Civil War
1–20 of 83 results
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The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
5043WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZENAMED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist * Time * Newsweek * Foreign Policy * Business Week * The Week * The Christian Science Monitor *NewsdayBy the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker.Book Four of Robert A. Caro’s monumental The Years of Lyndon …
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The War against Regulation: From Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush (Studies in Government and Public…
4722Battered by our economy and disappointed by our government’s role in that battering, we might be tempted to point the finger of blame at whoever’s currently on the hot seat in front of us. But, as Phillip Cooper shows, we must widen our vision to take in the long history behind this dismal state of affairs. By doing so, it becomes clear that our present circumstances are in many ways the predictable outcome of a several-decades-long war against government regulation and its potential to prote…
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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion t…
2094Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer PrizeThe explosive first-hand account of America’s secret history in AfghanistanTo what extent did America’s best intelligence analysts grasp the rising thread of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll recounts the history of the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks. Based on scrupu…
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The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington
2001Now in paperback, and following her extraordinary, bestselling, and much-acclaimed accounts of the most guarded secrets of the Second World War, here is a rollicking true story of spies, politicians, journalists, and intrigue in the highest circles of Washington during the tumultuous days of World War II.When Roald Dahl, a dashing young wounded RAF pilot, took up his post at the British Embassy in 1942, his assignment was to use his good looks, wit, and considerable charm to gain access to th…
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Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
1798Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood a…
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Gandhi: An Autobiography – The Story of My Experiments With Truth
1723Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi’s “attitude of experimenting, of tesing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can …
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J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets
1346“The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Eleanor Roosevelt was right: Hoover’s FBI was an American gestapo.”―Newsweek Shocking, grim, frightening, Curt Gentry’s masterful portrait of America’s top policeman is a unique political biography. From more than 300 interviews and over 100,000 pages of previously classified documents, Gentry reveals exactly how a paranoid director created the fraudulent myth of an invincible, incorruptible FBI. For almost fifty years, Hoover held virtually unchecked p…
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First Off The Tee
1225Some students of the presidency say that we can learn the most about the men who’ve occupied the Oval Office by studying their ideology. Others say political savvy or family background or regional influences are paramount. But Don Van Natta argues for another standard—by observing the way they play golf. Fourteen of the last seventeen presidents have been golfers, and Van Natta explores two questions: Why is the game of golf so attractive to the men who occupy the Oval Office? And what do th…
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Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (Chicago Studies in American Politics)
1190While we’ve long known that the strategies of terrorism rely heavily on media coverage of attacks, Selling Fear is the first detailed look at the role played by media in counterterrorism—and the ways that, in the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration manipulated coverage to maintain a climate of fear. Drawing on in-depth analysis of counterterrorism in the years after 9/11—including the issuance of terror alerts and the decision to invade Iraq—the authors present a compelling case …
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War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
1149General Smedley Butler’s frank book shows how American war efforts were animated by big-business interests. This extraordinary argument against war by an unexpected proponent is relevant now more than ever.
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Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Modern A…
1142In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States’ segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout …
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Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
1123Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship Americans have lost touch with their history, and in this thought-provoking book, Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying twelve leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and o…
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Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Politics and Society in Modern A…
1060We’ve all heard about how the CIA meddles in foreign countries’ politics, but let’s flip that around. How have foreign intelligence agencies influenced US politics?
In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States’ segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout … more about book… -
Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II
1059‘The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.’ ―Josef Stalin (1943), quoted in W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, Random House, N.Y., 1975, p. 277 The United States shipped more than $12 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Stalin’s Russia during World War II. Materials lent, beginning in late 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, included airplanes and tanks, loco…
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The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes
978In Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”, an American soldier indiscriminately guns down Vietnamese civilians from the helicopter. Did this kind of blatant killing of civilians happen in the war? Was this scene accurate?
In 2005, Deborah Nelson joined forces with military historian Nick Turse to investigate an extraordinary archive: the largest compilation of records on Vietnam-era war crimes ever to surface. The declassified Army papers were erroneously released and have since been pulled from public circulation. Few civilians have seen the documents.The files contain reports of more than 300 confirmed atrocities, and 500 other cases the Army either couldn’t prove or didn’t investigate. The archive has lette… more about book… -
The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes
978In 2005, Deborah Nelson joined forces with military historian Nick Turse to investigate an extraordinary archive: the largest compilation of records on Vietnam-era war crimes ever to surface. The declassified Army papers were erroneously released and have since been pulled from public circulation. Few civilians have seen the documents.The files contain reports of more than 300 confirmed atrocities, and 500 other cases the Army either couldn’t prove or didn’t investigate. The archive has lette…
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The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
911The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt de…
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No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton
897“Just as the necessary qualification for a good liar is a good memory, so the essential equipment of a would-be lie detector is a good timeline, and a decent archive.” In NO ONE LEFT TO LIE TO, a New York Times bestseller, Christopher Hitchens casts an unflinching eye on the Clinton political machine and offers a searing indictment of a president who sought to hold power at any cost. With blistering wit and meticulous documentation, Hitchens masterfully deconstructs Clinton’s abject propensit…
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The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
866The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt dee…
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American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945
824Douglas Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of “orientalist” stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. He concludes that a peculiar blen…