President Memoirs

This is a major political biography of a great American president - who won a war, transformed the government, and doubled the size of the United States...in four years. When Polk was sworn in as the 11th president, what followed was one of the most consequential presidencies in history.

From the time of his childhood in rural Kansas, Dwight D. Eisenhower's vision of himself and his country was one of confidence and hope. His hard-working parents taught him self-reliance and nothing that happened in his long career ever eroded this trait. During nearly half a century of service to his country and the world, Eisenhower displayed a deep understanding of the nation's problems, aspirations, and fears that prevailed during both war and peace.

You cannot understand the historic events of 2022 without understanding Zelensky. But the Zelensky effect is less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies: what makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian. The Zelensky Effect explains this paradox, exploring Ukraine's national history to show how its now-iconic president reflects the hopes and frustrations of the country's first 'independence generation'.

John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation and its second president, spent nearly the last third of his life in retirement, grappling with contradictory views of his place in history and fearing his reputation would not fare well in the generations after his death. And indeed, future generations did slight him, elevating Jefferson and Madison to lofty heights while Adams remained way back in the second tier.

When Lyndon Baines Johnson wanted to go somewhere, there was no stopping him. This dynamic president called for Air Force One as others summon a taxi - at a moment's notice, whatever the hour or the weather. And the man who made sure that LBJ got his ride was General James U. Cross, the president's hand-picked pilot, top military assistant, and personal confidante. The only Air Force One pilot to have a position, simultaneously, in the White House, General Cross is also the only member of LBJ's inner circle who has not publicly offered his recollections of the president. Until now.

In the spring of 1789, within weeks of the establishment of the new federal government based on the US Constitution, the Senate and House of Representatives fell into dispute regarding how to address the president. Congress, the press, and individuals debated more than 30 titles, many of which had royal associations and some of which were clearly monarchical. For Fear of an Elective King is Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon's rich account of the title controversy and its meanings.

Where previous Lincoln biographers describe his temperament as "moderate", "passive", or even "conservative", historian Richard Striner offers a stunningly original perspective that will shed significant new light on one of the most studied figures in American history. Striner shows Lincoln's audacity as no other book has ever done. By emphasizing the workings of Lincoln's mind - stressing his cunning, his overall honesty, strategic thinking - even his ability to change his mind - Striner looks anew at many topics and themes important to Lincoln's story....

Franklin Pierce was president of the United States during one of the most pivotal periods in American history. He was the 14th president, and during his tenure leading the nation, he had to deal with multiple points of upheaval. He was the captain of the ship, but the boat had sprung multiple leaks. Even so, he managed to expand its scope. Building upon the vast territorial gains of his predecessor President James Polk, he executed the Gadsden Purchase, adding some 30,000 square miles to the Union.

Read by the author. What does it take to go from growing up in a Mississippi housing project to becoming a master sergeant and a celebrity chef serving in the White House under four United States presidents? Call Me Chef, Dammit! is the inspiring story of Andre Rush, who became an overnight...

Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy's murder. Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy.

In Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America, historian William Gienapp provides a remarkably concise, up-to-date, and vibrant biography of the most revered figure in United States history. While the heart of the book focuses on the Civil War, Gienapp begins with a finely etched portrait of Lincoln's early life, from pioneer farm boy to politician and lawyer in Springfield, to his stunning election as 16th president of the United States. Students will see how Lincoln grew during his years in office and much more.

It's time to revisit 1945 and the final days World War II in a way that no one else ever has. Grab your thinking cap and join author Steve Ubaney in volume two of his five volume "Who Murdered?" book series, where he probes every part of FDR's mysterious death. We have been told all the lies for decades, and now it's time to answer some very pointed questions.

On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the US Marines barracks in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack our nation would suffer until 9/11. We're still feeling the repercussions today. When Reagan Sent In the Marines tells why the Marines were there, how their mission became confused and compromised, and how President Ronald Reagan used another misguided military venture to distract America from the attack and his many mistakes leading up to it.

President Thug is a serious yet satirical comparison of Donald Trump's presidency and the depths of Dante's Inferno. The book leads Dante, Virgil, and Trump into each Circle of Hell, illustrating the sacrilege of Trump’s sins, shortcomings, and scandals. Given the moniker “President Thug”, Trump sees what he has done during his presidency, walking the imbalanced and nearly impossible terrain of damnation in the circles of Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery.

In The Reagan I Knew, the late William F. Buckley Jr. offers a reminiscence of 30 years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House. Reagan and Buckley were political allies and close friends throughout Reagan's political career. They went on vacations together and shared inside jokes.

Covering more than 30 years of Reagan's film and television work, Marc Eliot sheds new light on Reagan's bachelor life, his two marriages, and his two runs as the president of SAG. It also examines his personal relationship with superagent Lew Wasserman, the crucial player who helped develop Reagan's movie-star persona, which would prove essential to his eventually becoming President of the United States.

This is the story of the war we won and the peace we lost, told with a clear historical perspective and a warm interest in the remarkable people who guided the United States through one of the most crucial periods. Foremost in the cast of characters is Woodrow Wilson, the shy, brilliant, revered, and misunderstood "schoolmaster", whose administration was a complex of apparent contradictions.

Two Depression-battered nations confronted destiny in 1932, going to the polls in their own way to anoint new leaders, to rescue their people from starvation and hopelessness. America would elect a Congress and a president - ebullient aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt or tarnished "Wonder Boy" Herbert Hoover. Decadent, divided Weimar Germany faced two rounds of bloody Reichstag elections and two presidential contests - doddering reactionary Paul von Hindenburg against rising radical hate-monger Adolf Hitler.

The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a US president faced such opportunities and challenges. As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this hard-to-pause history, behind closed doors, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly.

Visionary. Iconoclast. Political Survivor. "A powerful and entertaining look" (Governor Gavin Newsom) at the extraordinary life and political career of Governor Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown is no ordinary politician. Like his state, he is eclectic, brilliant, unpredictable and sometimes weird. And...