Executive Branch
Series in Executive Branch
Books in Executive Branch
After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Vital reading for Americans and people anywhere who seek to understand what is happening ‘after the fall’ of the global system created by the United States” ( New York Journal of Books ), from the former White House aide, close confidant to President Barack Obama, and author of The World as It Is At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance. The characters and issues that Rhodes illuminates paint a picture that shows us where we are today—from Barack Obama to a rising generation of international leaders; from the authoritarian playbook endangering democracy to the flood of disinformation enabling authoritarianism. Ultimately, Rhodes writes personally and powerfully about finding hope in the belief that looking squarely at where America has gone wrong can make clear how essential it is to fight for what America is supposed to be, for our own country and the entire world.
Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women
REBECCA TRAISTER, whose coverage of the 2008 presidential election for Salon confirmed her to be a gifted cultural observer, offers a startling appraisal of what the campaign meant for all of us. Though the election didn’t give us our first woman president or vice president, the exhilarating campaign was nonetheless transformative for American women and for the nation. In Big Girls Don’t Cry, her electrifying, incisive and highly entertaining first book, Traister tells a terrific story and makes sense of a moment in American history that changed the country’s narrative in ways that no one anticipated. It was all as unpredictable as it was riveting: Hillary Clinton’s improbable rise, her fall and her insistence (to the consternation of her party and the media) on pushing forward straight through to her remarkable phoenix flight from the race; Sarah Palin’s attempt not only to fill the void left by Clinton, but to alter the very definition of feminism and claim some version of it for conservatives; liberal rapture over Barack Obama and the historic election of our first African-American president; the media microscope trained on Michelle Obama, harsher even than the one Hillary had endured fifteen years earlier. Meanwhile, media women like Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow altered the course of the election, and comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler helped make feminism funny. What did all this mean to the millions of people who were glued to their TV sets, and for the country, its history and its future? As Traister sees it, the 2008 election was good for women. The campaign for the presidency reopened some of the most fraught American conversations—about gender, race and generational difference, about sexism on the left and feminism on the right—difficult discussions that had been left unfinished but that are crucial to further perfecting our union. The election was also catalytic, shaping the perspectives of American women and men from different generations and backgrounds, altering the way that all of us will approach questions of women and power far into the future. When Clinton cried, when Palin reached for her newborn at the end of a vice presidential debate, when Couric asked a series of campaign-ending questions, the whole country was watching women’s history—American history—being made. Throughout, Traister weaves in her own experience as a thirtysomething feminist sorting through all the events and media coverage—vacillating between Clinton and Obama and forced to face tough questions about her own feminism, the women’s movement, race and the different generational perspectives of women working toward political parity some ninety years after their sex was first enfranchised. It was a time of enormous change, and there is no better guide through that explosive, infuriating, heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious year than Rebecca Traister. Big Girls Don’t Cry offers an enduring portrait of dramatic cultural and political shifts brought about by this most historic of American contests.
Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage
Throughout American history, presidents have faced difficult choices--decisions that sometimes have had grave political and personal consequences. Will leadership prevail? Or will the office cede power to popular opinion? At these critical times, many of our presidents have chosen a path of genuine courage. They stood up for what they believed was right for the country and displayed tremendous character, which made them leaders of men. Wallace has chosen nearly twenty notable acts of presidential courage in our nation's history, including: George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion, Theodore Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War, Harry Truman and the Berlin Airlift and George W. Bushand the Iraqi war. How and why did these men make these choices? What experiences from their civilian lives came to bear on their decisions? What forces shaped them? Who influenced them? What or who gave them their inner fortitude? Wallace brings out the humanity of these power brokers and lets their personal histories shine through. The result is a completely involving and tremendously informative look at the presidents who've made defining choices for our nation in times of national uncertainty.
Dude, Where's My Country?
In case anyone in Washington hasn't noticed, Americans are fed up with the status quo. In this, the first shot fired over the bow of the 2004 Presidential election, Michael Moore aims to unseat the man who slithered into the White House on tracks built by the bloody hands of Enron and greased with the oil of his daddy. As if an unelected, semi-literate president weren't problem enough, America's Democrats have managed to take the liberty out of "liberal," signing on with the G.O.P. for dirty corporate money and the ill-gotten gains of globalization. The "left" is just as satisfied as the right to stand idly by as the chasm between the haves and the have-nots grows wider and wider. Thank god for Michael Moore because Dude, Where's My Country tells us precisely what went wrong, and, more importantly, how to fix things. In a voice that is fearless, funny, and furious, Moore takes readers to the edge of righteous laughter and divine revenge.
