A fascinating study of the efforts of British intelligence to push America out of its isolationist stance and into the Allied camp during the early days of WW II. Freelance writer Mahl has convincingly drawn on a variety of sources--including recently declassified FBI and government files, memoirs, personal papers, and little-known official reports--to weave together a portrait of extraordinary schemes and activities. He argues that such conventional sources as the official British history...

2013 Pulitzer Prize FinalistNew York Times Ten Best Books of 2012“Riveting…The Patriarch is a book hard to put down.” – Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book ReviewIn this magisterial new work The Patriarch, the celebrated historian David Nasaw tells the full story of Joseph P. Kennedy, the founder of the twentieth century's most famous political dynasty. Nasaw—the only biographer granted un...

Drawing on previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives, An Unfinished Life is packed with revelations large and small -- about JFK's health, his love affairs, RFK's appointment as Attorney General, what Joseph Kennedy did to help his son win the White House, and the path JFK would have taken in the Vietnam entanglement had he survived.Robert Dallek succeeds as no other biographer has done in striking a critical balance -- never shying a...

This vivid New York Times bestseller about 1950s America from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist is "an engrossing sail across a pivotal decade" ( Time ).Joe McCarthy. Marilyn Monroe. The H-bomb. Ozzie and Harriet. Elvis. Civil rights. It's undeniable: The fifties were a defining decade for America, complete with sweeping cultural change and political upheaval. This decade is...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - "A model presidential biography... Now, at last, we have a biography that is right for the man" - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book WorldOne of today’s premier biographers has written a modern, comprehensive, indeed ultimate book on the epic life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In this superlative volume, Jean Edward Smith combines contemporary scholarship and a broad range of primary source material to provide an engrossing na...

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's worldDuring the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brothe...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND KIRKUS REVIEWSFrom the acclaimed author of Citizens of London comes the definitive account of the debate over American intervention in World War II—a bitter, sometimes violent clash of personalities and ideas that divided the nation and ultimately determined the fate of the free world.At the center of this controversy...

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • From a prize-winning biographer comes the defining portrait of a man who led America in a time of turmoil and left us a darker age. We live today, John A. Farrell shows, in a world Richard Nixon made.At the end of WWII, navy lieutenant “Nick” Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon’s finer attributes gav...

Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully, and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts. But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Black...

From the New York Times bestselling author of 20 books about the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA comes the detailed account of the life and times of the ambitious, powerful, masterfully manipulative Joseph Patrick Kennedy.For all his wealth and power, Joe Kennedy was not a happy man. He also had no shame. What he cared about was having power. Through the political dynasty that he founded, he achieved that for generations to come. If he hurt and corrupted othe...

**A Kirkus Best Book of 2013A revelatory, minute-by-minute account of JFK’s last hundred days that asks what might have been**Fifty years after his death, President John F. Kennedy’s legend endures. Noted author and historian Thurston Clarke argues that the heart of that legend is what might have been. As we approach the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, JFK’s Last Hundred Days reexamines the last months of the president’s life to show a man in the midst of g...

Some samples: 1) When the United States was fighting the war in Vietnam, a sergeant wrote famed photographer Yousuf Karsh and requested a copy of a portrait that he had taken of Eleanor Roosevelt. Mr. Karsh wondered why a young man would be interested in a portrait of a woman who had been First Lady before he was born, so he wrote the soldier. As it turned out, the soldier was not young, but instead he was a career soldier who had been wounded in the Korean War. Ms. Roosevelt had visited h...