This handsome, engaging, revelatory book is an "intimate" history of three extraordinary individuals from the same extraordinary family-Theodore, Eleanor, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Geoffrey C. Ward, distilling more than thirty years of thinking and writing about the Roosevelts, and the acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns help us understand for the first time that, despite the fierce partisanship of their eras and ours, the Roosevelts were far more united than divided. All the history the Roosevelts made is here, but this is primarily a book about human beings, each of whom somehow overcame obstacles that would have undone less forceful personalities, and all of whom wrestled in their lives with issues still familiar to the rest of us-anger and the need for forgiveness, courage and cowardice, confidence and self-doubt, loyalty to family and the need to be oneself. This is the story of the Roosevelts-no other American family ever touched so many lives.

    Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful—and underappreciated—command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR’s White House Oval Study—his personal command center—and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.  Time and again, FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren’t ready. When Churchill insisted his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton’s account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies’ favor and FDR’s genius for psychology and military affairs is clear. This intimate, sweeping look at a great president in history’s greatest conflict is must reading.

    He examines Adams's myriad sides: the public and private man, the statesman and writer, the wise thinker and passionate advocate, the leading abolitionist and fervent federalist who believed strongly in both individual liberty and the government's role as an engine of progress and prosperity. In these ways—and in his energy, empathy, sharp intellect, and powerful gift with words both spoken and written—he was a predecessor of Lincoln and, later, FDR and Obama. Indeed, this sweeping biography makes clear how Adams's forward-thinking values, his definition of leadership, and his vision for the nation's future is as much about twenty-first century America as it is about Adams's own time.Meticulously researched and masterfully written, John Quincy Adams paints a rich portrait of this brilliant leader and his significance to the nation and our own lives.

    Larson reveals how George Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president.After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington shocked the world: he retired. In December 1783, General Washington, the most powerful man in the country, stepped down as Commander in Chief and returned to private life at Mount Vernon. Yet as Washington contentedly grew his estate, the fledgling American experiment floundered. Under the Articles of Confederation, the weak central government was unable to raise revenue to pay its debts or reach a consensus on national policy. The states bickered and grew apart. When a Constitutional Convention was established to address these problems, its chances of success were slim. Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers realized that only one man could unite the fractious states: George Washington. Reluctant, but duty-bound, Washington rode to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to preside over the Convention.Although Washington is often overlooked in most accounts of the period, this masterful new history from Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward J. Larson brilliantly uncovers Washington’s vital role in shaping the Convention—and shows how it was only with Washington’s support and his willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.

    Levin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of George Washington: The Crossing, presents a beautifully designed chronicle—complete with maps, portraits, and other Civil War illustrations—detailing President Abraham Lincoln’s historic Second Inaugural Address.As humble and faithful as the president who delivered it, Lincoln’s landmark Second Inaugural Address still resonates today. The speech was an attempt to unite a fractured people in a time when our nation was at its most divided, nearing the end of the Civil War. As you navigate this beautiful book, you’ll start to understand the significance and poetic power of this speech while you come closer to the man behind it.As an added bonus, Jack Levin’s son, #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Levin, has written an illuminating preface about the importance of Lincoln’s speech and its lasting impact on history. Filled with historic paintings and illustrations from the period, this book is a dramatic rendering of a momentous American occasion.

    Seeking an intellectual and emotional replacement for his own taciturn father, Lincoln turned to the great men of the founding-Washington, Paine, Jefferson-and their great documents-the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution-for knowledge, guidance, inspiration, and purpose. Out of the power vacuum created by their passing, Lincoln emerged from among his peers as the true inheritor of the Founders' mantle, bringing their vision to bear on the Civil War and the question of slavery. In Founders' Son, celebrated historian Richard Brookhiser presents a compelling new biography of Abraham Lincoln that highlights his lifelong struggle to carry on the work of the Founding Fathers. Following Lincoln from his humble origins in Kentucky to his assassination in Washington, D.C., Brookhiser shows us every side of the man: laborer, lawyer, congressman, president; storyteller, wit, lover of ribald jokes; depressive, poet, friend, visionary. And he shows that despite his many roles and his varied life, Lincoln returned time and time again to the Founders. They were rhetorical and political touchstones, the basis of his interest in politics, and the lodestars guiding him as he navigated first Illinois politics and then the national scene. But their legacy with not sufficient. As the Civil War lengthened and the casualties mounted Lincoln wrestled with one more paternal figure-God the Father-to explain to himself, and to the nation, why ending slavery had come at such a terrible price. Bridging the rich and tumultuous period from the founding of the United States to the Civil War, Founders' Son is unlike any Lincoln biography to date. Penetrating in its insight, elegant in its prose, and gripping in its vivid recreation of Lincoln's roving mind at work, this book allows us to think anew about the first hundred years of American history, and shows how we can, like Lincoln, apply the legacy of the Founding Fathers to our times.

    Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, has authored a personal biography of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st President.   Forty-three men have served as President of the United States. Countless books have been written about them. But never before has a President told the story of his father, another President, through his own eyes and in his own words. A unique and intimate biography, the book covers the entire scope of the elder President Bush’s life and career, including his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S. Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice President, and President.  The book shines new light on both the accomplished statesman and the warm, decent man known best by his family. In addition, George W. Bush discusses his father’s influence on him throughout his own life, from his childhood in West Texas to his early campaign trips with his father, and from his decision to go into politics to his own two-term Presidency.

    Planned as a short, inconsequential gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including the strategic defense initiative and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons—negotiations that laid the groundwork for the most sweeping arms accord in history the following year.Scrupulously researched and based on now-declassified information, Reagan at Reykjavik tells the gripping tale of this weekend that changed the world. Filled with illustrative accounts of the private discussions between Reagan and his team, Ken Adelman provides an honest and up-close portrait of President Reagan at one of his finest and most challenging moments.Reagan at Reykjavik includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and 11 illustrations.

    Author and historian Chris DeRose chronicles history’s most epic Presidential Royal Rumble, which culminated in a multi-front effort against Lincoln’s reelection bid, but not before:     * John Tyler engaged in shuttle diplomacy between President Buchanan and the new Confederate Government. He chaired the Peace Convention of 1861, the last great hope for a political resolution to the crisis. When it failed, Tyler joined the Virginia Secession Convention, voted to leave the Union, and won election to the Confederate Congress.     * Van Buren, who had schemed to deny Lincoln the presidency, supported him in his efforts after Fort Sumter, and thwarted Franklin Pierce's attempt at a meeting of the ex-Presidents to undermine Lincoln.     * Millard Fillmore hosted Lincoln and Mary Todd on their way to Washington, initially supported the war effort, offered critical advice to keep Britain at bay, but turned on Lincoln over emancipation.      * Franklin Pierce, talked about as a Democratic candidate in 1860 and ’64, was openly hostile to Lincoln and supportive of the South, an outspoken critic of Lincoln especially on civil liberties. After Vicksburg, when Jefferson Davis’s home was raided, a secret correspondence between Pierce and the Confederate President was revealed.     * James Buchanan, who had left office as seven states had broken away from the Union, engaged in a frantic attempt to vindicate his administration, in part by tying himself to Lincoln and supporting the war, arguing that his successor had simply followed his policies.      How Abraham Lincoln battled against his predecessors to preserve the Union and later to put an end to slavery is a thrilling tale of war waged at the top level of power.

    On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as "The Great Emancipator" did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation. He agonized over the decision and was wracked by private doubts almost to the moment when he inked the decree that would change a nation.Popular myth would have us believe that Lincoln did not suffer from such indecision, that he did what he did through moral resolve; that he had a commanding belief in equality, in the inevitable victory of right over wrong. He worked on drafts of the document for months, locking it in a drawer in the telegraph room of the War department. Ultimately Lincoln chose to act based on his political instincts and knowledge of the war. It was a great gamble, with the future of the Union, of slavery, and of the presidency itself hanging in the balance.In this compelling narrative, Todd Brewster focuses on these critical six months to ask: was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that he freed the slaves? The clock is always ticking in these pages as Lincoln searches for the right moment to enact his proclamation and simultaneously turn the tide of war. Lincoln's Gamble portrays the president as an imperfect man with an unshakable determination to save a country he believed in, even as the course of the Civil War remained unknown.

