Political Biographies

On July 18, 1924, a mob in Tehran killed US foreign service officer Robert Whitney Imbrie. His violent death, the first political murder in the history of the service, outraged the American people. Though Imbrie’s loss briefly made him a cause célèbre, subsequent events quickly obscured his extraordinary life and career.

That Donald Trump is an asshole is a fact widely agreed upon - even by his supporters, who actually like that about him. But his startling political rise makes the question of just what sort of asshole he is, and how his assholedom may help to explain his success, one not just of philosophical interest but of almost existential urgency. Enter the philosopher Aaron James, author of the foundational text in the burgeoning field of Asshole Studies: the best-selling Assholes: A Theory.

This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."

A Palestinian American activist recalls his adolescence in Gaza during the Second Intifada and how he made a strong commitment to peace in the face of devastating brutality in this moving, candid, and transformative memoir that reminds us of the importance of looking beyond prejudice, anger, and fear.

Before Kamala Harris was elected to the vice presidency, she was a little girl who loved superheroes. And when she looked around, she was amazed to find them everywhere! In her family, among her friends, even down the street - there were superheroes wherever she looked. And those superheroes showed her that all you need to do to be a superhero is to be the best you can be.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first 18 months in office, 12,000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens - all with his encouragement. Duterte is a serial womanizer and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis "sons of whores." He is on record as saying he does not "give a shit" about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

The author of Lincoln's Boys takes us inside Lyndon Johnson's White House to show how the legendary Great Society programs were actually put into practice: Team of Rivals for LBJ. The personalities behind every burst of 1960s liberal reform - from civil rights and immigration reform, to Medicare and Head Start - and what we'll lose if those programs are dismantled.

1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, widely known as NTR, was not merely a film star who strayed into politics and captured power in Andhra Pradesh. The actor-politician redefined the political culture in the state and scripted a new political idiom. His rather dramatic entry into politics, the profound impact he left on the people of Andhra Pradesh and the vital role he played in national politics during his relatively short political life, however, have not received deserving recognition.

Timothy Snyder opens a new path in the understanding of modern nationalism and 20th-century socialism by presenting the often overlooked life of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, an important Polish thinker at the beginning of the 20th century. During his brief life in Poland, Paris, and Vienna, Kelles-Krauz influenced or infuriated most of the leaders of the various socialist movements of Central Europe and France. His central ideas ultimately were not accepted by the socialist mainstream at the time of his death.

When Scott Dozier was sent to Nevada’s death row in 2007, convicted of a pair of grisly murders, he didn’t cry foul or embark upon a protracted innocence campaign. He sought instead to expedite his execution—to hasten his inevitable death. He decided he would rather face his end swiftly than die slowly in solitary confinement. In volunteering for execution, Dozier may have been unusual. But in the tortuous events that led his death date to be scheduled and rescheduled, planned and then stayed, his time on death row was anything but.

In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression. But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster.

A new book from New York Times bestselling author Edward Klein!

Ronald Reagan carried a conservative vision of America to the White House, where his administration gave it life. Peggy Noonan followed Reagan to Washington as his speechwriter— and gave his vision voice. As speech writer for George Bush during his Presidential campaign, Noonan dispelled her candidate's "wimpy" image and replaced it with one of quiet strength by coining such eloquent phrases as "a thousand points of light" and "a kinder, gentler nation."

Nigel Hamilton's Mantle of Command, long-listed for the National Book Award, drew on years of archival research and interviews to portray FDR in a tight close-up as he determined Allied strategy in the crucial initial phases of World War II. Commander in Chief reveals the astonishing sequel - suppressed by Winston Churchill in his memoirs - of Roosevelt's battles with Churchill to maintain that strategy.

From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades.

In this candid oral history of a presidential tenure, author Brian Abrams reveals the behind-the-scenes stories that illuminate the eight years of the Obama White House through more than one hundred exclusive interviews. Among those given a voice in this extraordinary account are Obama’s cabinet secretaries; his teams of speechwriters, legal advisers, and campaign strategists; as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who fought for or against his agenda. They recall the early struggles of an idealistic outsider candidate and speak openly about the exacting work that led to cornerstone legislation.

Leading scholars define the special contributions and qualifications of our first president Washington's legacy is a successful experiment in collective leadership, great initiatives in establishing a strong executive branch and the formulation of innovative and lasting economic and foreign...

Deutschland, Herbst 1977: Die Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) entführt den Arbeitgeberpräsidenten Hanns-Martin Schleyer und tötet seine Begleiter. Man will die im Gefängnis einsitzende Terroristengruppe um Andreas Baader und Gudrun Ensslin freipressen. Nach über 40 Tagen endet die Entführung mit der Ermordung Hanns-Martin Schleyers. Peter-Jürgen Boock, eines der maßgeblich beteiligten RAF-Mitglieder, gehört in den ersten drei Wochen der Entführung zu den Bewachern Schleyers.

The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen...