Showing titles in Presidents & Heads of State

It was in the nature of Belgium’s withdrawal from Africa that power was essentially handed over to the first in line to receive it. Very little of the careful preparation that characterized the British withdrawal from Africa was evident in Congo. As it turned out, the first in line to take power was a tall, stern-featured ideologue by the name of Patrice Lumumba. This audiobook looks at one of the most important African leaders of the 20th century.

While highlighting his 20-year career in the Secret Service during which he protected Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, US Secret Service Agent Rufus W. Youngblood describes the complexities, risks, and constant tensions involved in protecting America's chief executive. Along with several humorous anecdotes, archival audio inserts enhance this personalized journey through a critical period in American history.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. In a writing career that spanned over twenty years during the explosion of poetic and theatrical creativity of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, William Shakespeare produced a body of work that has become the bedrock of human...

From Vietnam to the Southern Strategy, from the opening of China to the scandal of Watergate, Pat Buchanan—speechwriter and senior adviser to President Nixon—tells the untold story of Nixon’s embattled White House, from its historic wins to it devastating defeats. In his inaugural address...

The modern history of Africa was, until very recently, written on behalf of the indigenous races by the white man, who had forcefully entered the continent during a particularly hubristic and dynamic phase of European history. In 1884, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together, to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event - known as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 - galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

In this acclaimed biography that earned him a spot on Nixon's infamous "enemies list," Garry Wills takes a thoughtful, in-depth, and often "very amusing" look at the thirty-seventh US president, and draws some surprising conclusions about a man whose name has become synonymous with scandal and the abuse of power (Kirkus Reviews).

Der Held des 20. Jahrhunderts: Er hat Hitler aufgehalten. Unter den herausragenden Politikern des 20. Jahrhunderts ist Churchill der schillerndste. Hollywood hat den Adeligen mit der Zigarre längst zu einer Film- und Heldenfigur überhöht. Seine Sätze, dass er etwa »außer Blut, Schweiß und Tränen« nichts zu bieten habe, sind geflügelte Worte. Churchill gilt als einer der größten Redner der Geschichte, hat seinen aufwendigen Lebensunterhalt als Schriftsteller und Journalist bestritten und wurde mit dem Nobelpreis für Literatur ausgezeichnet.

Witness Napoleon Bonaparte's Rise and Fall: From an outsider on Corsica to the Emperor of France, Napoleon's journey is a tale of ambition, strategy, and leadership. This book delves deep into his life, revealing a story that transcends history and offers timeless lessons.

Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy offers a nuanced assessment of the thirty-fifth president, whose legacy and impact people continue to debate to this day. Stephen F. Knott examines Kennedy through the lens of five critical issues: his interpretation of presidential power, his approach to civil rights, and his foreign policy toward Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam. Knott also explores JFK's assassination and the evolving interpretations of his presidency, both highly politicized subject matters. What emerges is a president as complex as the author's shifting views about him.

To know Donald J. Trump - to understand what makes the 45th president of the US tick - it is best to start in his natural habitat: Palm Beach, Florida. It is here he learned the techniques that took him all the way to the White House. Painstakingly, over decades, he has created a world in this exclusive tropical enclave and favorite haunt of billionaires where he is not just president but a king. The vehicle for his triumph is Mar-a-Lago, one of the greatest mansions ever built in the US. 

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen comes a vivid and unsparing yet sympathetic portrait of one of the most complex and enigmatic figures of our time: Charles, who has taken his place on the throne after being the oldest and longest-serving heir in British history...

Mussolini has rarely been taken seriously as a totalitarian dictator; Hitler and Stalin have always cast too long a shadow. But what was a negative judgement on the Duce, considered innocuous and ineffective, has begun to work to his advantage. As has occurred with many other European dictators, present-day popular memory of Mussolini is increasingly indulgent; in Italy and elsewhere he is remembered as a strong, decisive leader. Mussolini in Myth and Memory argues against this rehabilitation.

Sobel instead exposes the real Coolidge, whose legacy as the most Jeffersonian of all twentieth-century presidents still reverberates today. Sobel delves into the record to show how Coolidge cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third in a period of unprecedented economic growth.

Chuck Todd's gripping, fly-on-the-wall account of Barack Obama's tumultuous struggle to succeed in Washington. Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 partly because he was a Washington outsider. But if he'd come to the White House thinking he could change the political culture, he soon...

El recuento de lo que significó el sexenio de la transformación histórica del país y de cómo el compromiso con la ciudadanía marcó el camino de una nueva política "Me voy, y aunque la vida sigue su curso, necesitaba reiterar acerca del pasado para comprender mejor el presente y el porvenir: no hay texto sin contexto y tampoco los procesos políticos y sociales surgen de repente, de la nada, son frutos de un largo camino, de resistencias, fatigas, en los cuales participan muchos, que son, como ha sucedido en nuestro movimiento, los protagonistas principales de esta histórica transformación."

A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits...

“Makes you feel as if you are watching a live camera riveted on a courtroom more than 150 years ago.” —Diane Sawyer The true story of Abraham Lincoln’s last murder trial, a case in which he had a deep personal involvement—and which played out in the nation’s newspapers as he began...

This biography of Chester Arthur is a fascinating look at a man who, thrust into the highest political office, exceeded expectations and left a lasting mark on history.

Two BBC Radio programmes exploring President John F. Kennedy's shocking assassination on 22 November 1963. In Something Is Terribly Wrong, first broadcast in 2003, Alan Thompson charts the confusion and disbelief after the assassination. He returns to key sites in Dallas, and talks to...

The drama of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is the foundational story of America - courage, loyalty, hope, fanaticism, greatness, failure, forgiveness, love. Agony and Eloquence is the story of the greatest friendship in American history and the revolutionary times in which it was made, ruined, and finally renewed. In the wake of Washington's retirement, longtime friends Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to represent the opposing political forces struggling to shape America's future.