Biography & Autobiography - Political

Available in paperback for the first time, these three volumes represent the definitive biography of Andrew Jackson. Volume One covers the role Jackson played in America's territorial expansion, bringing to life a complex character who has often been seen simply as a rough-hewn country...

Members of the Yale College class of 1964--the first class to matriculate in the 1960s--were poised to take up the positions of leadership that typically followed an Ivy League education. Their mission gained special urgency from the inspiration of John F. Kennedy's presidency and...

"A scrupulous biography."―Publishers Weekly "A fresh, incisive, and uplifting biography."―Kirkus Bill Mullen celebrates the personal and political life of the great American writer who refused to shy away from controversary and hate and created some of the most important literary work of his time,...

To The Washington Post, he's "The Last Political Showman of the 20th Century." Bill Clinton has called him "the real Slick Willie." Ronald Reagan's secretary of state George Shultz called this famously liberal politician "a man of his word" and endorsed his successful candidacy...

A former Deputy Director of the CIA provides a behind-the-scenes look at the American intelligence community, the Reagan administration's secret war against the Sandinistas, the covert operations he conceived, and the battle against world terrorism.Author: Duane R. ClarridgeISBN-10: 0743245369ISBN-13: 9780743245364Publisher: Scribner Book CompanyLanguage: EnglishPublished:...

Hailed as an honest, candid political memoir in a genre more often characterized by slick, self-serving campaign biographies, this book captures Barbara Lee's extraordinary life and political career from her early upbringing in El Paso, Texas, through her years in Oakland, California, with the...

A major new account of one of the leading philosopher-statesmen of the eighteenth century Edmund Burke (1730-97) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the...

President Kennedy is the compelling, dramatic history of JFK's thousand days in office. It illuminates the presidential center of power by providing an indepth look at the day-by-day decisions and dilemmas of the thirty-fifth president as he faced everything from the threat of nuclear...

Olfat Mahmoud's confronting autobiography asks when the world will deliver on its promise and allow her people to return home to Palestine.Olfat Mahmoud is a stateless Palestinian refugee. Born in a refugeecamp in Lebanon, she is a descendant of the Christian and Muslim people...

Winston and Clementine Churchill wrote to each other constantly throughout the fifty-seven years of their life together, from the passionate and charming exchanges of their courtship until the year before Winston's death in 1965. Their letters provide rare and revealing insights into both the...

This vivid account of the life and times of Paul Revere was first published in 1942 to great acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize. An elegant storyteller and expert historian, Edith Forbes paints a memorable portrait of American colonial history and of this most legendary...

Building Home is an innovative biography that weaves together three engrossing stories. It is one part corporate and industrial history, using the evolution of mortgage finance as a way to understand larger dynamics in the nation's political economy. It is another part urban history,...

"Penetrating, detailed, and very readable. . . . A splendid biography." -- Wall Street Journal Few figures in American history have held as many roles in public life as John Quincy Adams. The son of John Adams, he was a brilliant ambassador and secretary...

In this stunning book, the first comprehensive biography of Marx since the end of the Cold War, Francis Wheen gives us not a socialist ogre but a fascinating, ultimately humane man, while still examining the criticisms of his detractors. A study in contradictions, Karl...

The founders of the American republic were ardently concerned with the judgment of posterity. Had they known what a fickle muse Clio would prove to be, they might have been more anxious. The making of myths and legends, complete with a hagiology and demonology,...

Hero, adulterer, bon vivant, murderer and rogue, Dan Sickles led the kind of existence that was indeed stranger than fiction. Throughout his life he exhibited the kind of exuberant charm and lack of scruple that wins friends, seduces women, and gets people killed. In...

In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H.A.R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence,...

A remarkable work of oral history and] a fond, provocative testament to a remarkable life.* A fabulous read about a breed of politician now largely extinct . . . Levine and Thom have crafted a history that brings to life one of the great...

The Crusader tells the fascinating life story of Pat Buchanan, the three-time presidential candidate, Nixon confidant, White House communications director during Iran-Contra, pundit, and bestselling author. Buchanan is one of America's most controversial conservative rebels. After serving Nixon and Reagan, he led a revolt...

Winner of the Books for a Better Life/Suze Orman First Book Award May 1986: Seven-year-old Francis Bok was selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan when Arab raiders on horseback burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and gathering...

Known as the other Washington monument, Alice Roosevelt Longworth knew personally every president from Benjamin Harrison to Jimmy Carter, and for over 70 years reigned as Washington's grandest grande dame. Here is both the delightful and the dark sides of her life.Author: Carol FelsenthalISBN-10:...

Married to Benito Mussolini's favourite daughter Edda, young Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903-44) became il Duce's confidant, emissary, and heir apparent in the years preceding the Second World War. Appointed foreign minister in 1936, Ciano played a central role in the Axis partnership negotiations with...

