Showing titles in Politicians

Revered as a consummate statesman who cemented America’s place on the global stage, Franklin Delano Roosevelt affected tremendous change in the United States in course of his career. To understand his life is to understand how the nation claimed world leadership in what many call the American Century.

Chris Hunter has the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world: he's responsible for bomb disposal in the British sector of Iraq, pitted against some of the most ruthless and technically advanced terrorists in the world. It is a 24/7 job; his team defused over 45 bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they're up against don't play by the Geneva Convention. For them, there are no rules, only results.

John F. Kennedy’s assassination launched a frantic search to find his killers. It also launched a flurry of covert actions by Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, and other top officials to hide the fact that in November 1963 the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba, as part of a JFK-authorized coup. The plan’s exposure could have led to a nuclear confrontation with Russia, but the cover-up prevented a full investigation into Kennedy’s assassination, a legacy of secrecy that would impact American politics and foreign policy for the next 45 years.

In this gripping new work, Meghan examines our country’s most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and most importantly, nuance, she tries to make sense of the current landscape - from Donald Trump’s presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about the gender wage gap, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials.

The confession of Helmut Grund explores one of the second World War's most notorious men. Grund had trained his men well, and his new methods had held Deutschland's casualties down to 15 dead and 35 wounded, compared to much higher losses in the other units of the V-Truppe operating in Poland. In the eyes of Hitler and high-ranking members of the SS, the V-Truppe had proven itself in the field. Despite army resistance, an SS police division was formed in late September.

To many Queen Victoria was a ruler shrouded in myth and mystique, portrayed as an aging, stiff widow. But in truth Britain’s longest-reigning monarch was passionate, expressive, humorous, and unconventional. A. N. Wilson’s exhaustively researched and definitive biography includes a wealth of new material from previously unseen sources, showing us Queen Victoria as she’s never been seen before.

This compelling book begins on the 2nd of August 1793, the day Marie Antoinette was torn from her family's arms and escorted from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a thick-walled fortress turned prison. It was also known as the "waiting room for the guillotine" because prisoners only spent a day or two here before their conviction and subsequent execution. The ex-queen surely knew her days were numbered, but she could never have known that two and a half months would pass before she would finally stand trial and be convicted.

This is likely going to be one of the most unusual books on leadership that you will ever listen to. It is as much about the author, Lisa Gibson's journey as it is about Muammar Gaddafi. On December 21, 1988, their lives collided in one of the most life altering ways, when he murdered Lisa's brother. Despite what he did, she had an unprecedented meeting with him and dedicated her life to helping the people of the country he brutalized.

Having earned a unique place in world history, as perhaps the predominate force behind the Cuban revolution, Che stands as a shining example of what can be achieved by unshakable will and stalwart idealism. In this rare collection of original speeches and interviews, in Che’s own voice, we come to know the man behind the myth in a way never before possible. Forget the propaganda, fake news, and blatant lies about this genuine revolutionary hero and listen to the man himself.

Churchill: A Life follows Winston Churchill from his earliest days to his moments of triumph. Here, the drama and excitement of his story are ever-present. Martin Gilbert gives us a vivid portrait, using Churchill's most personal letters and the recollections of his contemporaries, both friends and enemies, to go behind the scenes of some of the stormiest and most fascinating political events of our time.

As President Clinton's senior adviser, George Stephanopoulos saw it all: the endless arguments, the back-hall scheming, the protracted decisions, and the last minute flip-flops that somehow produced real accomplishments but also set in motion an almost tragic series of events that placed the fate of the president in the hands of the Senate. Now, with the natural ease of a born storyteller and the sensitive eye for detail of a novelist, Stephanopoulos tells his extraordinarily gripping story.

A century after his death, Grigory Rasputin remains fascinating: the Russian peasant with hypnotic eyes who befriended Tsar Nicholas II and helped destroy the Russian Empire, but the truth about his strange life has never fully been told. Written by the world's leading authority on Rasputin, this new biography draws on previously closed Soviet archives to offer new information on Rasputin's relationship with Empress Alexandra, sensational revelations about his sexual conquests, a re-examination of his murder, and more.

David Dimbleby has interviewed prime ministers and presidents, made award-winning documentaries, chaired Question Time for 25 years, and anchored the BBC's live coverage of historic national and world events. Keep Talking is David's wry look at his own extraordinary career, and the people, events and controversies he has encountered along the way. As a broadcaster for the BBC, David had an obligation to appear a neutral observer. 

Taking as its focus the years 1898 to1921, Champions of Oneness: Louis Gregory and His Shining Circle portrays the lives of a handful of brilliant pioneers of race amity in the United States (and internationally) who gave everything they could to promote the principle of the oneness of humanity. The thread common among each of their lives was the Baha'i faith.

Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the 41st president and his family, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times.

Timothy Snyder opens a new path in the understanding of modern nationalism and 20th-century socialism by presenting the often overlooked life of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, an important Polish thinker at the beginning of the 20th century. During his brief life in Poland, Paris, and Vienna, Kelles-Krauz influenced or infuriated most of the leaders of the various socialist movements of Central Europe and France. His central ideas ultimately were not accepted by the socialist mainstream at the time of his death.

Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird deftly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history.

Much has been documented about Himmler as the incarnation of pure evil and the puppet master behind the Holocaust. Now, history’s verdict reveals that he was much more than a mere slaughterer of Jews. For all his ills, Himmler was a visionary. He longed for a utopia based on the blood community of the Aryan race. What lengths was he prepared to go to in order to obtain "good blood" as well as removing the bad? The infamous SS is also examined in detail. Were they just the machinery of murder? What other duties did they perform to help the Nazi war effort?

In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand. He was told to prepare for a 48-hour operation. In the end, he and his men were under siege for 31 days - one of the longest such sieges in the whole of the Afghan campaign.

Reviled as a fascist by his great rival Ben-Gurion, venerated by Israel’s underclass, the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a proud Jew but not a conventionally religious one, Menachem Begin was both complex and controversial. Born in Poland in 1913, Begin was a youthful admirer of the Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and soon became a leader within Jabotinsky’s Betar movement.