Showing titles in Presidents & Heads of State

A revelatory examination of the global impact of Emmanuel Macron's tumultuous presidency. A political novice leading a brand new party, in 2017 Emmanuel Macron swept away traditional political forces and emerged as president of France. Almost immediately he realized his task was not only to...

The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017 “Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait...

The emperor Nero's reign is one weird tale of sexual depravity and extravagant sadism. He was a gifted musician, and is said to have given great concerts of which attendance was compulsory; women were said to have given birth during the performance, and men were driven to fake death to escape. Nero kicked his pregnant wife to death and then had a young boy castrated to replace her as his spouse; then, during the great fire of Rome, he is said to have played the lyre to emphasize the beauty of the destruction. His eccentricities are a continuation of the tradition of his predecessors, only more perverted; Suetonius' account portray a strange man in strange times.

This revealing biography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy explores her early years as a writer, photographer, and ambitious young woman—offering a fresh portrait of the future First Lady before her life with John F. Kennedy. “One of the most detailed, nuanced portraits of Jackie to date.”...

Curtis Roosevelt was three when he and his sister, Eleanor, arrived at the White House soon after their grandfathers inauguration. The countrys First Grandchildren, a pint-sized double act, they were known to the media as Sistie and Buzzie.In this rich memoir, Roosevelt brings us into the goldfish bowl, as his family called itthat glare of public scrutiny to which all presidential households must submit.

Originally published in six volumes, which sold more than one million copies, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln was praised as the most noteworthy historical biography of Sandburg’s generation. He later distilled this monumental work into one volume that critics and readers alike consider his greatest work of nonfiction, as well as the most distinguished, authoritative biography of Lincoln ever published.

Growing up in an Illinois prairie town, Sandburg listened to stories of old-timers who had known Lincoln. By the time this single-volume edition was competed, he had spent a lifetime studying, researching, and writing about our 16th president.

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, he was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He tried to be the calmest man in the room, not the loudest. 

The New York Times bestseller “An extraordinary book.” —The Wall Street Journal “Kissinger is the genuine article, and worth listening to.” —Financial Times “A must read. . . . His books—including this one—will hopefully be read well into the future.” —New York Journal of...

In the early hours of November 9, 2016, one of the most contentious, polarizing, and vicious presidential races came to an abrupt and unexpected end when heavily favored presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton called Donald J. Trump to concede, shocking a nation that had, only hours before, given little credence to his chances. Donald Trump pulled the greatest upset in American political history despite a torrent of invective and dismissal of the mainstream media. Here is the first definitive explanation about how the "silent majority" shifted the election to Donald Trump.

One of our finest narrative historians, and journalist for the Sunday Times and Literary Review, Lawrence James, has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, set within a fully detailed historical context, but solely focusing on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century, Churchill's first experience of the Empire was serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan.

From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970 Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B...

When he was assassinated in 1896, Nasir al-Din Shah had sat on the Peacock throne for nearly half a century. A colorful, complex figure, he is frequently portrayed as indolent and self-indulgent. Yet he was in many ways an effective ruler who displayed exceptional resilience in the face of dilemmas and vulnerabilities shared by most monarchs of the Islamic world in the 19th century. In this book-the first in English about Nasir al-Din Shah, Abbas Amanat gives us both a biography of the man and an analysis of the institution of monarchy in modern Iran.

There is a great debate among historians about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's actions during the Holocaust. Was FDR the hero that defeated the Germans, or did he turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jews as long as he possibly could? In Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Robert Beir analyzes specific actions and legislation to get at the truth behind Roosevelt's role in the Holocaust. Beir has a unique perspective. He is a Jew who was raised during the extreme anti-Semitism of the Great Depression. Having witnessed the fruits of the New Deal firsthand, Beir became a Roosevelt scholar.

A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits...

At the beginning of 1864, the Civil War was far from won; terrible and bloody Union setbacks and casualties lay ahead. Abraham Lincoln was facing a re-election battle as some northern Democrats were ready to start peace talks that could leave the Confederacy a separate slaveholding American nation and as his secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, challenged him for the Republican nomination. But by the end of the year, the war's end was in sight, and slavery was on the verge of extinction.

He's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever," "Dead Last," "Unfit," and "Incompetent," to name but a few. Many contemporaries...

The extraordinary life of James Monroe: soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform thirteen colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic. “A first-rate account of a remarkable life.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author...

The emperor Caligula was one of the strangest and cruelest rulers that ever lived, and most of what is known about his reign comes from Suetonius. The first six months of his reign appear to have been moderate and successful; but after that, he fell into a spiral of sadism, sexual perversity, and plain insanity that made him one of the most hated tyrants of all time.

John F. Kennedy is the president that everyone knows. He was a rich man's son, an athlete, a war hero, a ladies' man, an author, a president - his face rendered forever young because the last time Americans saw him, he was riding in a convertible in Dallas, his glamorous wife at his side. Then the bullets struck, and the assassinated president became a legend, the truth of his life obscured by his tragic and untimely death. But JFK had more depth to his character than the magazine covers indicated.

In this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, offers an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and learned a great deal under one roof. Prompted by...