Every American president, when faced with a crisis, longs to take bold and decisive action. When American lives or vital interests are at stake, the public-and especially the news media and political opponents-expect aggressive leadership. But, contrary to the dramatizations of Hollywood, rarely does a president have that option.In Presidents in Crisis, a former director of the Situation Room takes the reader inside the White House during seventeen grave international emer...

The White House Situation Room is arguably the most important facility in the most important building in the world. As the presidentÆs intelligence and alert center, it provides vital communication and crisis management capabilities to the chief executive and his advisers. It can also be ôan island of calm,ö as a top adviser for Vice President Al Gore once described it. So little is known about the Situation Room that, until the publication of Nerve Center, the American publicÆs knowledge of ...

Political speeches and public rhetoric paint the phenomena of terrorism with a black-and-white brush, presenting it as a clear-cut battle between evildoers and heroes. With The Achille Lauro Hijacking, Michael K. Bohn, who watched the incident unfold from the White House Situation Room, uses one of the most infamous terrorist incidents of the past twenty-five years to illuminate the folly of such oversimplified jingoisms. The 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, the amazin...

A handful of star athletes, along with their promoters and journalists, created America's sports entertainment industry during the 1920s, the Golden Age of American sports. The period had an extraordinary impact, profoundly changing individual sports, establishing the secular religion of sports and sports heroes, and helping bond disparate social and regional sectors of the country. It's when sports became a cornerstone of modern American life.Heroes and Ballyhoo profiles t...

You can't play Major League Baseball and bet on a game; just ask Pete Rose. Don't try running a betting ring in the NHL, either. Want the surest ticket out of NCAA sports? Betting's the way to do it. In stark contrast, however, the United States Golf Association officially sanctions betting among players during their games. And it's not just the pros who bet. Every man, out with his buddies, asks at the first tee, Shall we make this interesting? Yet there has never been a betting scandal in...

Gripping, personal stories about the life and death of President Kennedy.In November 22, 1963, Dean Owen curates a fascinating collection of interviews and thought-provoking commentaries from notable men and women connected to that notorious Friday afternoon. Those who worked closely with the president, civil rights leaders, celebrities, prominent journalists, and political allies are among the many voices asked to share their reflections on the significan...

An irreverent look at Presidential foibles, follies, fibs, and moral failuresWere past presidents smarter, more honest, and better behaved that those we elect today? Don’t bet on it! White House Confidential shows that commanders-in-chief have been lying, cheating, stealing, and womanizing from the days of the Founding Fathers. Focusing on the qualities that never made it into White House press releases, the authors look at their sexual misdeeds and strang...

“Lascelles has achieved the seemingly impossible: a concise and highly readable history of Catholic Popes that manages to be extremely entertaining and informative at the same time.”Gerald Posner, author of God’s Bankers"A brilliant book on a number of different levels. Lascelles has an engaging prose style and an amazing eye for detail and apposite anecdote. Surely only purblind Catholic zelanti will object to this outstanding analysis.”Frank...

Philosophy is to question everything. More than a lifestyle, larger than any single idea, broader than a conviction, philosophy is the love of exploration, of knowledge, of uncertainty, and of that cornerstone of free thinking: doubt. Kevin Perry's "Philosophy" takes the reader on a grand tour of life's biggest questions, examining all that the world's greatest philosophers have said about life and death, love and loss, language, art and God, to name a few.Philosophy is a great com...

A "highly entertaining history [of] global hustling, cola wars and the marketing savvy that carved a niche for Coke in the American social psyche" ( Publishers Weekly).Secret Formula follows the colorful characters who turned a relic from the patent medicine era into a company worth $80 billion. Award-winning reporter Frederick Allen's engaging account begins with Asa Candler, a nineteenth-century pharmacist in Atlanta who secured the rights to the...

Unlike most retirement planning and lifestyle books that focus on investing – or at the other end of the spectrum, on how to get the senior discount on a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny’s – this new book from Jeff Yeager, America’s favorite cheapskate, makes the compelling case that you can have a joyous, worry-free retirement by merely spending smart and focusing on what you truly want and expect out of retirement.Combining Yeager’s loveable humor and offbeat anecdotes that have gar...

The colorful eyewitness-to-history diary of a young man who loved motorcycles—and used these new machines to serve his country in the Great War.This is the skillfully abridged version of the diary of a First World War motorcycle despatch rider, Sergeant Albert Simpkin, who was attached to the HQ 37th Division. The diary entries, and some longer descriptions of the main actions of the Division, provide a fascinating record of the life of a despatch rider on the West...