They knew every president from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt and befriended Henry James, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and a host of other illustrious figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

    It is an intensely personal view of FDR. It traces his developments from the early years, his battle with polio, his fight for rehabilitation, his paralysis and his need to hide it, both in public and in private as well as the impact the paralysis and its cover-up had on his political career, his personality, and his relations with others. Now complete with a detailed account of the FDR Memorial and the struggle by disability advocates to have FDR depicted as he was in his wheelchair. Must reading for everyone interested in presidential history, disability history, and modern American history. A book not to be missed.

    Roosevelt. Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award. “A case study unmatched in american political writings” (Newsweek). Index; photographs.

    It is the inside history of America’s inevitable wartime rise as a great power, written in wonderfully readable prose by White House speechwriter and prize-winning playwright Robert Sherwood.

    Roosevelt, praised by Doris Kearns Goodwin as "brilliant...a magnificently readable saga."

    The Rainy Season, Amy Wilentz’s award-winning 1989 portrait of Haiti after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, was praised in the NY Times Book Review as “a remarkable account of a journalist’s transformation by her subject.” In her relationship with the country since then, she's witnessed more than one magical transformation. Now, with Farewell, Fred Voodoo, she portrays the extraordinary people living in this stark place. She traces the country’s history from its slave plantations thru its turbulent revolutionary history, its kick-up-the-dirt guerrilla movements, its totalitarian dynasty that ruled for decades & its long, troubled relationship with the USA. Yet thru a history of hardship shines Haiti’s creative culture—its African traditions, French inheritance & uncanny resilience, a strength often confused with resignation. Haiti emerged from the 2010 earthquake like a powerful spirit. This book describes the country’s day-to-day struggle & its relationship to outsiders who come to help out. There are human-rights reporters gone awry, movie stars turned aid workers, priests & musicians running for president, doctors turned diplomats. A former US president works as a house builder & voodoo priests try to control elections. A foreign correspondent on a simple story becomes over time a lover of Haiti, pursuing the essence of this beautiful, confounding land into its darkest & brightest corners. Farewell, Fred Voodoo is a spiritual journey into the heart of the human soul. Haiti has found an author of astonishing wit, sympathy & eloquence.

    This is a marvelous rags-to-riches autobiography, thoughtful, dramatic and funny, filled with perceptive details about events and personalities. In his parade of people and events, we meet Douglas MacArthur, both as outcast and conqueror; listen to a troubled Eisenhower preparing to lay aside his uniform and plunge into politics; visit Mao Tse-tung in his cave in Henan; and trace the power-curve of America's greatness across the glory years at home and abroad.Prologue: The StorytellerBoston: 1915-38Asia: 1938-45 Europe: 1948-53 America: 1954-63Epilogue: Outward BoundAcknowledgmentsIndex

    Elected to four terms as president, he transformed an inward-looking country into the greatest superpower the world had ever known. Only Abraham Lincoln did more to save America from destruction. But FDR is such a large figure that historians tend to take him as part of the landscape, focusing on smaller aspects of his achievements or carping about where he ought to have done things differently. Few have tried to assess the totality of FDR's life and career. Conrad Black rises to the challenge. In this magisterial biography, Black makes the case that FDR was the most important person of the twentieth century, transforming his nation and the world through his unparalleled skill as a domestic politician, war leader, strategist, and global visionary--all of which he accomplished despite a physical infirmity that could easily have ended his public life at age thirty-nine. Black also takes on the great critics of FDR, especially those who accuse him of betraying the West at Yalta. Black opens a new chapter in our understanding of this great man, whose example is even more inspiring as a new generation embarks on its own rendezvous with destiny.

    The story of his triumphs, tragedies, successes & failures.

    In 1948 renowned biographer and military historian Douglas Southall Freeman won his second Pulitzer Prize for his new and dramatic reexamination of George Washington. For years biographies had gone from idolatry to muckraking in their depictions of this somewhat marbleized Founding Father. Freeman’s new interpretation was a fresh step, making Washington a living, breathing individual, flawed but heroic. An able commander who defeated the British Empire against incredible odds, Washington proved to be just as adept at wielding political power, and adroitly steered our new loosely called nation through the first stormy years of our unproven federal stewardship and the first two presidential administrations. Here with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Kammen, who puts the writing and publication of Washington into perspective, and an afterword by Pulitzer Prize winner Dumas Malone, who explains the travails of Freeman’s grinding work, Washington is the most comprehensive biography available, and its value as an important classic has never been more evident.

    Written with unprecedented access to essential sources—including Cheever’s massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published—Bailey’s Cheever is a stunning example of the biographer’s art and a brilliant tribute to an essential author.

    Robert Dallek’s Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: how did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country’s needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country’s economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt work such a profound change in the country’s foreign relations? For FDR, politics was a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and by the time he became president, he had commanded the love and affection of millions of people. While all Roosevelt’s biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of thirty-nine endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek sees the affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system, and transform an isolationist country into an international superpower. Dallek attributes FDR’s success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America’s political system. In addressing the country’s international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions—perhaps FDR’s most enduring lesson in effective leadership.

    Lash reconstructs the Roosevelt’s four-decade marriage from Eleanor’s personal papers. The result is an intimate look at the vibrant private world of the public persona.

    "And no president since Lincoln has served through darker or more difficult times. Roosevelt thrived in crisis. It brought out his greatness, and his guile. It triggered his almost uncanny ability to communicate effectively with people of all kinds. And at times, it helped him excoriate his enemies, and to revel in doing so." This brilliant, compact biography chronicles Franklin Delano Roosevelt's rise from a childhood of privilege to a presidency that forever changed the face of international diplomacy, the American party system, and the government's role in global and domestic policy. Brinkley, the National Book Award-winning New Deal historian, provides a clear, concise introduction to Roosevelt's sphinx-like character and remarkable achievements. In a vivid narrative packed with telling anecdotes, the book moves swiftly from Roosevelt's youth in upstate New York--characterized by an aristocratic lifestyle of trips to Europe and private tutoring--to his schooling at Harvard, his brief law career, and his initial entry into politics. From there, Brinkley chronicles Roosevelt's rise to the presidency, a position in which FDR remained until death, through an unparalleled three-plus terms in office. Throughout the book, Brinkley elegantly blends FDR's personal life with his professional one, providing a lens into the President's struggles with polio and his somewhat distant relationship with the first lady. Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the United States through the worst economic crisis in the nation's history and through the greatest and most terrible war ever recorded. His extraordinary legacy remains alive in our own troubled new century as a reminder of what bravery and strong leadership can accomplish.

    He lived life on an epic scale, presenting to the world a character as compelling as the fiction he created. But behind it all lurked an insecure, troubled man. In this immensely powerful and revealing study, Kenneth S. Lynn explores the many tragic facets that both nurtured Hemingway's work and eroded his life. Masterfully written, Hemingway brings to life the writer whose desperate struggle to exorcise his demons produced some of the greatest American fiction of this century.