Biography & Autobiography : Political

In Shelby Steele's beautifully wrought and thought provoking new book, A Bound Man, the award-winning and bestselling author of The Content of Our Character attests that Senator Barack Obama's groundbreaking quest for the highest office in the land is fast becoming a galvanizing occasion beyond mere presidential politics, one that is forcing a national dialogue on the current state of race relations in America. Says Steele, poverty and inequality usually are the focus of such dialogues, but Obama's bid for so high an office pushes the conversation to a more abstract level where race is a politics of guilt and innocence generated by our painful racial history -- a kind of morality play between (and within) the races in which innocence is power and guilt is impotence. Steele writes of how Obama is caught between the two classic postures that blacks have always used to make their way in the white American mainstream: bargaining and challenging. Bargainers strike a "bargain" with white America in which they say, I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Challengers do the opposite of bargainers. They charge whites with inherent racism and then demand that they prove themselves innocent by supporting black-friendly policies like affirmative action and diversity. Steele maintains that Senator Obama is too constrained by these elaborate politics to find his own true political voice. Obama has the temperament, intelligence, and background -- an interracial family, a sterling education -- to guide America beyond the exhausted racial politics that now prevail. And yet he is a Promethean figure, a bound man. Says Steele, Americans are constrained by a racial correctness so totalitarian that we are afraid even to privately ask ourselves what we think about racial matters. Like Obama, most of us find it easier to program ourselves for correctness rather than risk knowing and expressing what we more...

Price: $17.99

A warm, intimate portrait of President Ronald Reagan by his confidant and friend of over 35 years. Former aide and long–time family friend Michael Deaver first met Ronald Reagan during his 1966 campaign for governor of California and later served him in Sacramento and Washington, DC, as the president's deputy chief of staff. In A Different Drummer, Reagan emerges as charismatic and unwaveringly optimistic, a devoted husband and dedicated leader, disciplined and tough. As Deaver points out in his introduction, ǥ worked eight years doing the toughest job on earth; criss–crossed the world; and survived an assassin's bullet, a devastating riding accident, cancer, and brain surgery all after he turned seventy.'. Deaver also shares the lows, including the tough times that would test the strength of their friendship. Finally, he shares a look at Reagan today as he battles Alzheimer's disease. It is Nancy Reagan's ३ nest hour, Deaver writes, a validation of the greatest love story he has ever known. more...

Price: $9.95

A Sidney Chronology: 1554-1654 offers a comprehensive chronological survey of the literary, political and personal history of the Sidney family of Penshurst Place, Kent. As royal servants, courtiers, diplomats, soldiers, writers and patrons of numerous other authors, the Sidneys occupied a central position in the development of Early-Modern English literature. Particular attention is paid to the lives and writings of Sir Philip Sidney; Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester; and Lady Mary Wroth. more...

Price: $100.00

This is the first study of Milner to take his politics, or ‘constructive’ imperialism as its primary theme. His career is examined as a whole, from the genesis of his imperial ideology at Oxford, through his time as High Commissioner in South Africa during the Boer War, to his days as Minister of War during the final seven months of the First World War. more...

Price: $99.00

Stephen B. Oates discerns the historical truth from the mythical legend that surrounds Lincoln in this original and fascinating portrait of America's 16th president. more...

Price: $10.95