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Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History
By Brian Kilmeade, Don Yaeger. 2015
"Another blockbuster! Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates reads like an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning thriller. You will love this book and…
also wonder why so few people know this story. No one captures the danger, intrigue, and drama of the American Revolution and its aftermath like Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger." --Brad ThorThis is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up to intimidation. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford. Over the previous fifteen years, as a diplomat and then as secretary of state, Jefferson had tried to work with the Barbary states (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco). Unfortunately, he found it impossible to negotiate with people who believed their religion justified the plunder and enslavement of non-Muslims. These rogue states would show no mercy--at least not while easy money could be made by extorting the Western powers. So President Jefferson decided to move beyond diplomacy. He sent the U.S. Navy's new warships and a detachment of Marines to blockade Tripoli--launching the Barbary Wars and beginning America's journey toward future superpower status. As they did in their previous bestseller, George Washington's Secret Six, Kilmeade and Yaeger have transformed a nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. Among the many suspenseful episodes: ·Lieutenant Andrew Sterett's ferocious cannon battle on the high seas against the treacherous pirate ship Tripoli. ·Lieutenant Stephen Decatur's daring night raid of an enemy harbor, with the aim of destroying an American ship that had fallen into the pirates' hands.·General William Eaton's unprecedented five-hundred-mile land march from Egypt to the port of Derne, where the Marines launched a surprise attack and an American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil for the first time. Few today remember these men and other heroes who inspired the Marine Corps hymn: "From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, we fight our country's battles in the air, on land and sea." Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates recaptures this forgotten war that changed American history with a real-life drama of intrigue, bravery, and battle on the high seas.Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power
By Mark Landler. 2016
The deeply reported story of two supremely ambitious figures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton--archrivals who became partners for a time,…
trailblazers who share a common sense of their historic destiny but hold very different beliefs about how to project American power In Alter Egos, veteran New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us inside the fraught and fascinating relationship between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton--a relationship that has framed the nation's great debates over war and peace for the past eight years.In the annals of American statecraft, theirs was a most unlikely alliance. Clinton, daughter of an anticommunist father, was raised in the Republican suburbs of Chicago in the aftermath of World War II, nourishing an unshakable belief in the United States as a force for good in distant lands. Obama, an itinerant child of the 1970s, was raised by a single mother in Indonesia and Hawaii, suspended between worlds and a witness to the less savory side of Uncle Sam's influence abroad. Clinton and Obama would later come to embody competing visions of America's role in the world: his, restrained, inward-looking, painfully aware of limits; hers, hard-edged, pragmatic, unabashedly old-fashioned. Spanning the arc of Obama's two terms, Alter Egos goes beyond the speeches and press conferences to the Oval Office huddles and South Lawn strolls, where Obama and Clinton pressed their views. It follows their evolution from bitter rivals to wary partners, and then to something resembling rivals again, as Clinton defined herself anew and distanced herself from her old boss. In the process, it counters the narrative that, during her years as secretary of state, there was no daylight between them, that the wounds of the 2008 campaign had been entirely healed. The president and his chief diplomat parted company over some of the biggest issues of the day: how quickly to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; whether to arm the rebels in Syria; how to respond to the upheaval in Egypt; and whether to trust the Russians. In Landler's gripping account, we venture inside the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, watch Obama and Clinton work in tandem to salvage a conference on climate change in Copenhagen, and uncover the secret history of their nuclear diplomacy with Iran--a story with a host of fresh disclosures. With the grand sweep of history and the pointillist detail of an account based on insider access--the book draws on exclusive interviews with more than one hundred senior administration officials, foreign diplomats, and friends of Obama and Clinton--Mark Landler offers the definitive account of a complex, profoundly important relationship. As Barack Obama prepares to relinquish the presidency, and Hillary Clinton makes perhaps her last bid for it, how both regard American power is a central question of our time. Advance praise for Alter Egos "A superb journalist has brought us a vivid, page-turning, and revelatory account of the relationship between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as of their statecraft. Alter Egos will make a signal contribution to the national debate over who should be the next American president."--Michael Beschloss, bestselling author of Presidential Courage "Mark Landler, one of the best reporters working in Washington today, delivers an inside account of Hillary Clinton's relationship with Barack Obama that brims with insight and high-level intrigue. It's both fun to read and eye-opening."--Jane Mayer, bestselling author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical RightFrom the Hardcover edition.Report of the County Chairman
