ForMontezuma, leader of the Mexicans, April 21, 1519 (known in theirsophisticated astronomical system as 9 Wind Day) was the precise date ofa dire prophesy: the return of Quetzalcoatl, a fearsome god predictedto arrive by ship, from the East, with light skin, a black beard, robedin black—exactly as Cortés would. The ensuing drama is described byeminent historian Maurice Collis in a style that is equal parts storyand scholarship. Though its consequences have been treated by writers asdiverse as D.H. Lawrence and Charles Olson, never before have the factsof this event been rendered with such extraordinary clarity andelegance.

    Of the 50 million killed in World War II, nearly 70 percent were innocent civilians, many as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.The horror of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted in the nineteenth century, which saw the eighteenth century end with the American Revolution bringing about the creation of the first classical liberal government in the world. What bought it about? How can it be prevented in the future? These are the concerns that animate this work.Denson recounts how the wars that destroyed American liberty came about through a series of deceitful political ploys. He discusses how Lincoln worked to provoke the South into firing the first shot, and how he used that shot as the pretext for total war. Wilson learned from this experience in working to get the US involved in World War I, which established a precedent for the planning state. FDR similarly engaged in political maneuvering to prepare a reluctant public for war.Denson provides a close examination of the rise of executive dictatorship, and demonstrates how far from the founders' vision of government we have come. It explains how world peace can only come through the practice of free trade and free markets, and why large government can only create conflict both domestic and international.The Denson book is a wonderful presentation of a position that was more mainstream in the 1930s and the 1990s: the unity of libertarian economics with a pro-peace foreign policy position. This position is far too rare in American life. This eye-opening treatment of history will go a long way toward restoring this proper libertarian perspective in American life.

    Senate an empty chamber; politicians have lamented that the institution is broken--yet the Senate was once capable of greatness. Senators of the 1960s and '70s overcame southern opposition to civil rights, passed Great Society legislation, and battled the executive branch on Vietnam, Watergate, and its abuses of power. The right's sweep of the 1980 elections shattered that Senate, leaving a diminished institution in its wake. Ira Shapiro spent 12 years working for Senators Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller. The Last Great Senate is his vivid portrait of the statesmen who helped steer America during the crisis years of the late 1970s, transcending partisanship and overcoming procedural roadblocks that have all but strangled the Senate since their departure. The Last Great Senate is necessary reading for all those who wonder how the Senate used to work and what happened to the world's greatest deliberative body.

    From Harvey Girls to homesteaders, ranchers to rodeo champions, and miners to merchants, to name a few. An enjoyable, inspiring quick read including humorous short stories written by the author’s father, Verner G. Benson about early days in Arizona. Settings include Flagstaff, Williams, Oak Creek Canyon, Jerome, Sedona, Roosevelt Dam, Cottonwood, Tonalea (Navajo Reservation), Valle, Kirkland Junction and Grand Canyon.

    These sea raiders, or ‘corsairs’ as they were known, sought captives to enslave in the Ottoman Empire’s galleys, mines and harems. When reports circulated of white Christians being shackled to oars, smashing rocks in mines and being sold into sexual slavery, the American public became incensed. The leaders of the young republic were forced to act and with remarkable dexterity built a fleet of ships that grew into a fighting force powerful enough to withstand its first major test: The Barbary Wars.*Includes annotations and images.

    He’s become a wealthy businessman and politician, with a beautiful wife and family, but the American Revolution looms on the horizon. When a prominent British leader mysteriously disappears, Ben Franklin summons Matt to London to help investigate the involvement of Patrick Ferguson, a man whose ambitions are to change the future. Unknown to them all, another time traveler, with separate motivations, will join them in a struggle across two continents to change the destiny of Western Civilization.

    In both the depth and sophistication of intellect that they brought to politics and in the titanic conflict they waged with each other, Roosevelt and Wilson were, like Hamilton and Jefferson before them, the political architects for an entire century.All previous efforts to treat the philosophies and programs of Roosevelt's New Nationalism and Wilson's New Freedom have been partial and episodic. Now John Milton Cooper reconstructs in parallel lines the entire range of their ideologies and their struggles--their social identification in terms of class, education, and regional roots; the origins and evolution of their political thought; their party leadership roles; and their psychological characters.After tracking the shared identities of young manhood, Cooper explains the conflict of their mature years that developed from opposing philosophies of government. Not until 1912, when Wilson ran for president, did they come together partially and briefly on common practical grounds of reform of the political process and efforts to curb big business in the public interest. Later, foreign policy in particular pitted them in a deeper conflict that consumed the rest of their lives.

    He was the embodiment of the Enlightment man, the perfect synthesis of classicist, scientist, and visionary. How can we hope to understand such a towering figure? The Sage of Monticello, deified in American politics, speaks across the ages like a patriotic Moses, or Buddha, or Christ.Or so his disciples would have us believe.The real Thomas Jefferson was an ordinary man, with all the usual failings. Molded by the culture of the Virginia planter class, he fought against tyranny while oppressing his own slaves. He institutionalized racist attitudes, bickered with his rivals, lusted after other men's wives, and kept his own mixed-race children in bondage.Yet his accomplishments are too spectacular to be denied. The Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, he even abolished taxes (for awhile). As a Founding Father, his contributions eclipsed all the rest. Without Jefferson, the American experiment might have ended before it began. So how can we make sense of his personal failings in the context of his great works?Thomas Jefferson: The Failures and Greatness of an Ordinary Man looks at Jefferson from the ground up, finding handholds in his love of Greek literature and fine wine, his affection for friends and family, and the compromises he deemed necessary for the survival of the nation. By exploring his relationships, the reader is invited into Jefferson's sanctum sanctorum, to stare unblinking at his complexity and follow truth where it leads.

