Biography & Autobiography : Presidents & Heads of State

Who was Richard Nixon? Here is a nuanced and surprising portrait of a brilliant and contradictory man, alone in the White House, memorizing scripts for public appearances and even for one-on-one meetings with his own staff and cabinet -- building a house of deception. Reeves tells the astonishing story of a presidency doomed from the start. more...

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Ronald Reagan may have been the most prolific correspondent of any American president since Thomas Jefferson. The total number of letters written over his lifetime probably exceeds 10,000. Their breadth is equally astonishing -- with friends and family, with politicians, children, and other private citizens, Reagan was as dazzling a communicator in letters as he was in person. Collectively, his letters reveal his character and thinking like no other source. He made candid, considerate, and tough statements that he rarely made in a public speech or open forum. He enjoyed responding to citizens, and comforting or giving advice or encouragement to friends. Now, the most astonishing of his writings, culled in Reagan: A Portrait in Letters, finally and fully reveal the true Ronald Reagan. more...

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An insightful character study of the most important Anglo-American friendship since FDR and Churchill. It’s well known that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were close allies and kindred political spirits. During their eight overlapping years in office, the U.S. president and the U.K. prime minister worked together to promote lower taxes, deregulation, free trade, and an aggressive stance against the Soviet Union. But according to Nicholas Wapshott, the Reagan/Thatcher relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Drawing on interviews with those closest to them, as well as on hundreds of recently declassified private letters and telephone calls, Wapshott depicts a more complex, personal, and sometimes argumentative relationship than has previously been revealed. On the surface they had little in common, in either background or personality. Reagan, the son of the town drunk, used his genial charm to win over his enemies and always focused on the big picture rather than details. Thatcher, the daughter of a strict middle-class shopkeeper, was a hard worker and master of details who would rather be respected than liked. Yet from their very first meeting in 1975, they recognized each other as political soulmates, committed not just to conservative principles but to getting things done. Over the years, they discussed and debated strategies, took strength from each other, celebrated each other’s triumphs, and commiserated with each other’s failures. Wapshott shines new light on this unique friendship and how it changed the world. 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...

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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