By Steve Berry, James A Michener. 1989
James A. Michener, the acclaimed author of sweeping historical blockbusters, chronicles his personal involvement in one of the most dramatic…
elections of the twentieth century: the presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. A relative newcomer to politics, Michener served as the Democratic chairman in his native Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a rural battleground precinct where the major controversies of the day--notably Kennedy's Catholicism--brought cultural divides to the forefront. First published shortly after the 1960 election, Report of the County Chairman remains an intimate, gripping account of the power of grassroots political involvement. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii.When General Grant Expelled the Jews
By Jonathan D. Sarna. 2012
Finalist, 2012 National Jewish Book AwardsA riveting account of General Ulysses S. Grant's decision, in the middle of the Civil…
War, to order the expulsion of all Jews from the territory under his command, and the reverberations of that decision on Grant's political career, on the nascent American Jewish community, and on the American political process. On December 17, 1862, just weeks before Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, General Grant issued what remains the most notorious anti-Jewish order by a government official in American history. His attempt to eliminate black marketeers by targeting for expulsion all Jews "as a class" unleashed a firestorm of controversy that made newspaper headlines and terrified and enraged the approximately 150,000 Jews then living in the United States, who feared the importation of European antisemitism onto American soil. Although the order was quickly rescinded by a horrified Abraham Lincoln, the scandal came back to haunt Grant when he ran for president in 1868. Never before had Jews become an issue in a presidential contest, and never before had they been confronted so publicly with the question of how to balance their "American" and "Jewish" interests. Award-winning historian Jonathan D. Sarna gives us the first complete account of this little-known episode--including Grant's subsequent apology, his groundbreaking appointment of Jews to prominent positions in his administration, and his unprecedented visit to the land of Israel. Sarna sheds new light on one of our most enigmatic presidents, on the Jews of his day, and on the ongoing debate between group loyalty and national loyalty that continues to roil American political and social discourse.JEWISH ENCOUNTERS SERIES From the Hardcover edition.Moonlight: Abraham Lincoln and the Almanac Trial
By John Evangelist Walsh. 2000
On August 29, 1857, in the light of a three-quarter moon, James Metzger was savagely beaten by two assailants in…
a grove not far from his home. Two days later he died and his assailants, James Norris and William Armstrong, were arrested and charged with his murder. Norris was tried and convicted first. As William "Duff" Armstrong waited for his trial, his own father died. James Armstrong's deathbed wish was that Duff's mother, Hannah, engage the best lawyer possible to defend Duff. The best person Hannah could think of was a friend, a young lawyer from Springfield by the name of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln took the case and with that begins one of the oddest journeys Lincoln took on his trek towards immortality. What really happened? How much did the moon reveal? What did Lincoln really know? Walsh makes a strong case for viewing Honest Abe in a different light in this tale of murder and moonlight.Moonlight is a 2001 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime.The Black Book of the American Left: The Collected Conservative Writings of David Horowitz
By David Horowitz. 2016
David Horowitz spent the first part of his life in the world of the Communist-progressive left, a politics he inherited…
from his mother and father, and later in the New Left as one of its founders. When the wreckage he and his comrades had created became clear to him in the mid-1970s, he left. Three decades of second thoughts then made him this movement's principal intellectual antagonist. "For better or worse," as Horowitz writes in the preface, "I have been condemned to spend the rest of my days attempting to understand how the left pursues the agendas from which I have separated myself, and why."When Horowitz began his odyssey, the left had already escaped the political ghetto to which his parents' generation and his own had been confined. Today, it has become the dominant force in America's academic and media cultures, electing a president and achieving a position from which it can shape America's future. How it achieved its present success and what that success portends are the overarching subjects of Horowitz's conservative writings. Through the unflinching focus of one singularly engaged witness, the identity of a destructive movement that constantly morphs itself in order to conceal its identity and mission becomes disturbingly clear.Horowitz reflects on the years he spent at war with his own country, collaborating with and confronting radical figures like Huey Newton, Tom Hayden and Billy Ayers, as he made his transition from what the writer Paul Berman described as the American left's "most important theorist" to its most determined enemy.Lincoln and Whitman