    Now, Karen Harper tells the tale of Consuelo Vanderbilt, her “The Wedding of the Century” to the Duke of Marlborough, and her quest to find meaning behind “the glitter and the gold.”On a cold November day in 1895, a carriage approaches St Thomas Episcopal Church on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Massive crowds surge forward, awaiting their glimpse of heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. Just 18, the beautiful bride has not only arrived late, but in tears, yet her marriage to the aloof Duke of Marlborough proceeds. Bullied into the wedding by her indomitable mother, Alva, Consuelo loves another. But a deal was made, trading some of the vast Vanderbilt wealth for a title and prestige, and Consuelo, bred to obey, realizes she must make the best of things.At Blenheim Palace, Consuelo is confronted with an overwhelming list of duties, including producing an “heir and a spare,” but her relationship with the duke quickly disintegrates. Consuelo finds an inner strength, charming everyone from debutantes to diplomats including Winston Churchill, as she fights for women’s suffrage. And when she takes a scandalous leap, can she hope to attain love at last…?From the dawning of the opulent Gilded Age, to the battles of the Second World War, American Duchess is a riveting tale of one woman’s quest to attain independence—at any price.

    But by the year 1900, a new type of lawyer was born, one who understood business as well as the law. Working hand in glove with their clients, over the next two decades these New York City "white shoe" lawyers devised and implemented legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the twentieth century. These lawyers were architects of the monopolistic new corporations so despised by many, and acted as guardians who helped the kings of industry fend off government overreaching. Yet they also quietly steered their robber baron clients away from a "public be damned" attitude toward more enlightened corporate behavior during a period of progressive, turbulent change in America.Author John Oller, himself a former Wall Street lawyer, gives us a richly-written glimpse of turn-of-the-century New York, from the grandeur of private mansions and elegant hotels and the city's early skyscrapers and transportation systems, to the depths of its deplorable tenement housing conditions. Some of the biggest names of the era are featured, including business titans J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, lawyer-statesmen Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson.Among the colorful, high-powered lawyers vividly portrayed, White Shoe focuses on three: Paul Cravath, who guided his client George Westinghouse in his war against Thomas Edison and launched a new model of law firm management--the "Cravath system"; Frank Stetson, the "attorney general" for financier J. P. Morgan who fiercely defended against government lawsuits to break up Morgan's business empires; and William Nelson Cromwell, the lawyer "who taught the robber barons how to rob," and was best known for his instrumental role in creating the Panama Canal.In White Shoe, the story of this small but influential band of Wall Street lawyers who created Big Business is fully told for the first time.

    Kennedy presented an idea to a crowd of restless students for an organization that would rally American youth in service. Though the speech lasted barely three minutes, his germ of an idea morphed dramatically into Kennedy's most enduring legacy -- the Peace Corps. From this offhand campaign remark, shaped speedily by President Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, in 1961, the organization ascended with remarkable excitement and publicity, attracting the attention of thousands of hopeful young Americans. Not an institutional history, "When the World Calls" is the first complete and balanced look at the Peace Corps's first fifty years. Revelatory and candid, Stanley Meisler's engaging narrative exposes Washington infighting, presidential influence, and the Volunteers' unique struggles abroad. Meisler deftly unpacks the complicated history with sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes, taking readers on a global trek starting with the historic first contingent of Volunteers to Ghana on August 30, 1961. The Peace Corps has served as an American emblem for world peace and friendship, yet few realize that it has sometimes tilted its agenda to meet the demands of the White House. Tracing its history through the past nine presidential administrations, Meisler discloses, for instance, how Lyndon Johnson became furious when Volunteers opposed his invasion of the Dominican Republic; he reveals how Richard Nixon literally tried to destroy the Peace Corps, and how Ronald Reagan endeavored to make it an instrument of foreign policy in Central America. But somehow the ethos of the Peace Corps endured, largely due to the perseverance of the 200,000 Volunteers themselves, whose shared commitment to effect positive global change has been a constant in one of our most complex--and valued--institutions.

    

    Fearing violence after the Senate defeated the "bonus bill," Herbert Hoover's Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, led tanks through the streets on July 28 to evict the bonus marchers.Through seminal research, including interviews with the last surviving witnesses, Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen tell the full story of the Bonus Army, recovering the voices of ordinary men who dared tilt at powerful injustice. The march ultimately transformed the nation, inspiring Congress to pass the GI Bill of Rights in 1944, one of the most important pieces of social legislation in our history, which in large part created America's middle class.

    

    government—an usher in the White House. For more than 200 years, a small office has operated on the State Floor of the White House Executive Residence. Known as the Usher's Office, whose mission is to accommodate the personal needs of the first family, and to make the White House feel like a home. The Usher's Office is the managing office of the Executive Residence and its staff of 90-plus. The staff consists of butlers, carpenters, grounds personnel, electricians, painters, plumbers, florists, maids, housemen, cooks, chefs, storekeepers, curators, calligraphers, doormen, and administrative support. Ushers work closely with the first family, senior staff, Social Office, Press Office, Secret Service Agency, and military leaders to carry out White House functions: luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions, meetings, conferences, and more. Chris Emery was only the 18th White House Usher since 1891, and had the honor and privilege to serve presidential families for three years during the Reagan administration, four years for President H. W. Bush, and 14 months under President Clinton. His vignettes recreate intimate White House happenings from an insider’s viewpoint. Chris Emery was the only White House Usher to be terminated in the 20th century. Turn the pages to find out which first lady fired him... “With his book, White House Usher: Stories from the Inside, former usher Chris Emery gives his readers a peek inside what happens upstairs at the White House. Chris’ anecdotes tell a rich story of how America’s house really is the First Families’ home. I loved my trip down memory lane.” - Former First Lady Barbara Bush (October 2017)