciphers and at fortifying a national government whose powers to tax and coerce would be frightening. Martin delivered the most forceful and sustained attack on the Constitution ever levied—a critique that modern readers might find jarringly relevant. And Martin's post-convention career, though clouded by drink and scandal, found him as defense counsel in two of the great trials of the age: the Senate trial of the impeached Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase and the treason trial of his friend Aaron Burr.Kauffman's Luther Martin is a brilliant and passionate polemicist, a stubborn and admirable defender of a decentralized republic who fights for the principles of 1776 all the way to the last ditch and last drop. In remembering this forgotten founder, we remember also the principles that once animated many of the earliest—and many later—American patriots.

Author of the groundbreaking #1 New York Times bestseller This Town and Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, Mark Leibovich returns with a masterly collection of portraits of Washington's elite, and wannabe elites. Hailed by The Washington Post as a “master of the political profile,” Leibovich has spent his career writing memorable, buzz-worthy, and often jaw-dropping features about politicians and other notables. Currently chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, Leibovich punctures the inflated personas of the powerful, and in Citizens of the Green Room, he reveals the lives, stories, and peculiarities behind the public masks. A brilliant reporter with a talent for subversive, engaging storytelling, Leibovich maintains a refreshing conviviality with many of his subjects even as he renders incisive and unflinching assessments. His features have driven the national conversation while exposing the fallibilities of the kingmakers and media stars: consider his 2007 profile of Hillary Clinton, which unearthed a treasure trove of old letters that the then senator had written as a vulnerable young college student; or his much-talked-about 2010 portrait of Glenn Beck, which laid bare the tortured soul and precarious standing of the once invincible host and his uneasy relationship with his soon-to-be ex-employer FOX News. In the political arena, Leibovich's portraits of John Kerry, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and John McCain are already classics; they invariably remind us that great journalism and stylish writing are not only essential to the Republic but necessary to maintain the citizenry's sanity and humor in the face of made-for-TV government.