The "definitive biography" of the poet and political dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia—and first president of the Czech Republic (Walter Isaacson).This portrait of Vaclav Havel, iconoclast and intellectual, renowned playwright turned political dissident, president of a united then divided nation, and dedicated human rights activist, is written by his former press secretary, advisor, and longtime friend—and recounts the turbulent twentieth-ce...

**The #1 New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2017“Eminently readable but thick with import . . . Grant hits like a Mack truck of knowledge.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates*, The Atlantic***Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant.Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. Al...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour…Sir Winston Churchill was a soldier, journalist, writer, Nobel Prize winner and, above all, a leader. Conservative then Liberal then Conservative again, his political instincts won him a sustained career at the summit of British government, while his resolve and politics of personality made him broadly regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century.With his early radicalism, bold decisions regarding ...

A biographical study of the 16th U.S. president, and an essential book for any student of Lincoln and American history.In this multifaceted portrait, Oates, "the most popular historical interpreter of Lincoln" (Gabor S. Boritt, New York Times Book Review), exposes the human side of the great and tragic president—including his depression, his difficulties with love, and his troubled and troubling attitudes about slavery—while also confronting the many legend...

A decade-and-a-half after President William Jefferson Clinton first took the oath of office, biographer Nigel Hamilton tells the riveting story of what was possibly the greatest self-reinvention of a president in office in modern times. The Clinton presidency began disastrously -- kicking off with the worst transition in living memory and deteriorating through a series of fiascos, from gays in the military to Hillary Clinton's failed health care reform. How Bill Clinton faced up to his fai...

At various times during the latter half of the eighteenth century there crossed the Atlantic two Protestant Irishmen, a Lowland Scotsman, and an Englishman, and thereby they fixed the character of Mr Henry James' genius. For the essential thing about Mr James was that he was an American; and that meant, for his type and generation, that he could never feel at home until he was in exile. He came of a stock that was the product of culture and needed it as part of its environment. But at the ...

“Fascinating.”—New York Times Book Review • “Well-written.”—The Boston Globe • “Extraordinary.”—The Christian Science Monitor • “A compelling page-turner.”—Adam HochschildOn the eve of a new century, an up-and-coming Theodore Roosevelt set out to transform the U.S. into a major world power. The Spanish-American War would forever change America's standing in global affairs, and drive the young nation into its own imperial showdown in the P...

A panoramic and spellbinding history of the last days of the Confederacy and the flight, capture, and imprisonment of Jefferson DavisIn April 1865, Richmond fell to the Union army and Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to his Northern counterpart, Ulysses S. Grant, at the Appomattox Court House. But the Civil War was far from over.Determined to keep Confederate dreams of secession alive, President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet fled the burning capital city. Wit...

In the first multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America’s greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers, along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce our current understanding of America’s sixteenth president.Volume 1 covers Lincoln’s early child...

From the author of Animal Liberation, an examination of the chasm between the words and actions of George W. Bush, who claimed the moral high ground more than any president in recent US historyDuring his time in public office, George W. Bush framed a striking number of his major policies and initiatives with the concepts of good and evil. From his christening of the "axis of evil" to the wars in the Middle East to his condemnation of stem cell research, Bus...

What happens to a dream deferred? This question, from one of Thabo Mbeki's favourite poems by Langston Hughes, provides the thread for this magisterial biography of the second president of a democratic South Africa. In the long shadow of Nelson Mandela, Mbeki attempted to forge an identity for himself as the symbol of modern Africa. Mark Gevisser brings to life the voices and places that made Thabo Mbeki: the frontier of the Eastern Cape; 'Swinging' Britain and neo-Stalinist Moscow in the ...