Political Leaders and Leadership

It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North...

The self -made man from a log cabin, the great orator, the Emancipator, the Savior of the Union, the martyr-Lincoln's story is at the very heart of American history. But who was he, really? In this outstanding biography, award-winning author Thomas Keneally follows Lincoln from his impoverished...

In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley Jr. instantly seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of...

The ride was so wild that it forced a sitting president to drop his re-election bid, a once and future president to survive felony convictions and a would-be assassin’s bullet, and a vice president, unexpectedly thrust into the arena, to mount an unprecedented 107-day campaign to lead the free...

Challenging traditional views of this towering figure, historian David S. Brown offers a fresh perspective on Roosevelt’s groundbreaking political legacy, including his progressive Square Deal policies that laid the foundation for modern social welfare programs. He also unpacks his bold foreign...

From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to public service as the first president of the United States, American Patriarch brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to...

The world is sliding towards one kind of anarchy: incessant conflict, environmental collapse, and a disturbing sense of insoluble crisis and hopelessness. But there is another kind of “anarchy” entirely – not chaos, but organizing ourselves, cooperating without domination or coercion, and therefore...

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...

Revolution tells the funny and poignant story of the year the author ran away from college with her idealistic boyfriend and followed him to Nicaragua to join the Sandinistas. Despite their earnest commitment to a myriad of revolutionary causes and to each other, Deb and her boyfriend find...

A monumental account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the forging of a leader, The Showman provides an insider’s perspective on the war reshaping our world, based on unprecedented access to Volodymyr Zelensky and the high command in Kyiv. Time correspondent Simon Shuster chronicles the life and...

In the nearly fifty years after he left public office, Henry Kissinger remained one of the most admired—and controversial—figures in American public life. Super K reveals how he manufactured this extraordinary fame. Drawing on previously unseen private correspondence and interviews with journalists...

William Howard Taft was perhaps not a great president, although his limited view of the president’s role looks better today than it did at the time. But Taft’s true claim to greatness lies in his work before and after the White House: five decades of selfless public service culminating as one of the...