Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A study of the last 100 years ofAmerican history.

Kindred spirits despite their profound differences inposition, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman shared a vision of thedemocratic character. They had read or listened to each other’swords at crucial turning points in their lives, and both wereutterly transformed by the tragedy of the Civil War. In thisradiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks theparallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln firstread Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’sassassination in 1865. Drawing on a rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts anddiary records, Epstein shows how the influence and reverence flowedbetween these two men–and brings to life the many friends andcontacts they shared. Epstein has written a masterful portrait oftwo great American figures and the era they shaped through wordsand deeds.

On September 11, 2001, hours after the terrorist attacks onNew York and Washington, the eminent military historian VictorDavis Hanson wrote an article in which he asserted that the UnitedStates, like it or not, was now at war and had the moral right torespond with force. An Autumn of War , which opens with thatfirst essay, will stimulate readers across the political spectrumto think more deeply about the attacks, the war, and their lessonsfor all of us.

Before the White House and Air Force One, before the TV adsand the enormous rallies, there was the real Barack Obama: a manwrestling with the momentous decision to run for the presidency,feeling torn about leaving behind a young family, and figuring outhow to win the biggest prize in politics. This book is the previously untold and epic story of how apolitical newcomer with no money and an alien name grew into theworld’s most powerful leader. But it is also a uniquely intimateportrait of the person behind the iconic posters and the SecretService code name Renegade. Drawing on a dozen unplugged interviews with the candidate andpresident, as well as twenty-one months covering his campaign as ittraveled from coast to coast, Richard Wolffe answers the simple yetenduring question about Barack Obama: Who is he? Based on Wolffe’s unprecedented access to Obama, Renegade reveals the making of a president, both on the campaign trail andbefore he ran for high office. It explains how the politician whoemerged in

After a lifetime of winning and losing at the game of politics,Florentine nobleman Machiavelli set down its ageless rules andmoves in this highly readable treatise. Witty, informative, anddevilishly shrewd, it has long been required reading for everyoneinterested in politics and power.

“Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage,otherwise known as ‘citing facts,’ is the spice of life. When I seethe hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging andpulsing above their eyes, well, that’s when I feel trulyalive.” So begins If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, AnnCoulter’s funniest, most devastating, and, yes, most outrageousbook to date. Coulter has become the brightest star in the conservativefirmament thanks to her razor-sharp reasoning and biting wit. Ofcourse, practically any time she opens her mouth, liberal elitesdenounce Ann, insisting that “She’s gone too far!” and hopefullypredicting that this time it will bring a crashing end to hercareer. Now you can read all the quotes that have so outraged her enemiesand so delighted her legions of fans. More than just the definitivecollection of Coulterisms, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d BeRepublicans includes dozens of brand-new commentaries written byC

The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of PulitzerPrize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."sAge of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concludingyears of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. A measure of economicrecovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR's critics todenounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagoguesHuey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. To his right were thechampions of the old order ex-president Herbert Hoover, theAmerican Liberty League, and the august Supreme Court. For a time,the New Deal seemed to lose its momentum. But in 1935 FDR ralliedand produced a legislative record even more impressive than theHundred Days of 1933 a set of statutes that transformed the socialand economic landscape of American life. In 1936 FDR coasted toreelection on a landslide. Schlesinger has his usual touch withcolorful personalities and draws a warmly sympathetic portrait ofAlf M. Landon, the Republican candidate of 1936.

From an award-winning historian, a stirring (and timely)narrative history of American labor from the dawn of the industrialage to the present day. From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first realfactories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentiethcentury and their waning influence today, the con?test betweenlabor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped ournational experience. Philip Dray’s ambition is to show us the vitalaccomplishments of organized labor in that time and illuminate itscentral role in our social, political, economic, and culturalevolution. There Is Power in a Union is an epic, character-drivennarrative that locates this struggle for security and dignity inall its various settings: on picket lines and in union halls,jails, assembly lines, corporate boardrooms, the courts, the hallsof Congress, and the White House. The author demonstrates,viscerally and dramatically, the urgency of the fight for fairnessand economic democracy—a strugg

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played acentral role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as anadvisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national securityadvisors. Without partisanship or finger-pointing, Miller recordswhat went right, what went wrong, and how we got where we aretoday. Here is a look at the peace process from a place at thenegotiation table, filled with behind-the-scenes strategy, colorfulanecdotes and equally colorful characters, and new interviews withpresidents, secretaries of state, and key Arab and Israelileaders. Honest, critical, and often controversial, Miller’s insider’saccount offers a brilliant new analysis of the problem ofArab-Israeli peace and how it still might be solved.