    people do.Included in the Lincoln Collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential LibraryAbraham Lincoln is inescapably human, reliving the gauntlet of tragedy and abuse that should have consumed him, exposing his private reasons for standing firm on the brink of war.Seven-year-old Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood dies when his father drags their family from the relative comfort of Kentucky into an unforgiving Indiana wilderness. While suffering rebuke for teaching himself to read and write, Abraham endures rumors of illegitimate birth, escapes death a half-dozen times, labors to repay his father’s debts, and grieves the deaths of his infant brother, angel mother, precious sister, and beloved sweetheart.By his early thirties, he casts off his parents’ religion, becomes estranged from his closest friend, and loses faith in his own character when he breaks an engagement to marry a woman he doesn’t love. He spirals into life-threatening depression. In the prime of life, unable to keep a pledge made to his dying mother to become someone special, he wrestles with self-doubt, abandons politics, and resigns himself to a life of mediocrity. But when his long-time rival opens the door for slavery’s expansion across half the globe, Lincoln faces the greatest challenge of his life—his beloved country is being ripped apart.Grounded in historical record, the story is enriched by insights gleaned from the works of prominent Lincoln biographers—Harold Holzer, Michael Burlingame, Douglas Wilson, Allen Guelzo, and Joshua Shenk, to credit a few.

    After a devastating financial crisis, furious voters sent a new breed of politician to Washington. These young Republican firebrands, led by "Fighting Bob" La Follette of Wisconsin, vowed to overthrow the party leaders and purge Wall Street's corrupting influence from Washington. Their opponents called them "radicals," and "fanatics." They called themselves Progressives.President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of La Follette's confrontational methods. Fearful of splitting the party, he compromised with the conservative House Speaker, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, to pass modest reforms. But as La Follette's crusade gathered momentum, the country polarized, and the middle ground melted away. Three years after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt embraced La Follette's militant tactics and went to war against the Republican establishment, bringing him face to face with his handpicked successor, William Taft. Their epic battle shattered the Republican Party and permanently realigned the electorate, dividing the country into two camps: Progressive and Conservative.Unreasonable Men takes us into the heart of the epic power struggle that created the progressive movement and defined modern American politics. Recounting the fateful clash between the pragmatic Roosevelt and the radical La Follette, Wolraich's riveting narrative reveals how a few Republican insurgents broke the conservative chokehold on Congress and initiated the greatest period of political change in America's history.

    His pictures, actions, words in his speeches and his private letters are analyzed and pointed inward toward the person, to help us understand the man: the heart and soul of the man. This book is about the artifacts that are left us all these years later (letters, speeches and particularly pictures)-things that LIFE can show that allow us to know this man more intimately. And so we, with help from experts and several famous commentators, will show them in our pages, and lead the reader to the clues about Lincoln's essence.Includes chapters such as:"Lincoln Pictured," an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.A narrative by Allen C. Guelzo, explaining the man and his image-how the image reflects the true man"Who Was Mathew Brady?"-the famous photographer, his life and times, his truths and deceptions (before and after shots from the Gettysburg battlefield, detailing how he moved things around - even bodies - for dramatic impact)The words of Lincoln, in an artifact presentation with removable letters and speeches on archival paper that bring the reader back to the times"The Camera and the White House" - A fascinating chapter on American Presidents and their visual image - Thomas McAvoy's secret snaps of FDR, FDR hiding his legs, JFK's manipulation of photography taken of him, etc.The "book within a book" - the likes of David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Richard Norton Smith, Walter Isaacson, Jon Meachem, Macklemore, Brad Pitt, Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Gay Talese, Tom Wolf and more in answer to the question "When you see Lincoln's face, what do you see?"

