Biography & Autobiography - Political

A staunch proponent of breaking down racial and gender barriers, Shirley Chisholm had the esteemed privilege of being a pioneer in many aspects of her life. She was the first African American woman from Brooklyn elected to the New York State legislature and the...

Born to poor tenant farmers in a log cabin in Graves County, Kentucky, Alben Barkley (1877-1956) rose to achieve a national political stature equaled by few of his contemporaries. His memorable public career ranged from the Progressive era to the early years of the...

Do not forget that 'skill and integrity' are the keys to success. This was the last piece of advice on a list Will Thurmond gave his son Strom in 1923. The younger Thurmond would keep the words in mind throughout his long and colorful...

Shortly before Wyoming's Alan K. Simpson was elected majority whip of the United States Senate, he decided to keep a journal. "I am going to make notes when I get home in the evening, as to what happened during each day." Now the senator's...

Shaykh Mithqal al-Fayiz's life spanned a period of dramatic transformation in the Middle East. Born in the 1880s during a time of rapid modernization across the Ottoman Empire, Mithqal led his tribe through World War I, the development and decline of colonial rule and...

The Three Roosevelts is the extraordinary political biography of the intertwining lives of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who emerged from the closed society of New York's Knickerbocker elite to become the most prominent American political family of the twentieth century. As Pulitzer Prize-...

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh to open a new and appalling chapter in the story of the twentieth century. On that day, Pin Yathay was a qualified engineer in the Ministry of Public Works. Successful and highly educated, he...

A brilliant general, remembered most for his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Wellington was also a politician of commanding presence. Elected Prime Minister in 1827, he was an influential adviser to kings and queens, and became deeply involved in all the major scandals of...

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller, now with an explosive new preface. From the reporter who was there at the very beginning comes the revealing inside story of the partnership between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump--the key to understanding the rise of the...

Hardly more than a decade old, the twenty-first century has already been dubbed the Asian Century in recognition of China and India's increasing importance in world affairs. Yet discussions of Asia seem fixated on economic indicators--gross national product, per capita income, share of global...

Bella Abzug's promotion of women's and gay rights, universal childcare, green energy, and more provoked not only fierce opposition from Republicans but a split within her own party. The story of this notorious, galvanizing force in the Democrats' "New Politics" insurgency is a biography...

Arnon Milchan has led a secret double life. The kind of life one would read about in a John Le Carr spy novel or in a movie made by Hollywood colleagues Steven Spielberg or Oliver Stone. This is the story of a secret agent,...

"A multifaceted journey that is geographical, personal and political . . . A complex, nuanced view of United States-Latin American politics and relations of the last forty some years." -- Durham Herald-Sun "One of the most important voices coming out of South America." --...

The Kennedys endure as American icons because of the mix between power and vulnerability that so many of them embodied. Our fascination and connection to them comes most strongly through the wives, whose pain, heartbreak, and grief seemed immensely public and lonely and personal...

The #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers another dramatic look into the lives of the Kennedys--including new details about JFK Jr., his relationship with his mother, his many girlfriends, and the night of his tragic death.Critically acclaimed author Christopher Andersen is a master...

A moving and compulsively readable look into the lives, loves, relationships, and rivalries among the three women at the heart of the British royal family today: Queen Elizabeth II, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and Kate Middleton--from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Good...

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year Distinguished presidential biographer Jean Edward Smith offers a "comprehensive and compelling" (The New York Times) account of the life and presidency of George W. Bush, showing how he ignored his advisors to make key decisions...

In 1768, John Witherspoon, Presbyterian leader of the evangelical Popular party faction in the Scottish Kirk, became the College of New Jersey's sixth president. At Princeton, he mentored constitutional architect James Madison; as a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress, he was the...

In the twentieth century, illiteracy and its elimination were political issues important enough to figure in the fall of governments (as in Brazil in 1964), the building of nations (in newly independent African countries in the 1970s), and the construction of a revolutionary order...

Defined by a tangled web of deception for more than a century, Northwest Indiana's political culture involved secret handshakes, tapped phone calls, backroom deals and murder.Found submerged in his car with a rock on the gas pedal, city official Babe Lopez's execution-style murder rocked...

The full, little-known story of how President Dwight Eisenhower masterminded the downfall of the anti-Communist demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy is "a gripping, detailed account of how the executive branch subtly but decisively defeated one of America's most dangerous demagogues" (The Washington Post). They shook...

Gabrielle Giffords's documentary Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down is now in theaters nationwide! The New York Times bestseller by Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly--an incredibly inspiring story of adventure, public service, love, and overcoming tragedy.The shooting of Gabby...

One of the most influential books of the past fifty years, Team of Rivals is Pulitzer Prize-winning author and esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's modern classic about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, his unlikely presidency, and his cabinet of former political foes....

This first full-length treatment of Russell Kirk's life and accomplishments blends new biographical insights and critical perspectives about the author of the ground-breakingThe Conservative Mind.Author: James E. PersonISBN-10: 1442251859ISBN-13: 9781442251854Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield PublishersLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/15/2015Pages: 284Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.90lbsSize: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.70dReview...

When twenty-five-year-old law student Gregory Levey applied for an internship at the Israeli Consulate, he got more than he'd bargained for. The speechwriter for the Israeli delegation to the United Nations quit, and Levey was asked to fill the vacancy. The situation got even...

Author: Helen WeinlandISBN-10: 1414001827ISBN-13: 9781414001821Publisher: 1st Book LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/23/2003Pages: 284Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.94lbsSize: 9.06h x 6.20w x 0.70d

By the time he died under mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1979 at the age of sixty, David Karr had reinvented himself numerous times. His remarkable American journey encompassed many different worlds--from Communist newspapers to the Office of War Information, from muckraking columnist to...

