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“One of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years.” —Thomas Mallon, The Wall Street Journal “Fun and fascinating…It’s witty, charming, and fantastically learned. I loved it.” —Rick Perlstein Based on a decade of research and reporting, Author in Chief tells the story of America’s presidents as authors—and offers a delightful new window into the public and private lives of our highest leaders. Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet few can name the work that helped him win the presidency: his published collection of speeches entitled Political Debates bet...
A sweeping and groundbreaking treasury of the most essential presidential writings, featuring a mix of the beloved and the little-known, from stirring speeches and shrewd remarks to behind-the-scenes drafts and unpublished autobiographies. From the early years of our nation’s history, when George Washington wrote his humble yet powerful Farewell Address, to our current age, when Barack Obama delivered his moving speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, America’s presidents have upheld a tradition of exceptional writing. Now, for the first time, the greatest presidential writings in history are united in one monumental treasury: the very best campaign oration...
No journalist is better situated to reckon with the psychology of war than David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of a US infantry battalion as they carried out a gruelling 15-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now, Finkel follows many of those same men back home, in a journey that is less about geography than of psychological terrain, undertaken by people trying to heal or at the very least survive. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel writes with tremendous compassion about the soldiers, and about their partners and children: the heartbroken wife who wonders privately whether her returned husband is go...
“One of the best books on the American presidency to appear in recent years” (The Wall Street Journal) and based on a decade of research and reporting—a delightful new window into the public and private lives America’s presidents as authors. Most Americans are familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s famous words in the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet few can name the work that helped him win the presidency: his published collection of speeches entitled Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln labored in secret to get his book ready for the 1860 election, tracking down newspaper transcripts, editing them carefully for fa...
"It was my hope to produce a book that would not only have some historical interest, but would be useful for those in public life, in educational work, in preparation for citizenship, and would be especially a book that parents would wish their children to read." —President Calvin Coolidge on his autobiography Today Americans of all backgrounds are on the hunt for a different political model. In fact, such a model awaits them, if only they turn their eyes to their own past . . . to America's thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge's masterful autobiography offers urgent lessons for our age of exploding debt, increasingly centralized power, and fierce partisan division. This expa...
An Oprah.com “Must-Read Book” Award-winning journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas reveals “enlightening, entertaining, and often poignant”* profiles of America's working class—the forgotten men and women who make our country run. Take the men of Hopedale Mining company in Cadiz, Ohio. Laskas spent several weeks with them, both below and above ground, and by the end, you will know not only about their work, but about Pap and his dying mom, Smitty and the mail-order bride who stood him up at the airport, and Scotty and his thwarted dreams of becoming a boxing champion. That is only one hidden world. Others that she explores: an Alaskan oil rig, a migrant labor camp in Maine, the air traffic...
The new book of articles and opinion from Jonathan Franzen, author of ‘Freedom’ and ‘The Corrections’.
The Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black First Family, the Obamas. Clarence Lusane juxtaposes significant events in White House history with the ongoing struggle for democratic, civil, and human rights by black Americans and demonstrates that only during crises have presidents used their authority to advance racial justice. He describes how in 1901 the building was officially named the “White House” amidst a furious backlash against President Roosevelt for ...
Writing in the digital age has been as messy as the inky rags in Gutenberg’s shop or the molten lead of a Linotype machine. Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the early adopters, and what made others anxious? Was word processing just a better typewriter, or something more?
Jefferson regarded Jesus as a moral guide rather than a divinity. In his unique interpretation of the Bible, he highlights Christ's ethical teachings, discarding the scriptures' supernatural elements, to reflect the deist view of religion.