During some of the most significant political events of our times – the Arab Spring, the financial crash and a European referendum that has changed the face of British politics forever – she sat right outside the door of the Prime Minister’s office, earning herself the title of ‘gatekeeper’.Fall takes us through the Cameron project, from its inception to coalition, reshuffles, political scandals, two general elections and three referendums. She speaks frankly and honestly about the Conservatives’ key players, their project to modernise the party, how the coalition worked (and how it didn’t). Shedding light on the world behind the public façade of politics, she reveals what it is like to be a woman at the heart of power: the blood, sweat and toil, the victories and regrets, the friendships and fall outs, the chaos and camaraderie.Politics tests any relationship with its conflicting priorities of loyalty, belief, and personal ambition. The Gatekeeper is a very personal portrait of life behind the scenes at the centre of power.

    Private corner offices and management by decree are out, as is unquestioned trust in the government and media. These former pillars of traditional power have been replaced by networks of informed citizens who collectively wield more power over their personal lives, employers, and worlds than ever before. So how do you navigate this new landscape and come out on top? Adam Grant, Wharton organizational psychologist and New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B, went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the epicenter of power, and sat down with thought leaders from around the world, to find out.In interviews with two dozen leaders and thinkers - from top executives at Google, GM, Slack, and Goldman Sachs, to the CEO of the Gates Foundation and NASA's former chief scientist - Grant shares hard-earned insight on how to succeed in this new era of hyper-linked power. He also explores how it's reshaping everything from how employees work to how employers manage their workers, from how women rise in the office to how scientists influence policy.The combination of captivating interviews, compelling data, and Grant's unmistakably incisive and actionable analysis results in an inspiring crash course from the frontlines on the changing nature of power today.

    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.

    Its recession-proof economy is the envy of the world. It's the planet's great lifestyle superpower. Its artistic exports win unprecedented acclaim. But never before has its politics been so brutal, narrow and facile, as well as being such a global laughing stock. A positive national story is at odds with a deeply unattractive Canberra story.The country should be enjoying The Australian Moment, so vividly described by the best-selling author George Megalogenis. But that description may turn out to be inadvertently precise. It could end up being just that: a fleeting moment.At present the country seems to be in speedy regression, with the nation's leaders, on both sides, mired in relatively small problems, such as the arrival of boat people, rather than mapping out a larger and more inspiring national future.In The Rise and Fall of Australia, BBC correspondent and author Nick Bryant offers an outsider's take on the great paradox of modern-day Australian life: of how the country has got richer at a time when its politics have become more impoverished. In this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing with politics, racism, sexism, the country's place in the region and the world, culture and sport, the author argues that Australia needs to discard the out-dated language used to describe itself, to push back against Lucky Country thinking, to celebrate how the cultural creep has replaced the cultural cringe and to stop negatively typecasting itself. Rejecting most of the national stereotypes, Nick Bryant sets out to describe the new Australia rather than the mythic country so often misunderstood not just by foreigners but Australians themselves.

    Mistakes and misunderstandings. Perseverance and prosperity. This is the story of how a handful of explorers and settlers grew into one of the world’s greatest nations. With US History: An Overview of the Most Important People & Events. The History of United States: From Indians to Contemporary History of America, you’ll meet the leaders that founded and shaped a great nation including Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Richard Nixon and more. But, this short introduction to American History doesn’t stop at who and when. It follows the rollercoaster of events to show you how and why: Columbus’ discovery of an uncharted continent led to rapid colonization by Spanish and European nations. Fierce competition between the Spanish, French, English, and Portuguese divided the North American landmass into multiple territories. A series of great leaders founded a democracy that has withstood centuries of peace and turmoil. War, tragedy, and famine shaped the United States into a modern superpower. The United States Constitution continues to guide and shape the nation today. The major political parties of the past shaped the modern Republican and Democratic parties. This quick glimpse into the most significant people and events in American History reveals the mistakes that tore the country apart and the triumphs that rebuilt it. Start your journey through American History today with US History: An Overview of the Most Important People & Events. The History of United States: From Indians to Contemporary History of America. Scroll up to buy your copy.

    Blair's majority was the culmination of a long struggle to modernize the party, and the politics of his country. Philip Gould is a political strategist and polling adviser who has worked with the Labour leadership since the 1980s. In this book he describes its rise and explains how the transformation was achieved, at the same time exploring the changed political climate in Britain.

    This is completely contrary to the Founding Fathers’ original vision of America; it was designed by them to be a secular democratic republic built on evidence-based Enlightenment values, emphatically not religious faith.Indeed, the Founders purposefully intended that a high, strong “wall of separation” keep church and state apart in the new nation, while allowing individual religious freedom untrammeled by government—and vice versa. But Christians with theocratic dreams keep trying to breach the wall. Through their efforts, God is now in evidence everywhere in the country—on our money, in our schools, even in high-level-government officials’ speeches. Freedom of — and from — religion is the American promise to all its people whatever their belief—or disbelief. This is how the Founding Fathers wanted it to be, not the undemocratic theocracy zealous evangelicals are trying to force on American society.

    

    This book provides an account of the life of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who led an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state to create Eelam, a separate nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils.The book begins from Prabhakaran’s childhood days in the aftermath of India’s and Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain. The Sri Lankan Tamils were following Gandhi’s non-violent methods to fight for their rights as citizens of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran, an ardent fan of Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, felt that non-violence would not work against a Sinhala dominated government and began experimenting with violent acts against the Government to send a message. His initial success became the nucleus for the formation of LTTE, which became the quintessential guerrilla organization fighting the State.The book details various incidents of Prabhakaran’s life including terror attacks, assassination of politicians, heads of States and militant leaders; India’s role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict; Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka; the Eelam wars, negotiations, betrayals and elections; through to his killing in May 2009.

    Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson boarded the plane in secrecy, with few in the world aware that President Kennedy was dead, and then after taking the presidential oath, Johnson had 132 minutes to assemble his thoughts and a government before landing at Andrews Air Force Base and presenting himself to the cameras as the new leader of the free world.While there are many individual recollections of the flight, there exist few comprehensive reconstructions of all that unfolded on the plane. Graff's account of the flight—based on dozens of accounts of those on board plus more than 500 pages of archive documents as well as a recently discovered two-hour-and-22-minute audio recording of Air Force One’s radio traffic with Andrews on the day of the assassination—reveals that even amid one of the most dramatic presidential transitions in history there arose very human moments of envy, anger, bewilderment, and courage, as those aboard endured what would be for all of them the most difficult hours of their lives.

    

     Free History BONUS Inside! When the first settlers reached the United States of America and started to chip out a living in the wilderness that seemed so fierce and unfamiliar to their European eyes, they could never have dreamed that someday the land upon which they stood would become one of the most powerful countries in the entire world. When Native Americans first witnessed those white sails bringing ships with white sailors into their world for the first time, they could never have dreamed that within a few centuries their population would be all but destroyed, that they would have to endure massacre after massacre, be stripped of their freedom and confined to comparatively tiny reservations, and walk the Trail of Tears within the next few hundred years. When the preachers of the Great Awakening stood on the backs of wagons or bits of old tree stumps and told the American people a new story of individual freedom and the power of ordinary people, they could never have dreamed that their preaching would trigger a landslide of abolitionism that would end in a civil war that almost tore the entire country apart. When the Civil War was finally won by the Union, and all African Americans' chains were broken at last, the military leaders could never have dreamed that within the next half century, the United States would emerge as one of the world's greatest military powers during the Spanish-American War. And when those soldiers won the struggle against Spain in Cuba, they could never have dreamed that later in the century, Cuba itself would turn against them and become the single greatest threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. When the Wright Brothers first took to the air and Thomas Edison made the lightbulb, they could never have dreamed that American innovation would produce not only the Ford car, basketball, the telephone, and Facebook, but it would also be instrumental in creating the atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people and finally brought an end to the Second World War. As for Martin Luther King, Jr., he did dream. He had a dream of equality and brotherhood, and his dream at least partially came true in 2008 when America saw the inauguration of its first black president. Never could the slaves of the great plantations of the South have dreamed that that day would ever come, but it did. Nobody could have dreamed it, but it all came to pass, and it became the history of the United States of America. And this is how it all happened... In The History of the United States: A Captivating Guide to American History, Including Events Such as the American Revolution, French and Indian War, Boston Tea Party, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf War, you will discover topics such as The People Who Were There First A Time of Exploration Colonizing America The French and Indian War The Boston Tea Party The American Revolution The First President Restless Times Horrors for the Natives Awakening Civil War Seeking for Peace A Rising Power Progress Disaster Strikes The Biggest Bomb in the World Icy Tension Freedom on the Home Front Terror and Its War And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about the history of the United States, then sc

     Over a period of more than ten years, following the overthrow of the government in 1910, Mexico experienced a period of intense and bloody warfare as a bewildering array of factions in ever-changing alliances took power and then lost it. Presidents were elected (or elected themselves) and were then deposed or assassinated. New factions appeared with impressive sounding slogans, took to the field, and were either wiped out and never heard of again or became the next government. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Porfiriato ✓ The Unlikely Revolutionary ✓ Reign and Assassination of Madero ✓ The Iron Hand of Huerta ✓ Carranza Takes on Zapata and Villa ✓ Last Man Standing And much more! The Mexican Revolution is confusing and difficult to understand—there is, for example, still no agreement between scholars and historians on when it ended—but it is essential in understanding the national identity of modern Mexico. The civil war produced heroes whose names live on in legend and villains whose bloody exploits are still horrifying. It also caused anything up to two million casualties both as a direct result of the fighting and in the famine, economic hardship, and disease which followed in its wake. Modern Mexico was created out of the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution; this is the story of la revolución mexicana.

    The second edition, Inside the Circus, pulls back the curtain on the pursuit of the Republican nomination, as operatives jockey for position and strategists vie to fashion a message that can win over all factions of the fractious GOP.   Over the course of a long winter and into the spring, the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination gathered steam and bubbled over with drama. At times it seemed more like a soap opera or reality show than a political campaign. Inside the Circus, the latest real-time digital dispatch from acclaimed political correspondent Mike Allen and award-winning journalist and author Evan Thomas, chronicles each turn in this endlessly surprising race with reporting straight from the campaign war rooms of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the other GOP contenders.   What was the thinking inside the Romney brain trust as what was once expected to be an easy ride to the nomination turned into what some have called a “long slog”? How did Newt Gingrich throw the preternaturally poised Romney off his game in South Carolina—and who convinced the former Massachusetts governor it was time to start punching back? Why were the other campaigns caught flat-footed by the rise of Rick Santorum and what does his unlikely ascent mean for the prospect of a brokered convention? From the Iowa caucuses to Super Tuesday and beyond, Allen and Thomas answer all the questions the headlines, polls, and delegate counts can’t address. The stakes are high, the plotlines are still unfolding, and Inside the Circus is your fly-on-the-wall guide to the most fascinating Republican presidential race in recent memory.