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Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry, and the Bush Haters
By Bill Sammon. 2004
Out of Captivity
By Gary Brozek, Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, Tom Howes. 2009
On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American civilian contractors--Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes--crash-landed in the mountainous…
jungle of Colombia. Dazed and shaken, they emerged from the plane bloodied and injured as gunfire rained down around them. As of that moment they were prisoners of the FARC, a Colombian terrorist and Marxist rebel organization. In an instant they had become American captives in Colombia's volatile and ongoing conflict, which has lasted for almost fifty years.In Out of Captivity, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first time their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tracing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC. Their story takes you inside one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations, going behind enemy lines with vivid and haunting imagery. Their words conjure a reality that few people have ever encountered--from sleeping on beds literally carved out of the jungle to escaping Colombian military air strikes under the cover of darkness to being bound with steel chains by their captors. Describing backbreaking starvation marches and forced isolation, the authors chronicle their confrontations and interactions with the FARC guerrilla soldiers--a motley crew of brainwashed, idealistic teenagers and seasoned vet-erans who've been around long enough to realize that the only way out of the FARC is in a body bag.Though the physical punishments their bodies endured were unrelenting, the psychological battles they waged were the ultimate test of their resolve. With candid detail, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes relate the perilous mental struggles they each experienced, as they grappled with feelings of guilt, fear, and anxiety for the families and lives they'd left behind. Exposing the transformative power of captivity, they show how they turned these fears into strengths, using their memories and their families, their pasts and their futures, to motivate them in their quest for survival. Despite the odds and the conditions, despite the chains and the silence, and despite the often tense relationships they experienced with their fellow Colombian hostages, they had one another, forging a bond that allowed them to cope with the horrific conditions of their confinement. This brotherhood enabled them to persevere through the worst that the FARC threw at them while always reminding them of their ultimate goal: freedom.A harrowing account of one of the longest civilian hostage crises in United States history, Out of Captivity is a remarkable and compelling exploration of how far three Americans were willing to go as they fought to stay alive for themselves, their families, and one another.Emperor of Liberty
By Francis D. Cogliano. 2014
This book, the first in decades to closely examine Thomas Jefferson’s foreign policy, offers a compelling reinterpretation of his attitudes…
and accomplishments as a statesman during America’s early nationhood. Beginning with Jefferson’s disastrous stint as wartime governor of Virginia during the American Revolution, and proceeding to his later experiences as a diplomat in France, Secretary of State, and U. S. Vice President, historian Francis Cogliano considers how these varied assignments shaped Jefferson’s thinking about international relations. The author then addresses Jefferson’s two terms as President#151;his goals, the means he employed to achieve them, and his final record as a statesman. Cogliano documents the evolution of Jefferson’s attitudes toward the use of force and the disposition of state power. He argues that Jefferson, although idealistic in the ends he sought to achieve, was pragmatic in the means he employed. Contrary to received wisdom, Jefferson was comfortable using deadly force when he deemed it necessary and was consistent in his foreign policy ends#151;prioritizing defense of the American republic above all else. His failures as a statesman were, more often than not, the result of circumstances beyond his control, notably the weakness of the fledgling American republic in a world of warring empires.Between Worlds
By Bill Richardson. 2005
A rising star of the Democratic Party tells the fascinating story of the ways his multicultural heritage and political education…