By Daniel Mark Epstein. 2004
It was more than coincidence--indeed, it was all but fate--that the lives and thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman…
should converge during the terrible years of the Civil War. Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position and circumstance, Lincoln and Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character that sprang from the deepest part of their being. They had read or listened to each other's words at crucial turning points in their lives. Both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the war. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.Drawing on the rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts, diary records, and lore that has accumulated around both the president and the poet, Epstein structures his double portrait in a series of dramatic, atmospheric scenes. Whitman, though initially skeptical of the Illinois Republican, became enthralled when Lincoln stopped in New York on the way to his first inauguration. During the war years, after Whitman moved to Washington to minister to wounded soldiers, the poet's devotion to the president developed into a passion bordering on obsession. "Lincoln is particularly my man, and by the same token, I am Lincoln's man." As Epstein shows, the influence and reverence flowed both ways. Lincoln had been deeply immersed in Whitman's verse when he wrote his incendiary "House Divided" speech, and Whitman remained an influence during the darkest years of the war. But their mutual impact went beyond the intellectual. Epstein brings to life the many friends and contacts his heroes shared--Lincoln's debonair private secretary John Hay, the fiery abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, the mysterious and possibly dangerous Polish Count Gurowski--as he unfolds the story of their legendary encounters in New York City and especially Washington during the war years. Blending history, biography, and a deeply informed appreciation of Whitman's verse and Lincoln's rhetoric, Epstein has written a masterful and original portrait of two great men and the era they shaped through the vision they held in common.From the Hardcover edition.Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism
By Charles Clover. 2016
Charles Clover, award-winning journalist and former Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times, here analyses the idea of "Eurasianism," a…
theory of Russian national identity based on ethnicity and geography. Clover traces Eurasianism's origins in the writings of White Russian exiles in 1920s Europe, through Siberia's Gulag archipelago in the 1950s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and up to its steady infiltration of the governing elite around Vladimir Putin. This eye-opening analysis pieces together the evidence for Eurasianism's place at the heart of Kremlin thinking today and explores its impact on recent events, the annexation of Crimea, the rise in Russia of anti-Western paranoia and imperialist rhetoric, as well as Putin's sometimes perplexing political actions and ambitions. Based on extensive research and dozens of interviews with Putin's close advisers, this quietly explosive story will be essential reading for anyone concerned with Russia's past century, and its future.The Man Without a Face
By Masha Gessen. 2012
The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low- level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the…
Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world.Handpicked as a successor by the "family" surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the oligarchy to shape according to its own designs. Suddenly the boy who had stood in the shadows, dreaming of ruling the world, was a public figure, and his popularity soared. Russia and an infatuated West were determined to see the progressive leader of their dreams, even as he seized control of media, sent political rivals and critics into exile or to the grave, and smashed the country's fragile electoral system, concentrating power in the hands of his cronies.As a journalist living in Moscow, Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand, and for The Man Without a Face she has drawn on information and sources no other writer has tapped. Her account of how a "faceless" man maneuvered his way into absolute-and absolutely corrupt-power has the makings of a classic of narrative nonfiction.Includes over 200 maps, plans, diagrams and uniform printsLt.-Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge was a soldier of long and bloody experience,…
