Here are 34 of the most significant issues it has grappled with—from equal rights to privacy rights, from the limits of speech to the boundaries between church and state. Many of these cases read like thrillers…right down to their cliff-hanging endings. Among the most intriguing: the Dred Scott decision, Miranda v. Arizona, Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, and Bush v. Gore.

    Joesten carefully documents the little-known facts behind Johnson's involvement in scandals stretching back to his first stolen election in 1948, thru the Bobby Baker, Billy Sol Estes and Walter Jenkins affairs, and culminates with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Included are LBJ's connection to mobsters, big Texas oil, political graft and corruption, blackmailing of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and a disturbing number of murders committed by his henchmen for LBJ's personal gain.FROM THE BOOK:The true nature of Lyndon B. Johnson has long been hidden from the public through the frenzied efforts of highly paid P.R. wizards and artificial image-builders. William Manchester came closer than most other people to seeing through the benign public relations mask of Lyndon Johnson, but one wouldn't know it from scanning the pages of 'The Death of a President'.If there are two persons in the world who have really come to know Johnson at close quarters, outside of his own family, they are Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy. Manchester interviewed both of them at length and they told him, without mincing their words, what they thought of That Man in the White House. But when Manchester, having faithfully recorded everything the Kennedys had told him, rushed into print with his story, years ahead of schedule, they both got panicky and practically forced him to 'revise' his story out of recognition.Edward J. Epstein, the author of Inquest, somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the original, unedited manuscript of the Manchester book, then entitled 'Death of a Lancer', and revealed in the July issue 1967 of Commentary, some of its contents.In his original draft, Manchester, it seems, made some very pungent remarks about Lyndon Johnson whom he described, among other things, as a 'chameleon who constantly changes loyalties'; 'a capon' and 'a crafty schemer who has a gaunt, hunted look about him'.He also pictured Johnson as 'a full-fledged hypomaniac' and 'the crafty seducer with six nimble hands who can persuade a woman to surrender her favors in the course of a long conversation confined to obscure words. No woman, even a lady, can discern his intentions until the critical moment'.By far the most interesting aspect of this matter, however, is Epstein's contention that Manchester's original theme, which gave unity to his book, was 'the notion that Johnson, the successor, was somehow responsible for the death-of his predecessor'.Several quotations from the original draft bear out this contention. At one point, the Lancer version states, 'The shattering fact of the assassination is that a Texas murder has made a Texan President'.At another, Kenneth O'Donnell, Kennedy's appointments secretary, is quoted as exclaiming 'They did it. I always knew they'd do it. You couldn't expect anything else from them. They finally made it'.Then Manchester comments: 'He didn't specify who "they" were. It was unnecessary. They were Texans, Johnsonians'.But what is one to think of an author who allows his most important work not only to be castrated, but to be turned completely upside down by a publisher more committed to the dictates of expediency than to the search for historical truth?

    The son of a milkman and a Macy's dressing room checker, Ray Kelly grew up on New York City's Upper West Side, a middle-class neighborhood where Irish and Puerto Rican kids played stickball and tussled in the streets. He entered the police academy and served as a marine in Vietnam, living and fighting by the values that would carry him through a half century of leadership-justice, decisiveness, integrity, courage, and loyalty. Kelly soared through the NYPD ranks in decades marked by poverty, drugs, civil unrest, and a murder rate that, at its peak, spiked to over two thousand per year. Kelly came to be known as a tough leader, a fixer who could go into a troubled precinct and clean it up. That reputation catapulted him into his first stint as commissioner, under Mayor David Dinkins, where Kelly oversaw the police response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and spearheaded programs that would help usher in the city's historic drop in crime. Eight years later, in the chaotic wake of the 9/11 attacks, newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped Kelly to be NYC's top cop once again. After a decade working with Interpol, serving as undersecretary of the Treasury for enforcement, overseeing U.S. Customs, and commanding an international police force in Haiti, Kelly understood that New York's security was synonymous with our national security. Believing that the city could not afford to rely solely on "the feds," he succeeded in transforming the NYPD from a traditional police department into a resource-rich counterterrorism-and-intelligence force. In this vital memoir, Kelly reveals the inside stories of his life in the hot seat of "the capital of the world"-from the terror plots that nearly brought a city to its knees to his dealings with politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama as well as Mayors Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Bill DeBlasio. He addresses criticisms and controversies like the so-called stop-question-and-frisk program and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and offers his insights into the challenges that have recently consumed our nation's police forces, even as the need for vigilance remains as acute as ever.