have shaped his dreams for America and given him vital lessons in the art of successful negotiating. Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, may be the most charismatic figure in the Democratic Party today and one of its best natural politicians whose name isn't Bill Clinton. He is the man Colin Powell has called for advice, and the man George Stephanopoulos once called the Red Adair of diplomacy in homage to his ability to put out international fires. He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize and is counted as one of our most knowledgeable politicians on Iraq and Saddam Hussein; on Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda; on North Korea; on energy policy; on Latin American affairs; on domestic politics; and on Hispanic America. Richardson's background as the son of an American businessman father and a Mexican mother has offered him an unusual starting point from which to seek a life in public service, but one of his most interesting roles has been that of global troubleshooter. What he has to say about how to negotiate to get what you want shows his true colors: He can be blunt, but charming; tough, but respectful; realistic, but hopeful. Through his work as a hostage negotiator sitting across the table from the likes of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and many others-as well as his toil on Capitol Hill, in the United Nations, and New Mexico's state government-he has learned the vital importance of preparation: know as much as possible about your adversary; test your partner's truthfulness; know how much you can concede; never lie and always be direct. Between Worldsis the surprising story of one of our most seasoned and captivating national figures.The American Journey of Barack Obama, eBook text edition
By The Editors of Life Magazine. 2008
The editors of LIFE Books have collected a richly illustrated biography of presidential candidate Barack Obama. This work includes intimate…
pictures from Obama's childhood and his time as editor of Harvard's Law Review, and culminates with the historic Democratic National Convention.The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Galba, Otho, Vitellius
By G. Suetonius Tranquillus. 2012
The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman…
Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The work, written in AD 121 during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was the most popular work of Suetonius, at that time Hadrian's personal secretary, and is the largest among his surviving writings. The Twelve Caesars is considered very significant in antiquity and remains a primary source on Roman history.Jeffrey Sachs
By Japhy Wilson. 2014
An investigation of Sachs's schizophrenic career, and the worldwide havoc he has caused. Jeffrey Sachs is a man with many…
faces. A celebrated economist and special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, he is also no stranger to the world of celebrity, accompanying Bono, Madonna and Angelina Jolie on high-profile trips to Africa. Once notorious as the progenitor of a brutal form of free market engineering called 'shock therapy', Sachs now positions himself as a voice of progressivism, condemning the '1 per cent' and promoting his solution to extreme poverty through the Millennium Villages Project. Appearances can be deceiving. Jeffrey Sachs: The Strange Case of Dr Shock and Mr Aid is the story of an evangelical development expert who poses as saviour of the Third World while opening vulnerable nations to economic exploitation. Based on documentary research and on-the-ground investigation, Jeffrey Sachs exposes Mr Aid as no more than a new, more human face of Dr Shock. From the Trade Paperback edition.ing himself as an evangelical development expert and savior of the Third World, while actually working to reinforce the neoliberal project that he now claims to oppose. Based on documentary research and on-the-ground investigation of the Millennium Villages Project, Jeffrey Sachs exposes its subject's Jekyll/Hyde complex, showing Mr. Aid to be no more than the new, more human face of Dr. Shock himself. From the Trade Paperback edition.Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth
By John Freed. 2016
Frederick Barbarossa, born of two of Germany’s most powerful families, swept to the imperial throne in a coup d’état in…
1152. A leading monarch of the Middle Ages, he legalized the dualism between the crown and the princes that endured until the end of the Holy Roman Empire. This new biography, the first in English in four decades, paints a rich picture of a consummate diplomat and effective warrior. John Freed mines Barbarossa’s recently published charters and other sources to illuminate the monarch’s remarkable ability to rule an empire that stretched from the Baltic to Rome, and from France to Poland. Offering a fresh assessment of the role of Barbarossa’s extensive familial network in his success, the author also considers the impact of Frederick’s death in the Third Crusade as the key to his lasting heroic reputation. In an intriguing epilogue, Freed explains how Hitler’s audacious attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 came to be called “Operation Barbarossa.”Meet Benjamin Franklin - An eStory
By Charles Margerison. 2011
Meet Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most famous of all the Founding Fathers. His story comes to life as you travel…