Has Anyone Seen the President?
Michael Lewis goes to Washington! Who better to shine a light into the shadows of the nation's capital in the age of Trump than the best-selling author of Liar's Poker and The Big Short ? In this audio investigation - unavailable in book form - Lewis narrates his 2018 report from Washington originally published in Bloomberg View . From inside the White House press room - which Lewis describes as having "the cramped, uncared-for feel of a public toilet" - to a balcony overlooking "a sea of white people" in the Trump International Hotel, to Steve Bannon's Capitol Hill townhouse, where he joins the former campaign CEO to watch the State of the Union address, Lewis takes listeners on an unforgettable behind-the-scenes tour.
Impeachment(With: Timothy Naftali,Peter Baker,Jeffrey A. Engel)
Four experts on the American presidency examine the first three times impeachment has been invoked—against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—and explain what it means today. Impeachment is a double-edged sword. Though it was designed to check tyrants, Thomas Jefferson also called impeachment “the most formidable weapon for the purpose of a dominant faction that was ever contrived.” On the one hand, it nullifies the will of voters, the basic foundation of all representative democracies. On the other, its absence from the Constitution would leave the country vulnerable to despotic leadership. It is rarely used, and with good reason. Only three times has a president’s conduct led to such political disarray as to warrant his potential removal from office, transforming a political crisis into a constitutional one. None has yet succeeded. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for failing to kowtow to congressional leaders—and, in a large sense, for failing to be Abraham Lincoln—yet survived his Senate trial. Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against him for lying, obstructing justice, and employing his executive power for personal and political gain. Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House intern, but in 1999 he faced trial in the Senate less for that prurient act than for lying under oath about it. In the first book to consider these three presidents alone—and the one thing they have in common—Jeffrey A. Engel, Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, and Peter Baker explain that the basis and process of impeachment is more political than legal. The Constitution states that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” leaving room for historical precedent and the temperament of the time to weigh heavily on each case. This book reveals the complicated motives behind each impeachment—never entirely limited to the question of a president’s guilt—and the risks to all sides. Each case depended on factors beyond the president’s behavior: his relationship with Congress, the polarization of the moment, and the power and resilience of the office itself. This is a realist view of impeachment that looks to history for clues about its potential use in the future.
Now What?: The Voters Have Spoken―Essays On Life After Trump
When the networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, people from coast to coast exhaled―and danced in the streets. This quick-turnaround volume, a collection of 38 personal essays from writers all over the country―“many of America’s most thoughtful voices,” as Jon Meacham puts it―captures the week Trump was voted out, a unique juncture in American life, and helps point toward a way forward to a nation less divided. An eclectic lineup of contributors―from Rosanna Arquette, Susan Bro and General Wesley Clark to Keith Olbermann, Stewart O'Nan and Anthony Scaramucci ―puts a year of transition into perspective, and summons the anxieties and hopes so many have for better times ahead. As award-winning columnist Mary C. Curtis writes in the lead essay, “Saying you’re not interested in politics is dangerous because, like it or not, politics is interested in you.” Novelist Christopher Buckley , a former speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, laments, “The Republican Senate, with one exception, has become a stay of ovine, lickspittle quislings, degenerate descendants of such giants as Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and John McCain.” Nero Award-winning mystery novelist Stephen Mack Jones writes, to Donald Trump, “Remember: You live in my house. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is my house. My ancestors built it at a cost of blood, soul and labor. I pay my taxes every year to feed you, clothe you and your family and staff and fly you around the country and the world in my tricked-out private jet. If you violate any aspect of your four-year lease―any aspect―Lord Jesus so help me, I will do everything in my power to kick yo narrow ass to the curb.” As Publisher Steve Kettmann writes in the Introduction: “The hope is that in putting out these glimpses so quickly, giving them an immediacy unusual in book publishing, we can help in the mourning for all that has been lost, help in the healing (of ourselves and of our country), and help in the pained effort, like moving limbs that have gone numb from inactivity, to give new life to our democracy. We stared into the abyss, tottered on the edge, and a record-setting surge of voting and activism delivered us from the very real threat of plunging into autocracy.”
