Biography & Autobiography : Presidents & Heads of State

In the last years of Ronald Reagan's life, his voluminous writings on politics, policy, and people finally emerged and offered a Rosetta stone by which to understand him. From 1975 to 1979, in particular, he delivered more than 1,000 radio addresses, of which he wrote at least 680 himself. When drafts of his addresses were first discovered, and a selection was published in 2001 as Reagan, In His Own Hand by the editors of this book, they caused a sensation by revealing Reagan as a prolific and thoughtful writer, who covered a wide variety of topics and worked out the agenda that would drive his presidency. more...

Price: $24.99

In this wonderfully evocative volume, following the outstanding success of The Hornet's Nest, Christmas in Plains, and his classic, An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter writes about the things that matter most, the simple relaxed days and nights that he has enjoyed with family and friends through the years and across generations. more...

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In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father. Situating Jefferson within the context of America's evolution and tracing his legacy over the past two hundred years, Hitchens brings the character of Jefferson to life as a man of his time and also as a symbolic figure beyond it. Conflicted by power, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as Minister to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. Predicting that slavery would shape the future of America's development, this professed proponent of emancipation elided the issue in the Declaration and continued to own human property. An eloquent writer, he was an awkward public speaker; a reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy. Jefferson's statesmanship enabled him to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase with France, doubling the size of the nation, and he authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition, opening up the American frontier for exploration and settlement. Hitchens also analyzes Jefferson's handling of the Barbary War, a lesser-known chapter of his political career, when his attempt to end the kidnapping and bribery of Americans by the Barbary states, and the subsequent war with Tripoli, led to the building of the U.S. navy and the fortification of America's reputation regarding national defense. In the background of this sophisticated analysis is a large historical drama: the fledgling nation's struggle for independence, formed in the crucible of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and, in its shadow, the deformation of that struggle in the excesses of the French Revolution. This artful portrait of a formative figure and a turbulent era poses a challenge to anyone interested in American history -- or in the ambiguities of human nature. more...

Price: $15.95

An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades. Drawing upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedy's story, An Unfinishe more...

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Donald focuses on six figures who were undoubtedly close to Lincoln and who have left full, intimate records of their associations: Joshua F. Speed, William H. Herndon, Orville H. Browning, William H. Seward, John Hay, and John G. Nicolay. Each saw a different side of Lincoln, but, taken together, their accounts tell much about Lincoln's difficulty in making and holding intimate friendships. The evidence is overwhelming that few if any of these and other friends were on intimate terms with Lincoln. Those who knew him best came to realize that behind the mask of affability, behind the facade of his endless humorous anecdotes, Lincoln maintained an inviolable reserve. Herndon found him "incommunicative-silent, reticent-secretive, the most shut-mouthed man" who ever lived. This book is divided into these six portraits-six friendships that Lincoln had through his life-starting with his stepbrother, Dennis Hanks; but his childhood was isolated and lonely and he described himself as "friendless and uneducated" after his mother died and the family moved. As a young man, he became friends with Joshua Speed when he arrived in Springfield. They remained friends and political allies until Speed went back home to Kentucky. Lincoln tried to persuade Speed to accompany him to Washington, but in fact he arrived as president-elect without any staff and without a single intimate friend. Next was William Herndon, his law partner, who wrote about him but did not claim an intimacy he had not enjoyed. Orville Browning, appointed to fill out Stephen Douglas' term, became Lincoln's confidant, but the closeness ended when Lincoln twice passed over Browning for the Supreme Court and when Browning disagreed with his politics and his conduct of the war. William Seward was his best friend in the extremely rambunctious cabinet, but very definitely the junior man. Lincoln did not have a true peer. His much younger secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, were the t more...

Price: $11.99