with him from his early years, as part of a large family, to his time at the printing company with his brother James. This ultimately resulted in his journey to England and France, a turn of events that would define the rest of his life. His remarkable story unfurls through BioViews®. Each story comes to life through BioViews®. These are short biographical narratives, similar to interviews. They provide an easy way of learning about amazing people who made major contributions and changed our world.The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy
By Meredith Cohen. 2015
This book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important monuments of French Gothic architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle, constructed…
in Paris by King Louis IX of France between 1239 and 1248 especially to hold and to celebrate Christ's Crown of Thorns. Meredith Cohen argues that the chapel's architecture, decoration, and use conveyed the notion of sacral kingship to its audience in Paris and in greater Europe, thereby implicitly elevating the French king to the level of suzerain, and establishing an early visual precedent for the political theories of royal sovereignty and French absolutism. By setting the chapel within its broader urban and royal contexts, this book offers new insight into royal representation and the rise of Paris as a political and cultural capital in the thirteenth century.Pierre
By Nancy Southam. 2005
#1 national bestsellerWhen Pierre Elliott Trudeau died in 2000, the outpouring of emotion was extraordinary. Thousands of people across Canada…
-- and all over the world -- mourned the loss of one of our greatest prime ministers, a man who touched the hearts and challenged the minds of a nation. In this book, Trudeau's close friend Nancy Southam has gathered more than 140 reminiscences and anecdotal narratives from journalists, former world leaders, politicians who battled and debated him, his sons' friends, RCMP bodyguards, girlfriends, canoeing buddies, and household staff. Among the contributors are luminaries as diverse as Conrad Black, Jean Chrétien, Leonard Cohen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ivan Head, Jacques Hébert, Karen Kain, Margot Kidder, Harrison McCain, Toni Onley, Gordon Pinsent, Christopher Plummer, Roy Romanow, Ed Schreyer, and Barbra Streisand. With the blessing of his sons, Justin and Sacha, Southam has put together a remarkably transparent account of a deeply private person that is funny, honest, affectionate, and illuminating.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Lure and Legacy of Music at Versailles
By John Hajdu Heyer. 2014
Louis XIV and his court at Versailles had a profound influence on music in France and throughout Europe. In 1660…
Louis visited Aix-en-Provence, a trip that resulted in political and cultural transformations throughout the region. Soon thereafter Aix became an important center of sacred music composition, eventually rivaling Paris for the quality of the composers it produced. John Hajdu Heyer documents the young king's visit and examines how he and his court deployed sacred music to enhance the royal image and secure the loyalty of the populace. Exploring the circle of composers at Aix, Heyer provides the most up-to-date and complete biographies in English of nine key figures, including Guillaume Poitevin, André Campra, Jean Gilles, François Estienne, and Antoine Blanchard. The book goes on to reveal how the history of political power in the region was reflected through church music, and how musicians were affected by contemporary events.Turning Point
By Jimmy Carter. 1992
The former president's personal tale of political intrigue and social conflict during his first campaign for public office. Iluminates the…
origins of his commitment to human rights and bears further witness to the accomplishments of an extraordinary man.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through The Princess-obsessed Years
By Rebecca C. Hains. 2014
Cartoon royalty, beware! A practical, solutions-based approach to navigating the perilous world of princesses Little girls love everything about princesses:…
the dolls, the love stories, the play clothes. But pop culture princesses are part of a powerful marketing machine, encouraging obsessive consumerism and delivering negative stereotypes about gender, race, and beauty to young girls. Princess Problem features stories and advice from parents, educators, psychologists, and children's industry insiders-including former Disney employees-to equip every parent with skills that will help them navigate their daughters' princess-saturated worlds.Hugo! The Hugo Chàvez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution
By Bart Jones. 2007
Ruling elites in Venezuela, the United States and Europe, and even Hugo Chávez himself though for different reasons, have been…