Now What?: The Voters Have Spoken―Essays On Life After Trump
When the networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden on Saturday, November 7, 2020, people from coast to coast exhaled―and danced in the streets. This quick-turnaround volume, a collection of 38 personal essays from writers all over the country―“many of America’s most thoughtful voices,” as Jon Meacham puts it―captures the week Trump was voted out, a unique juncture in American life, and helps point toward a way forward to a nation less divided. An eclectic lineup of contributors―from Rosanna Arquette, Susan Bro and General Wesley Clark to Keith Olbermann, Stewart O'Nan and Anthony Scaramucci ―puts a year of transition into perspective, and summons the anxieties and hopes so many have for better times ahead. As award-winning columnist Mary C. Curtis writes in the lead essay, “Saying you’re not interested in politics is dangerous because, like it or not, politics is interested in you.” Novelist Christopher Buckley , a former speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, laments, “The Republican Senate, with one exception, has become a stay of ovine, lickspittle quislings, degenerate descendants of such giants as Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker and John McCain.” Nero Award-winning mystery novelist Stephen Mack Jones writes, to Donald Trump, “Remember: You live in my house. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is my house. My ancestors built it at a cost of blood, soul and labor. I pay my taxes every year to feed you, clothe you and your family and staff and fly you around the country and the world in my tricked-out private jet. If you violate any aspect of your four-year lease―any aspect―Lord Jesus so help me, I will do everything in my power to kick yo narrow ass to the curb.” As Publisher Steve Kettmann writes in the Introduction: “The hope is that in putting out these glimpses so quickly, giving them an immediacy unusual in book publishing, we can help in the mourning for all that has been lost, help in the healing (of ourselves and of our country), and help in the pained effort, like moving limbs that have gone numb from inactivity, to give new life to our democracy. We stared into the abyss, tottered on the edge, and a record-setting surge of voting and activism delivered us from the very real threat of plunging into autocracy.”
State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter
Dates of addresses - January 19, 1978; January 25, 1979; January 21, 1980; January 16, 1981
The Final Throw / End-Game
The London Regional Crime Squad, is trying to nail a financial empire involved with organised crime and drug smuggling. David Morgan goes undercover and is hired by a travel company to act as a tour guide around Europe, but is in fact being used as a drug mule. Eventually, he also finds himself posing as a homeless vagrant in order to track down a former employee of the financial empire who knows of the whereabouts of incriminating documents. This is a 'Snakes and Ladders' operation with twists and which ranges from London to Florence.
The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson: Beyond Vietnam
American political scholarship has so focused on Vietnam that little attention has been paid to Johnson's foreign policy in other regions of the world. Recently some scholars have moved beyond Vietnam to examine other aspects of American dealings with the world during the Johnson years. In this volume, H. W. Brands has gathered the work of some of the most important of these scholars, not only addressing regions other than Vietnam but also asking important analytic questions about Johnson's foreign policies. • Robert Dallek, a Johnson biographer, evaluates the president as a world leader. • Thomas A. Schwartz reexamines Johnson's policies toward Europe, concluding that those policies were "among the most important achievements of his presidency." • John Prados argues that Johnson deserves more credit for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) than he has previously been given. • William O. Walker, III, analyzes the relationship between the United States and Cuba during Johnson's presidency. • Peter Felten explains the complicated tangle of U.S.-Dominican relations and Johnson's role in establishing the parameters of U.S. policy. • In "Nasser Delenda Est," Douglas Little examines the principal Middle Eastern crisis of the Johnson years, the Six Day War. • Robert J. McMahon investigates American relations with three Asian allies: Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. In Beyond Vietnam: The Foreign Policies of Lyndon Johnson, Brands offers scholars of the presidency and American foreign policy a compelling new look at the foreign policies of the Johnson presidency.
The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture(With: Alice Mayhew)
In 2002, President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedicated efforts for peaceful solutions to advance human rights and delivered this inspiring lecture—now published in ebook form. On October 11, 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 was Jimmy Carter, making him the first American-born laureate since Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the prize in 1967. President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2002, and delivered this inspiring lecture.