    Hailed for her lifesaving efforts by President Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral Dewey, Susan B. Anthony, and other luminaries of the day, Lewis was the first person awarded a Congressional medal for her years of bravery and extraordinary heroism. Weaving thrilling nautical adventures with tales of other female lighthouse keepers, this compelling biography opens a fascinating and previously unexplored chapter in the history of American women.

    Although Italian-American criminals are covered, this is not just another Italian mafia book. The book covers the Jewish gangsters as well (who truly were the pioneers of organized crime) and the Irish gangs, who were one of the first ethnic groups to run the New York City rackets. Joe even presents a few "lady gangsters" too.Most of all, “ Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" is easy to read. The short-chapter format is a stroke of genius. It is interesting, informative, entertaining, and to the point. You won't be bored reading it. Joe Bruno has hit the mark in presenting Old New York the way it really was. Rough and bloody! Mathew J. Mari - Criminal Attorney

    Morris's meticulous documentation traces prison corruption . . . proving the tragedy could have been avoided. I recommend this book without reservation.--Jack Anderson

    His clients include many detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and he established the London-based charity Reprieve, developed to defending human rights in 1999. His book is quite simply, devastating, and many will laugh and cry reading it: laugh in disbelief, and cry in despair at the utter inhumanity and lack of imagination wrapped up in hypocrisy so enormous that it beggers understanding. Yet even in the face of insurmountable odds, Clive Stafford Smith remains an optimist. Few could maintain his capacity for work and his commitment to his clients if he allowed frustration or despair to divert him.

    *Includes a bibliography for further reading.*Includes a table of contents. “A feller came up to me the other day and said ‘I don’t know whether this means anything to you but you’ve given me and my family a lot of enjoyment over the years.’ And I said to him, ‘Does it mean anything to me? It means everything to me. That’s the ballgame. That's it.’ And I think that if I have done that to that man, and maybe a couple more…then I’m proud of that.” – Jimmy StewartA lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history’s most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors’ American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America’s most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, Jimmy Stewart ranked third, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. There is a certain inevitability to these three actors ranking at the top of the list; after all, they were the dominant faces of Hollywood during the height of the era known as classical Hollywood cinema, a time before the onset of television when the movies still enjoyed relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment. The popularity of Stewart, Grant, and Bogart also extends well beyond the success of any of their individual films, reflecting their much broader cultural significance as monuments of Hollywood during its Golden Age. In fact, if the list was reconstructed today, it is entirely possible that Stewart would rank first. Not only have movies such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Vertigo (1958) continued to gain in popularity even into the 21st century, but Stewart has come to embody an accessible image of American values that is easy for everyone to embrace. The wholesome, happy-go-lucky persona he cultivated represents perhaps a more palatable image of American masculinity than the gritty realism of Bogart or the erudite but occasionally snobbish tendencies of Cary Grant. If there is any actor that embodies not only classical Hollywood but also American culture more generally, it’s difficult to argue against Jimmy Stewart.The phenomenon of Jimmy Stewart becomes even more remarkable when considering the incredible harmony between the characters he portrayed in his films and his personality off the movie set. Most actors and actresses cultivate a persona in order to achieve success, and in most cases it’s an image that bears only a tangential relationship to an actor’s true personality, but there was no such division for Stewart. The all-American image conveyed in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life corresponds seamlessly with Stewart’s off-screen pursuits, which included a degree in architecture from Princeton and an extended tenure as a pilot during World War II. There were elements of his life story that resisted cultural norms - he waited until age 41 before marrying, and his very decision to pursue acting in 1930s America could be seen as a deviation from more characteristically masculine professions - but there was an almost seamless congruence between the Stewart that audiences saw on screen and the man he was in real life. Naturally, his defining traits developed out of and in response to the values instilled in him by his family and cultural background, and for this reason, examining his filmography alongside his life story paints a complete picture of the delicate unity of Jimmy Stewart’s life.