having served with the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War losing one of his legs during the battle of Gettysburg. After the end of the war he settled down in retirement to write, he produced a number of excellent works on the recently ended Civil War and his magnum opus "A History of the Art of War", tracing the advances, changes and major engagements of Western Europe. His work was split into twelve volumes, richly illustrated with cuts of uniforms, portraits and maps, each focussing on periods of history headed by the most prominent military figure; Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great and finally Napoleon. Napoleon and the period which he dominated received such care and attention that Dodge wrote four excellent, authoritative and detailed volumes on him.In Dodge's concluding volume on Napoleon's great career covers the battles that would lose Germany for the French cause for good; as his lieutenants are unable to follow through his plans, his tired ragged conscripts cannot match the quality and power of old and struggle blindly with the cavalry that was sacrificed on the steppes of Russia. The missed chances of Lützen and Bautzen and the crowning epic defeat at the Battle of the Emperors at Leipzig force Napoleon back to France, he conjures a brilliant campaign along the rivers of Northern France beating one opponent then another. However, the odds are too much even for Napoleon's star, and he is forced to abdicate in 1814. Just over a year later he rolls the dice one last time during the Waterloo Campaign, filled with opportunities not taken and orders misplaced, Napoleon is forced in further exile at St. Helena, his military fame undimmed even after a hundred years.A well written, expansive and excellent classic.Includes over 200 maps, plans, diagrams and uniform printsLt.-Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge was a soldier of long and bloody experience,…
having served with the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War losing one of his legs during the battle of Gettysburg. After the end of the war he settled down in retirement to write, he produced a number of excellent works on the recently ended Civil War and his magnum opus "A History of the Art of War", tracing the advances, changes and major engagements of Western Europe. His work was split into twelve volumes, richly illustrated with cuts of uniforms, portraits and maps, each focussing on periods of history headed by the most prominent military figure; Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great and finally Napoleon. Napoleon and the period which he dominated received such care and attention that Dodge wrote four excellent, authoritative and detailed volumes on him.This first volume focuses on the initial wars of the French Revolution until the 1799 Allied campaign in Switzerland under the great Suwarov. Napoleon's Italian campaign in Italy in 1796-1797 fully displays his emerging genius, the battles of Montenotte, Dego, Castiglione, Arcola and Rivoli are explained with expert attention to detail.A well written, expansive and excellent classic.Includes over 200 maps, plans, diagrams and uniform printsLt.-Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge was a soldier of long and bloody experience,…
having served with the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War losing one of his legs during the battle of Gettysburg. After the end of the war he settled down in retirement to write, he produced a number of excellent works on the recently ended Civil War and his magnum opus "A History of the Art of War", tracing the advances, changes and major engagements of Western Europe. His work was split into twelve volumes, richly illustrated with cuts of uniforms, portraits and maps, each focussing on periods of history headed by the most prominent military figure; Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great and finally Napoleon. Napoleon and the period which he dominated received such care and attention that Dodge wrote four excellent, authoritative and detailed volumes on him.This third volume begins with Napoleon's ambitious foray in Spain and Portugal in 1807-8, despite British intervention his forces are triumphant over much of Spain. Napoleon is forced to turn back to his Eastern enemies as Austria attack on the Danube, even Napoleon's great powers cannot gain him victories at all times and his repulse at Aspern hands him his first major defeat. He is able to bring the Austrians to heel after the bloody battle of Wagram, but his over vaulting ambition is beginning to become too much; as reverses in the Peninsula mount he decides on the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. This volume concludes as the remnants of the Grande Armée trudge back through the snows of Russia and his lieutenants are roundly beaten by Wellington at Vittoria.A well written, expansive and excellent classic.Includes over 200 maps, plans, diagrams and uniform printsLt.-Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge was a soldier of long and bloody experience,…
