Never before has anyone explored the mind, soul, and heart of Ronald Reagan. The Search for Reagan explores the challenges and controversies in Reagan's life and how he successfully dealt with each, depicting a man who was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but rather as conservative as he was comfortable being-a man who wanted to win on his own terms and integrity.
Ronald Reagan was a singularly unique man and conservative who championed a wildly successful revolution-leading to more freedom and less government for the American people and to the fall of communism, while boosting American morale. He was the first president in many years who believed optimism from the Oval Office had a direct bearing on the affairs of the nation. As a consequence, he left office more popular than when he entered, with a whopping 73 percent approval. He understood that American conservatism was based upon the individual and not the group. In his presidency, he solved the mystery of high inflation that had bedeviled his predecessor, high interest rates, and high gas prices. He created over twenty million new jobs, and the number of American millionaires grew from 4,414 to 34,944. He is considered by most historians to be one of our four greatest presidents, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.
In some ways, everything in our world seems out of control, but turmoil has been a part of the evolution of our nation since its founding. America has endured extremely dark periods in its history-the Revolution, World War II, and perhaps the darkest of all, the Civil War.
But in darkness, leaders emerge to shine a light of hope to guide people. During the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant emerged to guide the nation to victory, then to the beginnings of reconciliation. As Lieutenant General, he defeated the rebellion. As Chief of the Army, he provided a stabilizing presence during the Andrew Johnson impeachment. As Presidential candidate, he spoke for every American. But there is one story of Grant's heroism that is rarely told. Perhaps the most dramatic season in Grant's life came in his final two years. After leaving the White House he lost all his money. Then a few months later he received the devastating news that he was dying of throat cancer. Dr. Craig von Buseck uncovers the inspiring and intimate side of this historical legend while providing an in-depth look at the last two years of Grant's life.
Victor! offers a unique narrative approach to hear the voice of a dying General Grant as he writes his memoirs and takes listeners back in time to key turning points in the War Between the States.
John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Conti was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial killer soon becomes her most famous, difficult, and haunting client. Thirty years after Gacy’s execution, Conti looks back through the eyes of a seasoned professional on the legal and media circus that ensued—and her countless hours of detailed conversation with the killer clown. We hear for the first time about Gacy’s gruesome “Body Book.” Were there more victims? Conspirators involved in the murders? What secrets were buried with him? If one were to ask Conti “How could you represent such a monster?,” she would respond “What you really want to know is, ‘What was he like?’” This book answers that question.
A unique and illuminating exploration of the key relationships that shaped Franklin Delano Roosevelt into one of America's most definitive leaders and impacted his influence on the world stage, from the acclaimed author of Lincoln's Mentors
Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn't a born leader. He became one. As a boy he was in poor health, was insecure, and an average student at best. Growing into manhood, the lessons he learned came not from books but from influencers of his lifetime, beginning with Endicott Peabody, the most renowned US headmaster of the twentieth century. He instilled in Roosevelt a confidence and strength that empowered the young student and propelled him to greatness as one of the most revered presidents of the United States.
For Roosevelt, Peabody was only one of a small number of people who helped him develop the skills and temperament that enabled him to overcome the devastating effects of polio, to lead the nation through two crises, and to secure America's leadership in the world. In FDR's Mentors, Michael Gerhardt tells the extraordinary stories of the men and women who had a vital impact on Roosevelt's life, career, and pragmatic personality: his distant cousin Teddy; his wife Eleanor; President Woodrow Wilson; journalist Lewis Howe; Winston Churchill; and New York Democratic Party leader Al Smith.
Written with dignity and grace in the form of a letter to her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Dear Mom and Dad is that surprisingly poignant work that succeeds not only as a memoir but as a moving account that will inspire listeners to recall their own childhoods in a totally new light.
Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents-on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth.
What comes across are Davis's burnished skills as a writer. Even as she unravels her mother's highly edited persona, and her father's loving but distant personality, Davis remains steadfast in her artistic expression, as she melds irony, comedy, and tragedy with dreamlike memories of an ever-present past. Dear Mom and Dad, with its account of her father's Alzheimer's and her mother's end-of-life struggles, becomes an account of forgiveness, reaching levels of redemption rarely found in contemporary memoirs.
'When we think of ancient Rome, it's impossible not to think of Christianity, one of its most notable exports-but what if it hadn't been? This is the question provoked by classicist Philip Freeman in Julian, an appealing new entry in Yale's Ancient Lives series, which tells the story of the old faith's last imperial torchbearer.'-Anna Heyward, New York Times Book Review
Flavius Claudius Julianus, or Julian the Apostate, ruled Rome as sole emperor for just a year and a half, from 361 to 363, but during that time he turned the world upside down. Although a nephew of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome, Julian fought to return Rome to the old gods who had led his ancestors to build their vast empire.