Based on extensive research as well as on a career working for cultural institutions, historian Thomas E. Ch vez has created a historical novel about the American southwest, specifically in New Mexico and Arizona, a place where Europeans settled in 1598. Here is a...

Hailed as "the definitive biography of Wendell Willkie" (Irwin F. Gellman), The Improbable Wendell Willkie offers an "engrossing and enlightening appraisal" (Ira Katznelson) of a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney presidential candidate who could have saved America's sclerotic political system. Although Willkie lost...

Theodor Herzl had been a successful Viennese journalist and a less successful playwright with no political ambitions. That changed in 1896, when he published The Jewish State. The following year he convened a Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. The Congress founded the Zionist Organization...

A New York Times Editors' Choice "A welcome addition to the vast literature produced by jailed writers across the centuries . . . [a] thrilling testament to the human spirit."--Ariel Dorfman, The New York Times Book Review "Wrestling with the Devil is a powerful...

William Magear Tweed, America's most corrupt politician ever, ruled New York City in the 1860s and 1870s. He rigged the votes, bribed the legislature, and stole on a massive scale. But even in prison, people still loved and admired him. Tweed's is a stunning...

This book brings us to the very core of the debates about nations and nationalism. It presents a microhistory of Ivan Franko (1856-1916), a prolific writer and political activist, who was an indisputable leader in forging a modern Ukrainian identity in the late Habsburg...

From his humble beginnings in Sumter, South Carolina, to his prominence on the Washington, D.C., political scene as the third highest-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, U.S. Congressman James E. Clyburn has led an extraordinary life. In Blessed Experiences, Clyburn tells in his...

Tim Davenport and David Walters have extracted the essential core of Debs's life work, illustrating his intellectual journey from conservative editor of the magazine of a racially segregated railway brotherhood to his role as the public face and outstanding voice of social revolution in...

A biography of Leon Trotsky by two of his close friends and collaboratorsAuthor: Victor Serge, Natalia Ivanovna SedovaISBN-10: 1608464695ISBN-13: 9781608464692Publisher: Haymarket BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 01/05/2016Pages: 336Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.10lbsSize: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d

The definitive partisan biography of Rosa Luxemburg, as only a contemporary and comrade could know her.Author: Paul FrichISBN-10: 1608460746ISBN-13: 9781608460748Publisher: Haymarket BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/16/2010Pages: 340Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.90lbsSize: 8.30h x 5.40w x 0.90dReview Citation(s): Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2011 pg. 156

By the end of 1934 Melvin Purvis was, besides President Roosevelt, the most famous man in America. Just thirty-one years old, he presided over the neophyte FBI's remarkable sweep of the great Public Enemies of the American Depression -- John Dillinger; Pretty Boy Floyd;...

Fernando Henrique Cardoso received a phone call in the middle of the night asking him to be the new Finance Minister of Brazil. As he put the phone down and stared into the darkness of his hotel room, he feared he'd been handed a...

"Most Americans first heard of Michael Harrington with the publication of The Other America, his seminal book on American poverty. Isserman expertly tracks Harrington's beginnings in the Catholic Worke"Author: Maurice IssermanISBN-10: 1586480367ISBN-13: 9781586480363Publisher: PublicAffairsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/08/2001Pages: 464Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.50lbsSize: 9.00h x 5.90w x 1.40dReview...

The rise and successes, the travails, and the eventual demise of the German Democratic Republic told in personal detail by activist and writer Victor Grossman The circumstances that impelled Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe, to flee a military prison sentence...

Winner of South Africa's top literary prize, the Alan Paton Award, The UnlikelySecret Agent tells the thrilling true story of one woman's struggle against theapartheid system. It is 1963. South Africa is in crisis and the white state isunder siege. One August 19th, the...

Flying Close to the Sun is the stunning memoir of a white middle-class girl from Connecticut who became a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most notorious groups of the 1960s. Cathy Wilkerson, who famously escaped the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, here...

Leander Perez 1891-1969) was more than simply another Neanderthal segregationist. He was a political boss who held absolute power in Plaquemines Parish to an extent unsurpassed by any parish leader in Louisiana's history. Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta is his full history.A bit...

A political biography of the first African American hero of the Civil WarA native of Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls was born into slavery but--through acts of remarkable courage and determination--became the first African American hero of the Civil War and one of the...

The first biography of Missy Meloney, the most important woman you've never heard of Marie "Missy" Mattingly Meloney was born in 1878, in an America where women couldn't vote. Yet she recognized the power that women held as consumers and family decision-makers, and persuaded...

In this prequel to the bestselling Murder in Samarkand, Craig Murray describes how he discovered the dark heart at the centre of Tony Blair's shiny New Labour administration shortly after its beginning, when Murray was the key witness in the Arms to Africa Affair...

The former first daughters share intimate stories and reflections from the Texas countryside to the storied halls of the White House and beyond. Born into a political dynasty, Jenna and Barbara Bush grew up in the public eye. As small children, they watched their...

An inspiring and eye-opening memoir showing how Democrats can reconnect with rural and red-state voters, from Montana's three-term democratic senatorSenator Jon Tester is a rare voice in Congress. He is the only United States senator who manages a full-time job outside of the Senate--as...

John of Gaunt was an English prince in the 14th century whose political skills and astute negotiating strengthened the monarchy of his nephew, King Richard II.A talented and able negotiator and statesman, John of Gaunt's actions were pivotal amid the politically fractious climate of...