Winner of the Forest History Society's 2006 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book AwardAs a central figure in the American wilderness preservation movement in the mid-twentieth century, Howard Zahniser (1906-1964) was the person most responsible for the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964. While the rugged outdoorsmen...

9/11 almost instantaneously remade American politics and foreign policy. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, water boarding and Guantanamo are examples of its profound and far-reaching effects. But despite its monumental impact--and a deluge of books about al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism--no...

Franklin's writings span a long and distinguished career of literary, scientific, and political inquiry--the work of a man whose life lasted for nearly all of the 18th century, and whose achievements ranged from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanac to signing...

"Spence draws upon his extensive knowledge of Chinese politics and culture to create an illuminating picture of Mao. . . . Superb." (Chicago Tribune) From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a vast country...

In this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, offers an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and learned a great...

"The most comprehensive, the most thoroughly researched and documented, the most scholarly of the biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr." --Henry Steele Commanger, Philadelphia InquirerWinner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award * A New York Times Notable Book of the YearBy the...

In nineteenth-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the railroads, Pulitzer ushered in the modern mass media. James McGrath Morris chronicles the epic story of Joseph Pulitzer, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who amassed great wealth...

As a young speechwriter in the Reagan White House, Peter Robinson was responsible for the celebrated "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. He was also one of a core group of writers who became informal experts on Reagan -- watching his every move,...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! From Obama's former communications director and current co-host of Pod Save America comes a colorful account of how politics, the media, and the Internet changed during the Obama presidency and how Democrats can fight back in the Trump era....

A critical analysis of one of the most media-savvy authoritarian rulers of our time, this collection of essays offers an overview of Duterte's rise to power and actions of his early presidency. With contributions from leading experts on the society and history of the...

The classic New York Times bestselling memoir by legendary Executive Editor of The Washington Post Ben Bradlee--with a new foreword by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and an afterword by Sally Quinn.The most important, glamorous, and famous newspaperman of modern times traces his path...

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after...

Building on the backdrop of his involvement in three important civil-rights cases, author A. Dwight Pettit narrates his personal story from the 1940s to the present in Under Color of Law. A successful civil-rights, constitutional, and criminal lawyer, Pettit focuses on the meaning of...

A top US diplomat's compelling memoir of her years in Cuba and the tumultuous relationship between the two countries: "Unparalleled insight." --Culture TripAfter the US embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with...

Born into a life of privilege, George W. Bush lived in the shadow of his father's political career until finally joining the race himself. In a Presidency riddled by controversy from the start, George W. Bush's reign was full of terrorist attacks and crashing...

In this "inspiring memoir about the real power of courage and hope" (Kirkus Reviews), lifelong activist Shirley Sherrod explains why she was fired from the USDA under false charges and how she stood up against the politics of fear. Sherrod was a lifelong activist...

The comprehensive New York Times bestselling biography of Senator Ted Kennedy dives deeply into his political career, his shocking downfall, and his redemption from disappointing member of a grand dynasty to respected sage in the Senate. No figure in American public life had such...

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...

Emma Goldman is one of the most celebrated activists and philosophers of the early 20th century, admired and reviled for her anarchist ideas and vociferous support of free speech and personal liberation. A polarizing figure in life, Emma Goldman was among the first advocates...

In The Double Life of Fidel Castro, one of Castro's soldiers of seventeen years breaks his silence and shares his memoirs of his years of service, his eventual imprisonment and torture for displeasing the notorious dictator, and his dramatic escape from Cuba. Responsible for...

Hailed as a virtuosic one-woman show (Time Out New York) this New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice pick tells the funny and poignant story of the year the author ran away from college with her idealistic boyfriend and followed him to Nicaragua to...

The intimate world of Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli comes to life in this first complete collection in English of the letters he wrote and received. Spanning his adult life from 1497 until his death in 1527, these letters to and from his friends and compatriots--some of...

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after...

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after...

During his long life, the British Fascist leader Oswald Mosley knew just about everybody worth knowing. Politicians like Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Lloyd George. Leading society hostesses such as Lady Cunard, Mrs Randolph Hearst and Nancy Astor. He also knew Beaverbook, Northcliffe...

"Suffragette" is now on release as a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst. . Illustrated with sixteen photographs. . Introduction contextualizing Mrs Pankhurst and the path to women's suffrage. . Suggestions for further reading. . Timeline of events. . Annotations: 100...

For over 50 years one family dominated England's high offices of state. William and Robert Cecil, father and son, held unparalleled power as statesmen, diplomats, counsellors and spymasters throughout Elizabeth's reign and long beyond. From Privy Councillor to Chief Secretary of State and Lord...

LOUIS BOTHA, THE FIRST PRIME MINISTER of the Union of South Africa, was a brilliant Boer general who won significant victories over the British in the early stages of the Anglo-Boer War. When the weight of the British arms eventually overwhelmed the Boers, Botha...