As emperor, Julian set about reforming the administration, conquering new territories, and reviving ancient religions. He was scorned in his time for repudiating Christianity and demonized as an apostate for willfully rejecting Christ. Through the centuries, Julian has been viewed by many as a tragic figure who sought to save Rome from its enemies and the corrupting influence of Christianity. Christian writers and historians have seen Julian much differently: as a traitor to God and violent oppressor of Christians. Had Julian not been killed by a random Persian spear, he might well have changed all of history.
An intense, intimate and first-of-its-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, by a MacArthur 'genius' grant winner and anthropologist with unprecedented access
Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers-or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services-are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognized anthropologist and expert Jason De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years.
The result of this unique and extraordinary access is SOLDIERS AND KINGS: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De León expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. SOLDIERS AND KINGS is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.
The unmissable final instalment of Tim Shipman’s #1 bestselling Brexit trilogy.
How did Boris Johnson supersede Theresa May to become Britain’s Prime Minister? How did he pursue his promise to Get Brexit Done amidst multiple Brexit secretaries, repeated coup attempts and reshuffles, and an extraordinarily terse relationship with Brussels? What really happened in Downing Street – from the political choices to the party place settings – as the pandemic took the world in its grip?
To follow his bestselling books All Out War and Fall Out, this book launches off from 2017 to offer an unflinching, unfiltered account of unprecedented times.
In the company of all the key players and with countless never-before-revealed insights, this book traces our political moment from May’s resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever.
This is the ultimate insider narrative to the last five years of government, revealing the strategies, gambles, mistakes, mindsets and scandals that have shaped and shaken Britain.
As always, political insider and Chief Political Commentator for the Sunday Times Tim Shipman unleashes a slew of insight – and gossip – to reveal the democratic drama as it really happened.
A must-listen real-life psychological thriller
Jon Fontaine's teenage years are shaped by his motivation to run a lucrative drug-selling enterprise. Despite the many tricks up his sleeve, the law catches up with him time after time. To escape a lengthy prison sentence, Jon bails out of jail and fakes his own death. He throws his jacket off a gorge, the pinnacle of a meticulously staged suicide. Police find the jacket and declare him dead, only to capture him later as a fugitive from justice.
Seven years after the ruse, Jon meets Susan, who is unaware of his criminal past. And he's keeping a secret: he's stolen a treasure of ancient gold and silver coins. He will never give away its location.
Jon sends Susan on a roller-coaster of love and fear, and exploits the weaknesses in the criminal justice system to work his biggest cons yet, ending in a trail of victims-and death.
A Jacket Off the Gorge peels back the layers of the criminal mind, revealing a fascinating look at one man's struggles within himself and with others. Jon's story raises questions about incarceration versus rehabilitation, lack of mental health treatment for offenders, and abuses by those we entrust to uphold the law.
An intimate retelling of Lyndon B. Johnson's politics and presidency by one of his closest advisors.
Horace Busby was one of LBJ's most trusted advisors; their close working and personal relationship spanned twenty years. In The Thirty-First of March he offers an indelible portrait of a president and a presidency at a time of crisis. From the aftereffects of the Kennedy assassination, when Busby was asked by the newly sworn-in president to sit by his bedside during his first troubled nights in office, to the concerns that defined the Great Society-civil rights, the economy, social legislation, housing, and the Vietnam War-Busby not only articulated and refined Johnson's political thinking, he also helped shape the most ambitious, far-reaching legislative agenda since FDR's New Deal.
Here is Johnson the politician, Johnson the schemer, Johnson who advised against JFK's choice of an open limousine that fateful day in Dallas, and Johnson the father, sickened by the deaths of young men fighting and dying in Vietnam on his orders. The Thirty-first of March is a rare glimpse into the inner sanctum of Johnson's presidency, as seen through the eyes of one of the people who understood him best.
Chaim Gans's A Political Theory for the Jewish People examines the two dominant interpretations of Zionism, contrasts them with post-Zionist alternatives, and develops a third model.
Proprietary Zionism, Gans argues, is the version that is most popular among the Israeli Jewish public. It conceives of the land of Israel/historic Palestine as the property of the Jewish people. It also conceives of the entire Jewish people as belonging to Israel. Hierarchical Zionism is common among Israel's educated elites and interprets the Jewish right to self-determination as a right to hegemony within the Israeli state. It remains silent on the relationship between Israeli and non-Israeli Jews. Post-Zionist approaches, conversely, critique the rationale for the continued existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state.
Gans disagrees with these approaches, and in their stead advocates egalitarian Zionism, which is based on an egalitarian interpretation of the right to national self-determination. As such, it interprets the historical link between the Jews and the land of Israel in terms of identity rather than property. Ultimately, the book argues that egalitarian Zionism is superior to its rivals both in the authenticity of its relationship to Jewish history and in its implications for denizens of Israel and Jews around the world.
A 'carefully researched' account of the rise and fall of notorious dictator Manuel Noriega-and America's role in both (The Washington Post).
Written by a prize-winning NPR veteran who spent years covering Latin America, this blend of biography, history, and political reporting details the events that lead to the American invasion of Panama.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
