Showing results by publisher "Hachette Audio" in Politicians

Evidence indicates President Barack Obama has been tremendously successful and effective by objective measures. On economic indicators alone, he is credited with the longest streak of job growth in US history, a two-thirds reduction in the federal budget deficit, and the rebounding of the stock market to record highs following the record lows of the recession under his predecessor.

What does it mean to be a Kennedy? If ever three women would be challenged and changed by marriage into a family, it would be Jacqueline Bouvier, Ethel Skakel, and Joan Bennett. None of these radiant brides could have ever been prepared for the fame, the family, and tragedies that would spring from their lives. As they struggled to cope with their husbands' infidelities, the harsh glare of the media, and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, these women would learn what it meant to be sisters, reaching out to one another with comfort and consolation.

A revelatory examination of the global impact of Emmanuel Macron's tumultuous presidency. In The Last President of Europe, William Drozdiak tells with exclusive inside access the story of Macron's presidency and the political challenges the French leader continues to face.

Just days after September 11, 2001, Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to administer the federal 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, a unique, unprecedented fund established by Congress to compensate families who lost a loved one on 9/11 and survivors who were physically injured in the attacks. Over the course of the next three years, Feinberg spent almost all of his time meeting with the families and learned about the enduring power of grief, love, fear, faith, frustration, and courage. Most importantly, he learned that no check could make the families and victims of 9/11 whole again.

The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 after eight years of fighting, bloodshed, and loss. Yet the terms of the truce that ended the war were effectively identical to what had been offered to the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost America and Vietnam thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and they were the direct result of the supposed master plan of the most important voice in American foreign policy: Henry Kissinger.

Before the Storm begins at the tail end of the 1950s, with America affluent, confident, and convinced that political ideology was a thing of the past. But when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, conservatives—editor William F. Buckley Jr., John Birch Society leader Robert Welch, and thousands of students—formed a movement to challenge the center-left consensus. They chose as their hero Barry Goldwater—a rich, handsome Arizona Republican who scorned the federal bureaucracy, reviled détente, despised liberals on sight—and grew determined to see him elected President.

The year is 1997, Michael Soussan, a fresh-faced young graduate takes up a new job at the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program, the largest humanitarian operation in the organization's history. His mission is to help Iraqi civilians survive the devastating impact of economic sanctions that were imposed following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. As a gaffe-prone novice in a world of sensitive taboos, Soussan struggles to negotiate the paranoia of his boss and the inner workings of one of the world's notoriously complex bureaucracies.

No one understands the "Make America Great Again" effort with more insight and more experience than former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In Trump's America: The Truth About Our Nation's Great Comeback, Gingrich describes our country's tremendous turnaround under President Donald Trump's leadership - and confronts the desperate efforts by the elites in academia, the media, and the Washington establishment to undermine and distort his achievements.

No one has ever been in a position to see the presidents, and the presidency, so intimately, over so many years. They called him in for photo opportunities. They called for comfort. They asked about death and salvation; about sin and forgiveness. At a time when the nation is increasingly split over the place of religion in public life, The Preacher and the Presidents reveals how the world's most powerful men and world's most famous evangelist, Billy Graham, knit faith and politics together.

Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The only Chinese citizen known to have openly and steadfastly opposed communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith—and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets.

Donald Trump has assembled a rogue's gallery of alt-right hatemongers, crony capitalists, immigrant bashers, and climate-change deniers to run the American government. To survive the next four years, we the people need to know whose hands are on the levers of power. And we need to know how to challenge their abuses. John Nichols, veteran political correspondent at the Nation, has been covering many of these deplorables for decades.

When Gretchen Carlson made the decision to "walk off the set" and speak up about sexual harassment in the workplace, she jumped off a cliff by herself, but it led to a new calling: empowering women to reclaim their power against any injustice. After the former Miss America, mother of two, and star news anchor stood up and spoke out, women all over the world joined the movement and began to take back their lives, careers, and dignity. Gretchen became the voice for the voiceless.

When Justice John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010, he left a legacy of service unequaled in the history of the Court. During his 34-year tenure, Justice Stevens was a prolific writer, authoring in total more than 1,000 opinions. In The Making of a Justice, John Paul Stevens recounts the first 94 years of his extraordinary life, offering an intimate and illuminating account of his service on the nation's highest court.

Few images in history have managed to capture and hold the popular imagination quite like that of Hannibal, the fearless North African, perched on a monstrous elephant, leading his mercenaries over the Alps and then, against all odds, descending the ice-covered peaks to challenge Rome in her own backyard for mastery of the ancient world. It was a bold move, and it established Hannibal as one of history's greatest commanders. But this same brilliant tactician is also one of history's most tragic figures; fate condemned him to win his battles but not his war.

From an eminent scholar of the American South, the first full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson since 1970. Not since Merrill Peterson's Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation has a scholar attempted to write a comprehensive biography of the most complex Founding Father. In Jefferson, John B. Boles plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson's life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker - as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet.

Few people have sat across from the Iranians and the North Koreans at the negotiating table. Wendy Sherman has done both. During her time as the lead US negotiator of the historic Iran nuclear deal and throughout her distinguished career, Wendy Sherman has amassed tremendous expertise in the most pressing foreign policy issues of our time. Throughout her life - from growing up in civil-rights-era Baltimore to stints as a social worker, campaign manager, and business owner to advising multiple presidents - she has relied on values that have shaped her approach to work and leadership.

"Sweets, I'm okay. I'm okay. Don't worry. It's not my building," said Kristen Breitweiser's husband on the phone from his office in the second tower. The call ended abruptly, and Kristen stared at the television in horror as the second plane hit, and her life, and her country, changed forever.

The story of Andrew Jackson's improbable ascent to the White House, centered on the handlers and propagandists who made it possible. Andrew Jackson was volatile and prone to violence, and well into his 40s, his sole claim on the public's affections derived from his victory in a 30-minute battle at New Orleans in early 1815. Yet those in his immediate circle believed he was a great man who should be president of the United States. Jackson's election in 1828 is usually viewed as a result of the expansion of democracy.

In the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born, they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth; Madison the importance of republican principles. Author Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right - and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment.

Ripples of Hope captures the legacy of former Senator and US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy through commentary from his daughter, as well as interviews with dozens of prominent national and international figures who have been inspired by him. They include Barack Obama, John Lewis, Marian Wright Edelman, Alfre Woodard, Harry Belafonte Jr., Bono, George Clooney, Gloria Steinem, and more. They share personal accounts and stories of how Kennedy's words, life, and values have influenced their lives, choices, and actions.