    At the Justice Department in 1964, he investigated the murder of three civil rights workers—an infamous event that inspired the film Mississippi Burning. He led the national Legal Services Program for the poor, prosecuted organized crime in New York, defended peace activist Philip Berrigan, and represented CIA operative Sid Gottlieb. As a counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, Lenzner investigated Nixon’s dirty tricks and followed the money trail that led to the Watergate burglary and cover-up. He was the first person to deliver a congressional subpoena to a sitting U.S. president. He uncovered cost overruns of the Alaska oil pipeline, helped identify the Unabomber, investigated the circumstances of Princess Diana’s death, and cleared Hugo Chavez of false corruption charges. Lenzner also worked with President Clinton’s defense team during the impeachment hearings.The Investigator is a riveting personal account: Lenzner astounds with anecdotes of scandal and intrigue, offers lessons in investigative methods, and provides an eye-opening look behind some of the most talked-about media stories and world events of our time.

    For half a century, as an uneasy peace hung over Europe, ferocious proxy wars raged in the Cold War’s killing fields, resulting in more than fourteen million dead—victims who remain largely forgotten and all but lost to history.A superb work of scholarship illustrated with four maps, The Cold War’s Killing Fields is the first global military history of this superpower conflict and the first full accounting of its devastating impact. More than previous armed conflicts, the wars of the post-1945 era ravaged civilians across vast stretches of territory, from Korea and Vietnam to Bangladesh and Afghanistan to Iraq and Lebanon. Chamberlin provides an understanding of this sweeping history from the ground up and offers a moving portrait of human suffering, capturing the voices of those who experienced the brutal warfare.Chamberlin reframes this era in global history and explores in detail the numerous battles fought to prevent nuclear war, bolster the strategic hegemony of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and determine the fate of societies throughout the Third World.

    In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world's most resurgent cities.Spanning centuries and neighborhoods, Brooklyn-born Campanella recounts the creation of places familiar and long forgotten, both built and never realized, bringing to life the individuals whose dreams, visions, rackets, and schemes forged the city we know today. He takes us through Brooklyn's history as homeland of the Leni Lenape and its transformation by Dutch colonists into a dense slaveholding region. We learn about English �migr� Deborah Moody, whose town of Gravesend was the first founded by a woman in America. We see how wanderlusting Yale dropout Frederick Law Olmsted used Prospect Park to anchor an open space system that was to reach back to Manhattan. And we witness Brooklyn's emergence as a playland of racetracks and amusement parks celebrated around the world.Campanella also describes Brooklyn's outsized failures, from Samuel Friede's bid to erect the world's tallest building to the long struggle to make Jamaica Bay the world's largest deepwater seaport, and the star-crossed urban renewal, public housing, and highway projects that battered the borough in the postwar era. Campanella reveals how this immigrant Promised Land drew millions, fell victim to its own social anxieties, and yet proved resilient enough to reawaken as a multicultural powerhouse and global symbol of urban vitality.

    

    Kennedy ever loved. Follow their affair in this fictional diary of the woman murdered for asking too many questions after the JFK assassination.   John F. Kennedy said he needed sex every three days or he got a headache. In the White House, he never had a headache. Kennedy met Mary Pinchot in 1935, when he was eighteen and she was sixteen. Twenty years later, when she was living in Virginia and married to Cord Meyer, a high-ranking CIA official, she was Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s next-door neighbor. In 1962, she was an artist, divorced, living in Washington—and Kennedy’s first serious romance. Mary Pinchot Meyer was more than a bedmate. She was Kennedy’s beacon light: his sole female adviser, spending mornings in the Oval Office, and, at night, discussing issues. After the 1964 election, Kennedy said, he would divorce Jackie and marry her.   After the assassination, Mary didn’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and she shared that view, loudly and often, in Washington’s most elite circles. Her ex-husband urged her to be silent, but when the report of the Warren Commission was released, she was even more loudly critical. On October 10, 1964, two days before her forty-forth birthday, as she walked in Georgetown, a man shot her in the head and the heart. That night, Mary's best friend called her sister. “Mary had a diary,” she said. “Get it.”   The diary was filled with sketches, notes for paintings—and ten pages about an affair with an unnamed lover. Her sister burned it. In JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, Jesse Kornbluth recreates the diary Mary might have written. Working from a timeline of Kennedy’s presidency and every documented account of their public relationship, he has written a high-octane thriller that tracks this secret, doomed romance—and invites readers to solve Mary’s murder.

    From the celebrated conservative comes a rich and complex novel about one of the most conspicuous political figures in American history--Senator Joe McCarthy.