Book picks similar to
China Doll Clinton, Gore And The Selling Of The U.S. Presidency by Roger Canfield
presidents
american-history
politics
The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z
Phil Valentine - 2008
The Conservative's Handbook provides a conservative viewpoint on a wide range of issues: guns, global warming, drugs, partial birth abortion, education, political correctness, entrepreneurs, and the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. If, as some have said, conservatives are ruled by facts and liberals by emotions, one would be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of the aphorism than popular radio talk-show host Phil Valentine's The Conservative's Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z. The Conservative's Handbook provides a conservative viewpoint on a wide range of issues and ideas: Guns Global warming Drugs Partial birth abortion Education Political correctness Entrepreneurs And the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. The knowledge Valentine imparts is more than just information - it's ammunition for conservatives when they are caught up in discussions with friends and arguments with those on the Left. Many arguments between liberals and conservatives degenerate into name-calling and unsubstantiated claims. The Conservative's Handbook distills those raw emotions and extraneous thoughts into a cohesive argument for conservative principles and values, covering the full array of today's fiscal and social issues in a manner that is comprehensive without being overwhelming.
All It Takes Is Guts
Walter E. Williams - 1988
Williams destroys a number of prevailing social myths and explains why the nature of congressmen is not to act in the national interest.
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents
William DeGregorio - 1984
A factual look at all our chief executives, from George Washington to our current president.
The Sympathy Wave
P.R. Ganapathy - 2013
Rohit is not just his party’s next Prime Ministerial candidate, but also a reluctant heir to his family’s political legacy. Soon after, the wreckage of the plane is discovered scattered over the Rajasthan desert, sending the media as well the nation’s public into a tizzy. As Rohit’s sister sweeps the general elections, riding a massive wave of public sympathy, some uncomfortable questions remain. Who is behind this audacious plan? What could be the reason behind this high-profile assassination? The proverbial finger seems to point at India’s geopolitical enemy, Pakistan, but not everyone is convinced. Anwar Islam reunites with his mentor Colonel Vijay Gupta, and his friend Vishal Karandikar to find the missing pieces of this puzzle. As the trio explores the dark alleys hidden behind the façade of India’s seat of power, unbelievable conspiracies come to light. A gripping thriller, The Sympathy Wave takes it reader into the heart of political India to uncover a nest of intrigues.
The Great Clippers
Jane D. Lyon - 2016
These wealthy men had founded the first banks in the United States and built its first railroads, factories, and steamships. Now, they were to cap their achievements by making their young country equally superior in size, and in the process, producing the greatest, swiftest, and most beautiful craft the world had ever seen - the clipper ship. This book not only traces the origins and achievements of the clipper but enlivens the dry bones of historic fact with the flesh and blood of clipper captains and crews. A great era comes to life with their courageous, tenacious stories.
Presidential Lottery: The Reckless Gamble in Our Electoral System
James A. Michener - 1969
Michener details the reckless gamble U.S. voters make every four years: trusting the electoral college. In 1968, Michener served as a presidential elector in Pennsylvania. What he witnessed that fall disturbed him so much that he felt compelled to expose the very real potential in this system for a grave injustice with history-altering consequences. Incorporating the wide-ranging insight and universal compassion of Michener’s bestselling novels, Presidential Lottery is essential reading for every American concerned about the ever-growing rift between the people and the political process. Praise for Presidential Lottery
“Clear, concise, and sensible . . . a thoughtful book on how Americans choose their President.”—The New York Times “An urgent appeal.”—Kirkus Reviews
The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews
James Reston Jr. - 2007
Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach of prosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite and unconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of any wrongdoing and certain that history would remember his great accomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of the Vietnam War—and forget his “mistake,” the “pipsqueak thing” called Watergate.In 1977, three years after his resignation, Nixon agreed to a series of interviews with television personality David Frost. Conducted over twelve days, they resulted in twenty-eight hours of taped material, which were aired on prime-time television and watched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Nixon, a skilled lawyer by training, was paid $1 million for the interviews, confident that this exposure would launch him back into public life. Instead, they sealed his fate as a political pariah.James Reston, Jr., was David Frost’s Watergate advisor for the interiews, and The Conviction of Richard Nixon is his intimate, behind-the-scenes account of his involvement. Originally written in 1977 and published now for the first time, this book helped inspire Peter Morgan’s hit play Frost/Nixon. Reston doggedly researched the voluminous Watergate record and worked closely with Frost to develop the interrogation strategy. Even at the time, Reston recognized the historical importance of the Frost/Nixon interviews; they would result either in Nixon’s de facto conviction and vindication for the American people, or in his exoneration and public rehabilitation in the hands of a lightweight. Focused, driven, and committed to exposing the truth, Reston worked tirelessly to arm Frost with the information he needed to force Nixon to admit his culpability. In The Conviction of Richard Nixon, Reston provides a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall account of his involvement in the Nixon interviews as David Frost’s Watergate adviser. Written in 1977 immediately following these celebrated television interviews and published now for the first time, The Conviction of Richard Nixon explains how a British journalist of waning consequence drove the famously wily and formidable Richard Nixon to say, in an apparent personal epiphany, “I have impeached myself.”From the Hardcover edition.