    Relatively few academic historians, however, have devoted study to it, viewing the murder as a side note tied to neither the Civil War nor Reconstruction. Over time, the traditional story of the assassination has become littered with myths, from the innocence of Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd to John Wilkes Booth’s escape to Oklahoma or India, where he died by suicide several years later. In this succinct volume, Edward Steers, Jr. sets the record straight, expertly analyzing the historical evidence to explain Lincoln’s assassination.The decision to kill President Lincoln, Steers shows, was an afterthought. John Wilkes Booth’s original plan involved capturing Lincoln, delivering him to the Confederate leadership in Richmond, and using him as a bargaining chip to exchange for southern soldiers being held in Union prison camps. Only after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond fell to Union forces did Booth change his plan from capture to murder. As Steers explains, public perception about Lincoln’s death has been shaped by limited but popular histories that assert, alternately, that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton engineered the assassination or that John Wilkes Booth was a mad actor fueled by delusional revenge. In his detailed chronicle of the planning and execution of Booth’s plot, Steers demonstrates that neither Stanton nor anyone else in Lincoln’s sphere of political confidants participated in Lincoln’s death, and Booth remained a fully rational person whose original plan to capture Lincoln was both reasonable and capable of success. He also implicates both Mary Surratt and Samuel Mudd, as well as other conspirators, clarifying their parts in the scheme.At the heart of Lincoln’s assassination, Steers reveals, lies the institution of slavery. Lincoln’s move toward ending slavery and his unwillingness to compromise on emancipation spurred the white supremacist Booth and ultimately resulted in the president’s untimely death. With concise chapters and inviting prose, this brief volume will prove essential for anyone seeking a straightforward, authoritative analysis of one of the most dramatic events in American history.

    From his earliest days, Lincoln devoured newspapers. As he started out in politics he wrote editorials and letters to argue his case. He spoke to the public directly through the press. He even bought a German-language newspaper to appeal to that growing electorate in his state. Holzer shows us politicized newspaper editors battling for power, and a masterly president using the press to speak directly to the people and shape the nation.

    He was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence. But he was also a lawyer and an ambassador, an inventor and a scientist. He had a wide range of interests and hobbies, but his consuming interest was the survival and success of the United States. This book contains a note from Meacham and over 100 archival illustrations, as well as sections throughout the text about subjects such as the Boston Tea Party, the Library of Congress, and Napoléon Bonaparte. Additional materials include a time line; a family tree; a Who’s Who in Jefferson’s world; sections on Jefferson’s original writings and correspondence, “inventions,” interests, places in Jefferson’s world, finding Jefferson in the United States today, additional reading, organizations, and websites; notes; a bibliography; and an index. This adaptation, ideal for those interested in American presidents, biographies, and the founding of the American republic, is an excellent example of informational writing and reflects Meacham’s extensive research using primary source material. Praise for Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher “A solid resource for young people intrigued by Jefferson.” –Booklist  “Comprehensive and engaging.” –Scholastic Instructor “There is a surprising paucity of books about Jefferson at this level and this handsome, well-written, and engaging volume fills that literary gap.” –Horn Book “Wonderfully written and crafted... Entertaining for both kids and adults alike.” –KidsReads.com

    It unraveled and restitched the very fabric of the American life. It knocked down racial barriers, provided health care for the elderly and food for the poor, sustained orchestras and museums in cities across the country, and put seat belts and padded dashboards in every automobile. But it also carved the deep philosophical divide that has come to define the nation’s harsh politics.Half a century later, the policies of Lyndon Johnson continue to define politics and power in America. THE GREAT SOCIETY AT 50 is a series from The Washington Post that examines the legacy–and limits—of Johnson's deeply humanistic, and profoundly revolutionary social agenda.

    But between these two well-documented periods in office, there lies an eight-year patch of largely unexplored political wilderness. It was during this time, after all, that Taft somehow managed to rise from his ignominious defeat by both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming chief justice. In the first in-depth look at this period in Taft's singular career, eminent presidential historian Lewis L. Gould reveals how a man often derided for his lack of political acumen made his way through the hazards of Republican affairs to gain his objective.In the years between the presidency and the Supreme Court Taft was, as one commentator observed, the greatest of globe trotters for humanity. Gould tracks him as he crisscrosses the country from 1913 through the summer of 1921, the inveterate traveler reinventing himself as an elder Republican statesman with no visible political ambition beyond informing and serving the public. Taft was, however, working the long game, serving on the National War Labor Board, fighting for the League of Nations, teaching law and constitutional history at Yale, making up his differences with Roosevelt, all while negotiating the Republican Party's antipathy and his own intense dislike of Woodrow Wilson, whose wartime policies and battle for the league he was bound to support. Throughout, his judicial ambition shaped his actions, with surprising adroitness.This account of Taft's journey from the White House to the Supreme Court fills a large gap in our understanding of an important American politician and jurist. It also discloses how intricate and complicated public affairs had become during the era of World War I and its aftermath, an era in which William Howard Taft, as a shrewd commentator on the political scene, a resourceful practitioner of party politics, and a man of consummate ambition, made a significant and lasting mark.