In The Fatal Englishman, his first work of nonfiction,Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men. Eachhad the seeds of greatness; each was a beacon to his generation andleft something of value behind; yet each one died tragicallyyoung. Christopher Wood, only twenty-nine when he killed himself, was apainter who lived most of his short life in the beau monde of 1920sParis, where his charm, good looks, and the dissolute life thatfollowed them sometimes frustrated his ambition and achievement asan artist. Richard Hillary was a WWII fighter pilot who wrote a classicaccount of his experiences, The Last Enemy, but died in a mysterious trainingaccident while defying doctor’s orders to stay grounded afterhorrific burn injuries; he was twenty-three. Jeremy Wolfenden, hailed by his contemporaries as the brightestEnglishman of his generation, rejected the call of academia to become a hackjournalist in Cold War Moscow. A spy, alcoholic, and openhomosexual at a time when su

Book De*ion "A spectre is hauntingEurope - the spectre of Communism." So begins one of history's mostimportant documents, a work of such magnitude that it has foreverchanged not only the scope of world politics, but indeed the courseof human civilization. The Communist Manifesto was written inFriedrich Engels's clear, striking prose and declared theearth-shaking ideas of Karl Marx. Upon publication in 1848, itquickly became the credo of the poor and oppressed who longed for asociety "in which the free development of each is the condition forthe free development of all." The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx's morecomprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influentialeconomic, political, social, and literary theories. But theManifesto is most valuable as an historical document, one that ledto the greatest political upheaveals of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communistgovernments that until recently ruled half the globe. This Bantam Classic edi

If you follow politics or the news, America is a country ofculture wars and great divides, a partisan place of red states andblue states, of us against them. From pundits to politicians itseems that anyone with an audience sees a polarized country - acountry at war with itself. In a radical departure from this "conventional wisdom," CarlAnderson explores what the talking heads have missed: anoverwhelming American consensus on many of the country's seeminglymost divisive issues. If the debates are shrill in public, he says,there is a quiet consensus in private - one that America'sinstitutions ignore at their peril. From health care, to the roleof religion in America, to abortion, to the importance oftraditional ethics in business and society, Anderson uses freshpolling data and keen insight in BEYOND A HOUSE DIVIDED toshow that a surprising consensus has emerged despite these debates.He sheds light on what's been missing in the public and politicaldebates of the last several years: the consensus that isn't ha

Locked in the Cabinet is a close-up view of the way thingswork, and often don't work, at the highest levels ofgovernment--and a uniquely personal account by the man whose ideasinspired and animated much of the Clinton campaign of 1992 and whobecame the cabinet officer in charge of helping ordinary Americansget better jobs. Robert B. Reich, writer, teacher, socialcritic--and a friend of the Clintons since they were all in theirtwenties--came to be known as the "conscience of the Clintonadministration and one of the most successful Labor Secretaries inhistory. Here is his sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignantchronicle of trying to put ideas and ideals into practice. With wit, passion, and dead-aim honesty, Reich writes of those inWashington who possess hard heads and soft hearts, and those withexactly the opposite attributes. He introduces us to the careerbureaucrats who make Washington run and the politicians who, onoccasion, make it stop; to business tycoons and labor leaders whoclash by day an

“This is a thriller, a page-turner, a probing look into theinner workings of the assassination squads that Israel mobilizedafter the Munich massacre.” –David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Arab andJew “Gratitude is due to Mr. Klein for his painstaking . . . book, thebest one could possibly hope for.” –Walter Lacquer, The Wall Street Journal Award-winning journalist Aaron J. Klein tells, for the firsttime, the complete story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre andthe Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. Withunprecedented access to Mossad agents and an nparalleled knowledgeof Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth andmisinformation that have permeated previous books, films, andmagazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black Septemberand other related terrorist groups. In this riveting account,long-held secrets are finally revealed, including who was killedand who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and whichwere m

March 23, 2003: U.S. Marines from the Task Force Tarawa arecaught up in one of the most unexpected battles of the Iraq War.What started off as a routine maneuver to secure two key bridges inthe town of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq degenerated into anightmarish twenty-four-hour urban clash in which eighteen youngMarines lost their lives and more than thirty-five others werewounded. It was the single heaviest loss suffered by the U.S.military during the initial combat phase of the war. On that fateful day, Marines came across the burned-out remains ofa U.S. Army convoy that had been ambushed by Saddam Hussein’sforces outside Nasiriyah. In an attempt to rescue the missingsoldiers and seize the bridges before the Iraqis could destroythem, the Marines decided to advance their attack on the city bytwenty-four hours. What happened next is a gripping and gruesometale of military blunders, tragedy, and heroism. Huge M1 tanks leading the attack were rendered ineffective whenthey became mired in an open sewer. Then a

"The letters provide a nostalgic timeline of American historytold through the words and feelings of Americans, from regularfolks to kings." —Star Gazette, Elmira, NY, Dec. '05 "There are more than 80 letters, reflecting both our history andour very American sense that when we speak, our president shouldlisten." —The Arizona Republic, Dec. '05 Drawn from the extensive holdings of the National Archives—whichincludes all of the Presidential libraries—these carefully chosenletters remind us that ours is a government "of the people, by thepeople, and for the people," which entitles us to make our viewsknown to our leaders. Most of the letters come from workingcitizens; others were written by notable figures: John Glenn, ElvisPresley, Walt Disney, Ho Chi Minh, Nikita Kruschev, Upton Sinclair,John Steinbeck, Robert Kennedy, and many more. Grouped thematically, the sections cover such topics as civilrights, the Cold War, physical fitness, joblessness, World War II,western expansion, and the space race. An

Since its first publication in 1945? Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, a

Using information and techniques gathered by the InternationalSpy Museum and an ex-CIA agent, this book shows how the tricks andmethods used by spies can be incorporated into everyday life, suchas how to hide valuables in your home or how to avoid carjacking orpickpockets.