The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution
Naftali Bendavid - 2007
The Thumpin’ is the story of that historic victory and the man at the center on whom Democratic hopes hinged: Congressman Rahm Emanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid had exclusive access to Emanuel and the DCCC in the year and a half leading up to the elections and ended up with the story of a lifetime, the thrilling blow-by-blow account of how Emanuel remade the campaign in his own ferocious image. Responsible for everything from handpicking Congressional candidates to raising money for attack ads, Emanuel, a talented ballet dancer better known in Washington for his extraordinary intensity and his inexhaustible torrents of profanity, threw out the playbook on the way Democrats run elections.Instead of rallying the base, Rahm sought moderate-to-conservative candidates who could attract more traditional voters. Instead of getting caught in the Democrats’ endless arguments about their positions, he went on the attack, personally vilifying Republicans from Tom DeLay to Christopher Shays. And instead of abiding by the gentlemen’s agreements of good-old-boy Washington, he broke them, attacking his counterpart in the Republican party and challenging Howard Dean, the chairman of his own party. In 2005, no one believed victory was within the Democrats’ grasp. But as the months passed, Republicans were caught in wave after wave of scandal, support for the war in Iraq steadily declined, and the president’s poll numbers plummeted. And in Emanuel, the Democrats finally had a killer, a ruthless closer like Karl Rove or Lee Atwater, poised to seize the advantage and deliver what President Bush would call “a thumpin.’”Taking its cues from classic political page-turners like Showdown at Gucci Gulch and documentaries like The War Room, The Thumpin’ takes us inside the key races and the national strategy-making that moved the Democrats from forecasted gains of three seats in 2005 to a sweeping gain of thirty seats when the votes were finally counted. Through this masterful account of Rahm’s rout, Bendavid shows how the lessons the Democrats learned in 2006—to fight for every vote, to abandon litmus tests, and to take no prisoners—will be crucial to the party’s future electoral success, and shape the political course the nation will take in the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.
The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream (Kindle Single)
Will Bunch - 2015
How did Bernie Sanders make it out of the backwoods of Vermont – where he lived for a time in a ramshackle off-road “sugar shack” with no electricity, and where he never got more than 6 percent of the vote in a string of doomed, fringe far-left campaigns in the 1970s – to become a leading contender in the 2016 race for the White House? And perhaps more importantly for author Will Bunch, how did this gruff and sometimes didactic gray-haired political survivor make it out of the 1960s and ‘70s to become the last torch-bearer of the youthful idealism of that nearly lost “Age of Aquarius” – The One who didn’t drop out, sell out…or simply give up? In the fall of 2015, Bunch – with the voices of the late Hunter S. Thompson and the other iconic “New Journalists” of that lost era ringing in his ears – set out on a road trip that took him from the battlefields of northern Virginia to the salty air of backwater Boston to the neon sky of the Las Vegas Strip, all to get to the bottom of “The Bern Identity.” He follows the long strange trip of Bernie Sanders – a kid from a cramped Brooklyn flat who couldn’t tell a lie in school, who mourned the migration of his beloved Dodgers and was shaken up by “Death of a Salesman,” who became a campus radical, a dreamer of revolutions, and then almost disappeared before his improbable election of mayor of Burlington in 1981. Sanders’ remarkable bio is interspersed with the tale of the true believers who packed hockey rinks and concrete convention floors in crowds of 20,000 or more, who tweeted incessantly and posted memes of Sanders flying in coach class, and who exploded with excitement at their hero’s call for a “political revolution” to raise the beleaguered middle class. In a time of rampant cynicism about American politics, “The Bern Identity” turns into something most unlikely – a love story, between the long-distance runner who never gave up his fantasy of real social change, and the dreamers and the radicals and the formerly hopeless who were waiting for him at the finish line.THE AUTHOR Will Bunch is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News – where he writes the popular political blog Attytood – and also shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting in 1992 when he was at New York Newsday. He is the author of two other Kindle Singles: October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and Give It To Steve!, about the 1948 Philadelphia Eagles winning the NFL title during a raging blizzard. His full-length books include The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, and Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Los Angeles Times, American Prospect, American Journalism Review, and elsewhere. He lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his family.
Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies
J.B. West - 1973
B. West, chief usher of the White House, directed the operations and maintenance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—and coordinated its daily life—at the request of the president and his family. He directed state functions; planned parties, weddings and funerals, gardens and playgrounds, and extensive renovations; and with a large staff, supervised every activity in the presidential home. For twenty-eight years, first as assistant to the chief usher, then as chief usher, he witnessed national crises and triumphs, and interacted daily with six consecutive presidents and first ladies, their parents, children and grandchildren, and houseguests—including friends, relatives, and heads of state.In Upstairs at the White House, West offers an absorbing and novel glimpse at America’s first families, from the Roosevelts to the Kennedys andthe Nixons. Alive with anecdotes ranging from the quotidian (Lyndon B. Johnson’s showerheads) to the tragic (the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination), West’s book is an enlightening and rich account of the American history that took place just behind the Palladian doors of the North Portico.