having served with the Union Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War losing one of his legs during the battle of Gettysburg. After the end of the war he settled down in retirement to write, he produced a number of excellent works on the recently ended Civil War and his magnum opus "A History of the Art of War", tracing the advances, changes and major engagements of Western Europe. His work was split into twelve volumes, richly illustrated with cuts of uniforms, portraits and maps, each focussing on periods of history headed by the most prominent military figure; Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick the Great and finally Napoleon. Napoleon and the period which he dominated received such care and attention that Dodge wrote four excellent, authoritative and detailed volumes on him.This second volume explores the beginning of Napoleon's ascension to the title of Emperor of the French and his defeat of all of the powers of Europe to his apogee of power in 1807. Napoleon's thunderous campaign in Italy in 1800, his lightning campaign that culminated at Austerlitz in 1805 see the Emperor in his full pomp scattering his Austrian and Russian foes. Concluding this volume are his campaigns against the Prussians and Russians in 1806 and 1807, despite defeating his enemies roundly in battle his own finely trained Grande Armée was starting to be bled to death.A well written, expansive and excellent classic.United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good
By Cory Booker. 2016
A passionate new voice in American politics, United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy,…
responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future. Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless. He chose public service. He chose to move to a rough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked as a tenants' rights lawyer before winning a seat on the City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor, and for more than seven years he was the public face of an American city that had gone decades with too little positive national attention and investment. In 2013, Booker became the first African American elected to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate. In United, Cory Booker draws on personal experience to issue a stirring call to reorient our nation and our politics around the principles of compassion and solidarity. He speaks of rising above despair to engage with hope, pursuing our shared mission, and embracing our common destiny. Here is his account of his own political education, the moments--some entertaining, some heartbreaking, all of them enlightening--that have shaped his civic vision. Here are the lessons Booker learned from the remarkable people who inspired him to serve, men and women whose example fueled his desire to create opportunities for others. Here also are his observations on the issues he cares about most deeply, from race and crime and the crisis of mass incarceration to economic and environmental justice. "Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word," Booker writes in this galvanizing book. In a world where we too easily lose touch with our neighbors, he argues, we must remember that we all rise or fall together--and that we must move beyond mere tolerance for one another toward a deeper connection: love.From the Hardcover edition.Clintons' War on Women
By Robert Morrow, Roger Stone. 2015
Hillary Clinton is running for president as an "advocate of women and girls,” but there is another shocking side to…
her story that has been carefully covered up--until now. This stunning exposé reveals for the first time how Bill and Hillary Clinton systematically abused women and others--sexually, physically, and psychologically--in their scramble for power and wealth. In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Roger Stone and researcher and alternative historian Robert Morrow map the arc of Bill and Hillary’s crimes and cover-ups. They reveal details about their actions in Arkansas, during Bill Clinton’s time in the White House, about who really ordered the deadly attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state, about their time at the Clinton Foundation, and during Hillary’s current campaign for president. This is the first book to shed light on the couple’s deeply personal violations of the people they crushed in their obsessive quest for power. Along the way, Stone and Morrow reveal the family’s darkest secrets, including a Clinton family member’s drug rehab treatment that was never reported by the press, Hillary Clinton’s unusually close relationship with a top female aide, and a stunning revelation of such impact that it could strip Bill Clinton of his current popularity and derail Hillary’s push to be the second Clinton in the White House. Anyone who cares about the future of the United States will want to read this tell-all, exposing the appalling, unvarnished, and ugly truth about the ClintonsA Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction
By Stephen Fried, Patrick J. Kennedy. 2015
**A New York Times Bestseller**Patrick J. Kennedy, the former congressman and youngest child of Senator Ted Kennedy, details his personal…
and political battle with mental illness and addiction, exploring mental health care's history in the country alongside his and every family's private struggles.On May 5, 2006, the New York Times ran two stories, "Patrick Kennedy Crashes Car into Capitol Barrier" and then, several hours later, "Patrick Kennedy Says He'll Seek Help for Addiction." It was the first time that the popular Rhode Island congressman had publicly disclosed his addiction to prescription painkillers, the true extent of his struggle with bipolar disorder and his plan to immediately seek treatment. That could have been the end of his career, but instead it was the beginning. Since then, Kennedy has become the nation's leading advocate for mental health and substance abuse care, research and policy both in and out of Congress. And ever since passing the landmark Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act--and