United States Presidents

Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of “Change We Can Believe In” was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery.

In this balanced, illuminating audiobook, Updegrove tells the story of the Bushes' relationship from the birth of George W. through their postpresidential years and Jeb Bush's failed candidacy. Drawing on exclusive access and interviews with both presidents and the key people in their lives, Updegrove reveals the Bushes' views on the current state of the nation and the GOP and how the party they both led and helped build is undergoing a radical transformation.

Dine with Thomas Jefferson and Fascinating Guest is an adventure of 25 fact-based dinners at Monticello, the White House, and at Minster Jefferson's Paris residence. The dinners center on four of Jefferson passions: wine, food, conversation, and travel. The guests are a who's who of famous people of the time, such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John and Abigail Adams, Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton, Dolley and James Madison, and more.

The book features a great collection of America’s founding fathers and mothers, whose contribution to the fight for independence, human rights, democracy, and proper governance will never be forgotten!

The author of the acclaimed biography of President James Polk, A Country of Vast Designs, offers a fresh, playful, and challenging way of playing “Rating the Presidents,” by pitching historians’ views and subsequent experts’ polls against the judgment and votes of the presidents’ own contemporaries.

In this fascinating and masterful work of research, Gus Russo finally unmasks the hidden secrets that have surrounded the Kennedy assassination for 35 years. Russo's audiobook is packed with never-before-seen documents and photographs, and never-before-known information - the result of tireless research and exhaustive interviews with countless key players in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.

The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one to see combat. The United States Army was small, understaffed, and disorganized in comparison to its status during the American Civil War roughly thirty years prior. Following the sinking of USS Maine, President William McKinley needed to muster a strong ground force swiftly, which he did by calling for 125,000 volunteers to assist in the war.

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. But is that true? Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, targeted dissidents, and let his crude racism imprison American citizens merely for being of Japanese descent.

Read offers the first book focused on Lincoln's understanding of majority rule. He also highlights the similarities and differences between the threats to American democracy in Lincoln's time and in our own.

John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.

On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States of America. The outspoken businessman, real estate developer, and television personality had previously declared some interest in becoming a candidate for public office in 2000 and 2012, but it wasn't until June 2015 that his political goals became clear.

As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy made a speech to the Fort Worth, Texas, Chamber of Commerce; he was assassinated later that afternoon. Kennedy had traveled to the state to unite Texas Democrats where party leaders were feuding and extremists were contributing to political tensions. Kennedy knew an intra-party feud in Texas could jeopardize his chances of carrying the state for his 1964 re-election campaign.

Ever since the nation's most important secret meeting - the Constitutional Convention - presidents have struggled to balance open, accountable government with necessary secrecy in military affairs and negotiations. For the first 120 years, a culture of open government persisted, but new threats and technology have long since shattered the old bargains. Today, presidents neither protect vital information nor provide the open debate Americans expect.

As Margaret Truman knows from firsthand experience, living in the White House can be exhilarating and maddening, alarming and exhausting, but it is certainly never dull. Part private residence, part goldfish bowl, and part national shrine, the White House is both the most important address in America and the most intensely scrutinized.

Despite serving his country for 50 years and being among the most qualified men to hold the office of president, James Monroe is an oft-forgotten Founding Father. In this book, Brook Poston reveals how Monroe attempted to craft a legacy for himself as a champion of American republicanism.

Donald Trump was elected president pledging to put America first, as any nation's leader should put his or her own people first. There needs to be an America-first reevaluation of him and his predecessors. This book, therefore, rates the presidents not on the basis of criteria developed by socialist internationalist historians, but on their fidelity to the United States Constitution and to the powers, and limits to those powers, of the president as delineated by the Founding Fathers.

Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists.

In his landmark memoir The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy looks back on a life lived on the front lines of American politics. As the senior-most member and de facto dean of the chamber, Senator Leahy has been a key author of the American story. Leahy established himself as a moral leader and liberal pioneer over four decades spanning nine presidential administrations. American history comes alive in this gripping story of a master political leader and consummate legislator. Leahy takes you inside the room as pivotal moments in our nation’s history play out.

Though he was a great statesman, one of America's founding fathers, and the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson suffered from depression. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran examines episodes of melancholia in Jefferson's life. In particular, he focuses on the journey Jefferson made to Europe in 1787 to escape the depression that set in due to his tumultuous experience as governor of Virginia following the Revolution and his wife Martha's death.