101 Indisputable Facts Proving Donald Trump Is An Idiot: A brief background of the most spectacularly unqualified person to ever occupy the White House.
Guy Fawkes - 2018
Here’s a quick guide and easily digestible list of his lies, moronic comments and stupid moves – both past and present – proving he’s by far the least qualified leader in our nation’s history. “101 Facts” was assembled by a group of independent journalists with nearly a century of combined experience. This isn’t an opinion piece. It’s a catalog of actual statements made by Trump in his own words that leave no doubt as to exactly who this person is and why he doesn’t belong in Washington, in business or in civilized society. Part of the proceeds from this book support anti-Trump groups nationwide. Readers who can’t afford the modest price can still read the book entirely free by visiting DCIdiots.com, a new website created to catalog the ongoing misdoings of Trump and other Washington idiots who are being supported by your tax dollars. When your friends ask why you hate Trump, now you’ll have an instant catalog of reasons, along with a website tracking the ongoing insult to America that is the Trump administration. Check out the book, sign up for the online free newsletter, and keep track of the enemies of wisdom with short, easily digestible and sometimes humorous stories delivered weekly to your inbox. Martin Luther King once said, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Don’t be silent. Buy the book, stay informed and support those supporting you.
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents
Cormac O'Brien - 2003
Presidents features outrageous and uncensored profiles of the men in the White House - complete with hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts.
The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty
Peter Schweizer - 2004
President George W. Bush leads our nation in a time of unprecedented peril. But how well do we really know him or his remarkable family, whose history often mirrors the history of America? Now, in the first full-scale biography of the Bushes, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer trace the extraordinary trajectory of their rise to power. Through a series of exclusive, surprisingly candid interviews with members of the family and close friends, the inner workings of this very private family are revealed: their marriages and friendships; the intense sibling rivalry between George W. and Jeb Bush; divisions between father and son over the Iraq war; even Jeb Bush's plans to run for president in 2008. Never-before-seen private photos add even greater detail and depth to this fascinating family portrait. And above all, we see George W. Bush the way his family does, as an intensely driven person who has a much more complex relationship with his father than has often been portrayed in the media. Family members talk about how he deals with the stresses of the war on terrorism, why he sees it as a "religious war," and how his personal faith influences what he says and does. The Schweizers also delve into the Bushes' sensitive and secret business dealings, including their long history of involvement in the oil business. Their shrewd alliances with other American dynasties--including the Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Tafts--have all helped to quietly consolidate their power within the Republican Party.Indeed, what makes the Bushes so successful is that they function less like the great political families before them andmore like a high-tech startup: free-flowing, pragmatic, and opportunistic. It is this distinction that assures them an enduring presence on the nation's political stage, making "The Bushes" essential reading for anyone who cares about America's future.
The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln
C.A. Tripp - 2005
A. Tripp, a highly regarded sex researcher and colleague of Alfred Kinsey, and author of the runaway bestseller "The Homosexual Matrix," devoted the last ten years of his life to an exhaustive study of Abraham Lincoln's writings and of scholarship about Lincoln, in search of hidden keys to his character. In "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," completed just weeks before he died, Tripp offers a full examination of Lincoln's inner life and relationships that, as Dr. Jean Baker argues in the Introduction, "will define the issue for years to come." Throughout this riveting work, new details are revealed about Lincoln's relations with a number of men. Long-standing myths are debunked convincingly -- in particular, the myth that Lincoln's one true love was Ann Rutledge, who died tragically young. Ultimately, Tripp argues that Lincoln's unorthodox loves and friendships were tied to his maverick beliefs about religion, slavery, and even ethics and morals. As Tripp argues, Lincoln was an "invert": a man who consistently turned convention on its head, who drew his values not from the dominant conventions of society, but from within.For years, a whisper campaign has mounted about Abraham Lincoln, focusing on his intimate relationships. He was famously awkward around single women. He was engaged once before Mary Todd, but his fiance e called off the marriage on the grounds that he was "lacking in smaller attentions." His marriage to Mary was troubled. Meanwhile, throughout his adult life, he enjoyed close relationships with a number of men. He shared a bed with oshua Speed for four years as a young man, and -- as Tripp details here -- he shared a bed with an army captainwhile serving in the White House, when Mrs. Lincoln was away. As one Washington socialite commented in her diary, "What stuff!"This study reaches far beyond a brief about Lincoln's sexuality: it is an attempt to make sense of the whole man, as never before. It includes an Introduction by Jean Baker, biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln, and an Afterword containing reactions by two Lincoln scholars and one clinical psychologist and longtime acquaintance of C.A. Tripp. As Michael Chesson explains in one of the Afterword essays, "Lincoln was different from other men, and he knew it. More telling, virtually every man who knew him at all well, long before he rose to prominence, recognized it. In fact, the men who claimed to know him best, if honest, usually admitted that they did not understand him." Perhaps only now, when conventions of intimacy are so different, so open, and so much less rigid than in Lincoln's day, can Lincoln be fully understood.