after the death of his father, leaving Congress--he has been changing the dialogue that surrounds all brain diseases.A Common Struggle weaves together Kennedy's private and professional narratives, echoing Kennedy's philosophy that for him, the personal is political and the political personal. Focusing on the years from his 'coming out' about suffering from bipolar disorder and addiction to the present day, the book examines Kennedy's journey toward recovery and reflects on Americans' propensity to treat mental illnesses as "family secrets."Beyond his own story, though, Kennedy creates a roadmap for equality in the mental health community, and outlines a bold plan for the future of mental health policy. Written with award-winning healthcare journalist and best-selling author Stephen Fried, A Common Struggle is both a cry for empathy and a call to action. From the Hardcover edition.The Nixon Effect
By Douglas E. Schoen. 2016
The Nixon Effect examines the 37th president's political legacy in broad-ranging ways that make clear, for the first time, the…
breadth and duration of his influence on American political life. The book argues that Nixon is the key political figure in postwar American politics in multiple ways, some barely acknowledged until now. His legacy includes a generational shift in the ideological orientations of both the Republican and Democratic parties; the Nixon influence, both intentional and unintentional, was to push both parties further out to their ideological poles. So stark was Nixon's influence on party identities that it shaped the hardened partisan polarization in Washington today and the evolution of what has come to be called Red and Blue America.Stemming in part from this, and also from Nixon's scorched-earth political warfare and eventually his Watergate scandal, we have also seen the evolution of politics as war, where adversaries and ideological opponents are seen as evil or unpatriotic. Finally, Nixon's pioneering tactics-from the identification of the Silent Majority to the Southern Strategy, from "triangulating" between both parties and claiming the political center to launching the culture war with attacks on "elites" in media, academia, and the courts-have shaped political communications and strategy ever since.Other books have argued for Nixon's importance, but Douglas E. Schoen's is the first to take into account the full range of this fascinating man's influence. While not discounting Nixon's many misdeeds, Schoen treats his presidency and its importance with the seriousness-and evenhandedness-that the subject deserves.John Tyler, the Accidental President
By Edward P. Crapol. 2006
The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics…
as "His Accidency." In this biography of the tenth president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency. Crapol also highlights Tyler's faith in America's national destiny and his belief that boundless territorial expansion would preserve the Union as a slaveholding republic. When Tyler sided with the Confederacy in 1861, he was branded as America's "traitor" president for having betrayed the republic he once led.Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses
By Sarah Gristwood. 2013
To contemporaries, the Wars of the Roses were known collectively as a ?cousinsOCO war. OCO The series of dynastic conflicts…
that tore apart the ruling Plantagenet family in fifteenth-century England was truly a domestic drama, as fraught and intimate as any family feud before or since. As acclaimed historian Sarah Gristwood reveals in "Blood Sisters," while the events of this turbulent time are usually described in terms of the male leads who fought and died seeking the throne, a handful of powerful women would prove just as decisive as their kinfolksOCO clashing armies. These mothers, wives, and daughters were locked in a web of loyalty and betrayal that would ultimately change the course of English history. In a captivating, multigenerational narrative, Gristwood traces the rise and rule of the seven most critical women in the wars: from Marguerite of Anjou, wife of the Lancastrian Henry VI, who steered the kingdom in her insane husbandOCOs stead; to Cecily Neville, matriarch of the rival Yorkist clan, whose son Edward IV murdered his own brother to maintain power; to Margaret Beaufort, who gave up her own claim to the throne in favor of her son, a man who would become the first of a new line of Tudor kings. A richly drawn, absorbing epic, "Blood Sisters" is a tale of hopeful births alongside bloody deaths, of romance as well as brutal pragmatism. It is a story of how women, and the power that women could wield, helped to end the Wars of the Roses, paving the way for the Tudor age?and the creation of modern England. "Confessions of a Political Spouse
By James Schroeder. 2009
In this candid memoir, James Schroeder shares his experience as the husband of former US congresswoman Pat Schroeder, one of…
the best-known women in American politics and current president of the Association of American Publishers. Recounting his experience as "Mr. Pat Schroeder," James looks at how men come to terms with today's evolving gender roles and the challenges and compromises of two-career families.James Schroeder is the husband of former congresswoman Pat Schroeder, whom he met at Harvard Law School. He practiced law for many years and served in the Clinton administration as deputy undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services.