eager to have the world view him as the heir to Fidel Castro. But the truth about this increasingly influential world leader is more complex, and more interesting.. The Chávez that emerges from Bart Jones' carefully researched and documented biography is neither a plaster saint nor a revolutionary tyrant. He has an undeniably autocratic streak, and yet has been freely and fairly re-elected to his nations presidency three times with astonishing margins of victory. He is a master politician and an inspired improviser, a Bolivarian nationalist and an unashamed socialist. His policies have brought him into conflict with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and major oil companies. They have also provided a model for new governments and social movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. When in September 2006 he declared at the United Nations that 'the devil came here yesterday ... the President of the United States', it was clear that he was taking on challenging the most powerful nation on earth, in conscious imitation of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar.From the Trade Paperback edition.Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers
By David J. Samuels, Matthew S. Shugart. 2010
This book provides a framework for analyzing the impact of the separation of powers on party politics. Conventional political science…
wisdom assumes that democracy is impossible without political parties, because parties fulfill all the key functions of democratic governance. They nominate candidates, coordinate campaigns, aggregate interests, formulate and implement policy, and manage government power. When scholars first asserted the essential connection between parties and democracy, most of the world's democracies were parliamentary. Yet by the dawn of the twenty-first century, most democracies had directly elected presidents. Given this, if parties are truly critical to democracy, then a systematic understanding of how the separation of powers shapes parties is long overdue. David J. Samuels and Matthew S. Shugart provide a theoretical framework for analyzing variation in the relationships among presidents, parties, and prime ministers across the world's democracies, revealing the important ways that the separation of powers alters party organization and behavior - thereby changing the nature of democratic representation and accountability.Richard Sopris in Early Denver: Captain, Mayor & Colorado Fifty-Niner
By Linda Bjorklund, Thomas Noel. 2016
From Gregory's Diggings prospector to Denver mayor, Richard Sopris left an indelible mark on the Mile High City and Centennial…
State. During an 1860 prospecting expedition, Sopris discovered Glenwood Springs and the nearly thirteen-thousand-foot summit later named for him. Following life as a steamboat captain, he was appointed captain of Company C, First Colorado Cavalry, in 1861 and commanded volunteer troops at Glorieta Pass. After serving as a delegate to the first constitutional convention of Colorado and as Arapaho County sheriff, he helped quell the Hop Alley Chinese Riot of 1880 and enacted public works projects to rid Denver of a deadly typhoid outbreak. After his mayoral term ended in 1881, Sopris became the first commissioner of his beloved City Park. Author Linda Bjorklund celebrates the unsung life and accomplishments of a founding son of Colorado.Il mio viaggio attraverso l'occidente (Autobiografia)
By Wael El-Manzalawy, Mattia Baratto. 2016
Ero molto interessato alla politica ed alle notizie. Ed il risultato fu che sentivo che tutte le persone occidentali ci…
odiavano. Dato che generalizzare è un errore molto comune, ne fui vittima: ascoltavo le notizie e generalizzavo il mio sentire che tutti gli occidentali ci odiassero e volessero distruggere i nostri paesi. Fin dal 2003, ho cominciato ad usare Internet. Ho avuto a che fare con tante persone occidentali. E gradualmente i miei sentimenti sono cambiati. Vi invito a leggere questo libro e scoprire il mio viaggio attraverso il mondo occidentale.The Reagan Persuasion
By James C. Humes. 2010
Persuade, mentor, and motivate like the Great Communicator More than just an influential speaker, Ronald Reagan was a master of…
all types of communication and employed his personal warmth and charm to rally Americans around his vision. Now, former Reagan speechwriter James C. Humes shows how you can replicate Reagan's ability to influence others and utilize his communication tools when interacting with colleagues and partners. Don't just rely on words, instead: • Communicate with gestures, postures, and even clothing • Learn the power of podium presence • Fine-tune your humor and voice for each unique audienceWill and Kate's Big Fat Gypsy Wedding: Photos from our big day, like
By Alex Rory. 2011
In Will and Kate's Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, the Royal couple take us behind-the-scenes with exclusive photos of their engagement,…
the hen night, the wedding day and more! Featuring comments from the future King and Queen, as well other less-interesting Royals, this unique photo album tells: . How Wills first 'grabbed' Kate at an Edinburgh fashion show: 'I had to get my hands on that see-through dress!' . Why Kate believes a Princess belongs in the caravan: 'It's not like Wills is going to be working either...' . Of Prince Harry's love of bare-knuckle boxing: 'It's just rahlly traditional, like' . And what the Queen thinks of anti-Royal/Gypsy prejudice: 'One is actually starting to get pi**ed off!'