Two white house maids, a remarkable mother and her daughter, reveal what it was really like upstairs, downstairs at the white house.

    Randall tells the fascinating tale of a man who turned an impoverished childhood into a life of creative rebellion. He follows Washington’s rise to greatness as he turns from managing plantations to becoming a professional soldier and eventually joining in the fight again taxation without representation, which would spark the American Revolution.

    Along the way they supported the careers of many of the world’s great surfers – from Midget Farrelly to Michael Peterson, Tom Curren to Damien Hardman, Pam Burridge to Stephanie Gilmore, and of course Tyler Wright and Mick Fanning.Bestselling surf writer Tim Baker tells this implausible story in an irresistible series of ripping yarns, offering rich life lessons, a maverick business primer and a wild ride of adventure, good times and outlandish ambitions spectacularly realised.The Rip Curl Story will make you want to surf more, travel further, follow through on that great business idea and pursue your own Search.

    I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room. I didn’t look back.”Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world’s deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive – and fast – because one wrong move would mean death.This is the insider account of what it’s like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.

    It is about the skinny little girl they called 'Gidget' who overcame a king tide of obstacles, from chronic fatigue and depression to debilitating injury and family tragedy, to become an icon in the male-dominated world of competitive surfing. Winner of a record seven women's world championships, she also blazed trails in the mountainous waves of Hawaii's outer reefs, earning respect where it mattered most-in the water. ...

    When Elizabeth Beisel watched the Olympics on television for the first time, she was seven years old in her parents’ living room. She decided right then and there she would compete at the Olympic Games one day. Eight years later, she made her first of three Olympic Teams as a fifteen-year-old. Despite her huge success in the sport, Elizabeth struggled with doubts, failures, and injuries throughout her entire swimming career. In Silver Lining, she he gives a compelling look inside the pressures that come with being an Olympian, and how she mentally conquered the stress of competing at the highest level for over a decade. From a small-town girl with a dream, to winning Olympic medals, Elizabeth gives you a glimpse inside her life as you’ve never seen it before. She is relatable, open, and honest, and her storytelling in Silver Lining> will leave you feeling emotional and inspired to pursue your own dreams, no matter who you are.  Reviews “Silver Lining is a story of amazing perseverance of one of the greatest leaders in our sports history.” – Rowdy Gaines “You will be inspired, and also discover why Elizabeth is one of the most respected athletes to grace a pool deck for Team USA.” – Katie Ledecky “Elizabeth wonderfully captures what it means to be an elite athlete. Silver Lining shows how perseverance, dedication, and a support team can help one overcome life’s biggest obstacles.” – Caeleb Dressel About the Author Elizabeth Beisel is a three-time Olympic swimmer and two-time Olympic medalist for the United States of America. Visit her at www.elizabethbeisel.com.

    Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man—who first achieved fame in his early twenties—is inextricably bound to his mythic status. Solidly grounded in Washington’s papers and exemplary in its brevity, this approachable biography is a superb introduction to the leader whose name has become synonymous with America.

    Smith describes Washington's struggle to preside over the bitter feud between Jefferson and Hamilton--two brilliant members of his cabinet--while attempting to distinguish the first presidency.

    Gemma died from acute myeloid leukaemia, just three days after being diagnosed.In Love, Interrupted, Simon is brutally honest about his journey through grief, and opens up about how close he came to ending his own life. Simon didn’t know how to carry on without Gemma; he just knew that, for the sake of his eight-year old son, he had to find a way …Love, Interrupted is a moving story of love, loss, faith, and family.

    He was famously militaristic, yet brokered peace between Russia and Japan. He started out an archconservative, yet came to champion progressive causes. These contradictions are not evidence of vacillating weakness: instead, they were the product of a restless mind bend on a continuous quest for self-improvement. In Theodore Roosevelt, historian Kathleen Dalton reveals a man with a personal and intellectual depth rarely seen in our public figures. She shows how Roosevelt’s struggle to overcome his frailties as a child helped to build his character, and offers new insights into his family life, uncovering the important role that Roosevelt’s second wife, Edith Carow, played in the development of his political career. She also shows how TR flirted with progressive reform and then finally commited himself to deep reform in the Bull Moose campaign of 1912. Incorporating the latest scholarship into a vigorous narrative, Dalton reinterprets both the man and his times to create an illuminating portrait that will change the way we see this great man and the Progressive Era.

    Johnson and American Liberalism provides a brief yet comprehensive treatment of the major events of Johnson's career but with a central focus on his role as the emblematic figure in the rise and fall of postwar American liberalism. The author includes 15 documents - Johnson's own speeches as well as assessments of the president and his programs by contemporaries and later scholars - that give readers the opportunity to examine LBJ's career firsthand and to evaluate its impact. The book also contains photographs and cartoons from the period, an LBJ chronology, a bibliography, and an index.

    Their philosophies were miles apart—Reagan intent on scaling back government, O’Neill fervent in defending it. Yet there was common ground too: long lunches shared on St. Patrick’s Day and a mutual respect—political and personal. Three days after Reagan’s shooting, Tip was the first outsider at the president’s bedside.Drawing not only on his own remarkable knowledge but on extensive interviews with those closest to his subjects, Matthews brings this unlikely friendship to life in his unique voice, rendering as lively and novelistic a read as Jack Kennedy and a timely object lesson in how bipartisan cooperation can work.

    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.

    Although the private lives of political couples have in our era become front-page news, the true story of this extraordinary and tragic first family has never been fully told. The Lincolns eclipses earlier accounts with riveting new information that makes husband and wife, president and first lady, come alive in all their proud accomplishments and earthy humanity. Epstein gives a fresh close-up view of the couple’s life in Springfield, Illinois (of their twenty-two years of marriage, all but six were spent there). We witness the troubled courtship of an aristocratic and bewitching Southern belle and a struggling young lawyer who concealed his great ambition with self-deprecating humor; the excitement and confusion of the newlyweds as they begin their marriage in a small room above a tavern, and the early signs of Mary’s instability and Lincoln’s moodiness; their joyful creation of a home on the edge of town as Lincoln builds his law practice and makes his first forays into politics. We discover their consuming ambition as Lincoln achieves celebrity status during his famed debates with Stephen A. Douglas, which lead to Lincoln’s election to the presidency. The Lincolns’ ascent to the White House brought both dazzling power and the slow, secret unraveling of the couple’s unique bond. The Lincolns dramatizes certain well-known events with stunning new immediacy: Mary’s shopping sprees, her defrauding of the public treasury to increase her budget, and her jealousy, which made enemies for her and problems for the president. Yet she was also a brilliant hostess who transformed the shabby White House into a social center crucial to the Union’s success. After the death of their little boy, not a year after Lincoln took office, Mary turned for solace to spirit mediums, but her grief drove her to the edge of madness. In the end, there was little left of the Lincolns’ relationship save their enduring devotion to each other and to their surviving children.Written with enormous sweep and striking imagery, The Lincolns is an unforgettable epic set at the center of a crucial American administration. It is also a heartbreaking story of how time and adversity can change people, and of how power corrupts not only morals but affections. Daniel Mark Epstein’s The Lincolns makes two immortal American figures seem as real and human as the rest of us.

    Roosevelt enjoyed a close relationship with his grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt. Now David shares personal family stories and photographs that show Eleanor as she really was.