Black Boy


Richard Wright - 1945
    An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey


Kamala Harris - 2019
    The daughter of immigrants, she was raised in an Oakland, California community that cared deeply about social justice; her parents--an esteemed economist from Jamaica and an admired cancer researcher from India--met as activists in the civil rights movement when they were graduate students at Berkeley. Growing up, Harris herself never hid her passion for justice, and when she became a prosecutor out of law school, a deputy district attorney, she quickly established herself as one of the most innovative change agents in American law enforcement. She progressed rapidly to become the elected District Attorney for San Francisco, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the state of California as a whole. Known for bringing a voice to the voiceless, she took on the big banks during the foreclosure crisis, winning a historic settlement for California's working families. Her hallmarks were applying a holistic, data-driven approach to many of California's thorniest issues, always eschewing stale "tough on crime" rhetoric as presenting a series of false choices. Neither "tough" nor "soft" but smart on crime became her mantra. Being smart means learning the truths that can make us better as a community, and supporting those truths with all our might. That has been the pole star that guided Harris to a transformational career as the top law enforcement official in California, and it is guiding her now as a transformational United States Senator, grappling with an array of complex issues that affect her state, our country, and the world, from health care and the new economy to immigration, national security, the opioid crisis, and accelerating inequality.By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in The Truths We Hold a master class in problem-solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader


Elinore Pruitt Stewart - 1914
    Stewart's captivating missives from her homestead in Wyoming bring to full life the beauty, isolation, and joys of working the prairie.

Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate


Gary J. Byrne - 2016
    Now that a second Clinton administration threatens -- their scheme from the very beginning -- Byrne exposes what he saw of the real Hillary Clinton.While serving as a Secret Service Officer, Gary Byrne protected President Bill Clinton and the First Family in the White House and outside the Oval Office. There, he saw the political and personal machinations of Bill and Hillary Clinton and those who were fiercely loyal to them. In CRISIS OF CHARACTER Byrne provides a firsthand account of the scandals--known and unknown--and daily trials ranging from the minor to national in scale.Having witnessed the personal and political dysfunction of the Clinton White House--so consumed by scandal and destroying their enemies, real and imagined--Byrne came to understand that, to the Clintons, governing was an afterthought. He now tells this story--before voters go to the polls--in the hopes that Clinton supporters will understand the real Hillary Clinton.

Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment


Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston - 1973
    Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In."Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention—and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush


Frank Bruni - 2002
    Bush.As the principal New York Times reporter assigned to cover George W. Bush's presidential campaign from its earliest stages – and then as a White House correspondent – Frank Bruni has spent as much time around Bush over the last two years as any other reporter.In Ambling Into History, Bruni paints the most thorough, balanced, eloquent and lively portrait yet of a man in many ways ill–suited to the office he sought and won, focusing on small moments that often escaped the news media's notice. From the author's initial introduction to Bush through a nutty election night and Bush's first months in office, Bruni captures the president's familiar and less familiar oddities and takes readers on an often funny, usually irreverent, journey into the strange, closed universe – or bubble – of campaign life.The result is an original take on the political process and a detailed study of George W. Bush as most people have never seen him.

The Roosevelt Myth


John T. Flynn - 1948
    Like other academics they tend to be overwhelmingly on the left. "Left-liberal historians worship political power, and idolize those who wield it most lavishly in the service of left-liberal causes." (Higgs) Why should it be surprising that they venerate Roosevelt and try to get a credulous public to do the same? For a rather different view, the reader can now turn to The Roosevelt Myth, which was and, after half a century, remains the major debunking of Franklin Roosevelt.

Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away from It All


Dan Bongino - 2013
    "He swore to take a bullet for the President and left it all behind to take a bullet for the American people"  Why would a successful, twelve-year Secret Service agent resign his position in the prime of his career to run for political office against all the odds?  New York Times bestseller, Life Inside the Bubble is an intimate look at life inside the presidential “bubble,” a haze of staffers, consultants, cronies, acolytes, bureaucrats and lobbyists that creates the “alternate reality” in which monumental policy decisions are made. And it is the story of a dedicated Secret Service professional who, after years inside the “bubble,” walked away in favor of sounding a clarion call to the American people in defense of sane government and the US Constitution.    Finally, why the Fast & Furious scandal, the bombings in Boston and the terrorist attacks in Benghazi are harbingers of what’s to come without a bold change in direction.

Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence


Carol Berkin - 2005
    In this groundbreaking history, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict.The women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers and fathers died. Yet Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.

Leaders


Richard M. Nixon - 1983
    At the time cameras and reporters were present. But how much more would we have learned if we could have traveled the globe with Richard Nixon and met privately with others who have shaped the modern world?Richard Nixon knew virtually every major foreign leader since World War II—some at the pinnacle of power, some during their “years in the wilderness” out of power, and still others toward the end of their lives. His was an unparalleled opportunity to gain insight into the nature of the powerful and qualities of leadership.In Leaders, Nixon shares these insights and experiences. He illustrates these leaders in private, assesses their careers, recalls words of wisdom, and brings to bear his own judgments. We meet the co-architects of the New Japan, Douglas MacArthur and Shigeru Yoshida. Encountering the legendary leaders of China—Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Chiang Kai-shek—we see the men behind the events. We see the intensely private Charles DeGaulle; explore the philosophies of Konraud Adenauer; confront Leonid Brezhnev; and delight in the company of Winston Churchill—not to mention Nixon’s analyses of interactions with dozens of other leaders.No one but Richard Nixon could have written this book. It is at once as personal as a handclasp and as objective as only so earnest a student of history could have made it.

The Age of Jackson


Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. - 1946
    While working in the Kennedy White House, he found time to review movies for Show magazine. He also admitted his mistakes. One, he said, was neglecting to mention President Jackson’s brutal treatment of the Indians in his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Age of Jackson.” It was published when he was 27, and is still standard reading. The book rejected earlier interpretations linking the rise of Jacksonian democracy with westward expansion. Instead, it gave greater importance to a coalition of intellectuals and workers in the Northeast who were determined to check the growing power of business. The book sold more than 90,000 copies in its first year and won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for history.

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years


Carl Sandburg - 1939
    Representing a lifetime of study by the great American poet, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years distills Sandburg's monumental six volume set into a single one-book edition. By gleaning every possible reference from history, literature, and popular lore, Sandburg successfully captures not only the legendary president, but also Lincoln the man. He reveals exactly who Lincoln was, and what forces in his life shaped his personality. More than 100 black-and-white historical photographs and linecuts show Lincoln himself, the places he went, and the people who knew him.

The Revolution: A Manifesto


Ron Paul - 2008
    In fact, they said so quite clearly in the Constitution of the United States of America. Unfortunately, that beautiful, ingenious, and revolutionary document is being ignored more and more in Washington. If we are to enjoy peace, freedom, and prosperity once again, we absolutely must return to the principles upon which America was founded. But finally, there is hope . . . In THE REVOLUTION, Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has exposed the core truths behind everything threatening America, from the real reasons behind the collapse of the dollar and the looming financial crisis, to terrorism and the loss of our precious civil liberties. In this book, Ron Paul provides answers to questions that few even dare to ask.Despite a media blackout, this septuagenarian physician-turned-congressman sparked a movement that has attracted a legion of young, dedicated, enthusiastic supporters . . . a phenomenon that has amazed veteran political observers and made more than one political rival envious. Candidates across America are already running as "Ron Paul Republicans.""Dr. Paul cured my apathy," says a popular campaign sign. THE REVOLUTION may cure yours as well.

Dispatches


Michael Herr - 1977
    Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates


Ralph Louis Ketcham - 1986
     Edited and introduced by Ralph Ketcham.