Search Results: Biography: U.S. Presidents from I Cannot Live Without Books

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr.
Everyone wants to define the man who signed his name "A. Lincoln." In his lifetime and ever since, friend and foe have taken it upon themselves to characterize Lincoln according to their own label or libel. In this magnificent book, Ronald C. White, Jr., offers a fresh and compelling definition of Lincoln as a man of integrity -- what today's commentators would call "authenticity" -- whose moral compass holds the key to understanding his life.
Through meticulous research of the newly completed Lincoln Legal Papers, as well as of recently discovered letters and photographs, White provides a portrait of Lincoln's personal, political, and moral evolution. White shows us Lincoln as a man who would leave a trail of thoughts in his wake, jotting ideas on scraps of paper and filing them in his top hat or the bottom drawer of his desk; a country lawyer who asked questions in order to figure out his own thinking on an issue, as much as to argue the case; a… Read More

The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power, 1815 - 1848 by William Nester
As William Nester asserts in The Age of Jackson, it takes quite a leader to personify an age. A polical titan for thirty-three years (1815 - 1848), Andrew Jackson displayed character, beliefs, and actions that came to dominate American politics. Although Jackson returned to his Tennessee plantation in March 1837 after serving eight years as president, he continued to overshadow the American political scene. Two of his proteges, Martin "the Magician" Van Buren and James "Houng Hickory" Polk followed him to the White House and pursued his agenda.
Jackson provoked firestorms of political passions throughout his era. Far more people loved than hated him, but the fervor was just as pitched either way. Although the passions have subsided, the debate lingers. Historians are split over Jackson's legacy. Some extol him as among America's greatest presidents, citing his championing of the common man, holding the country together… Read More

American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley
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Just months after being elected president of the United States, John F. Kennedy made an astonishing announcement to the nation: we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing epic of contemporary history, Douglas Brinkley returns to the 1960s to re-create one of humankind's most exciting and ambitious achievements. American Moonshot brings together the extraordinary political, cultural, and scientific factors that fueled the birth and development of NASA and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects, which catapulted the United States to victory in the space race against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
Drawing on new primary source material and recent scholarship, Brinkley brings to life this fascinating history as no one has before. American Moonshot is a portrait of the brilliant men and women who made this… Read More

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White
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In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the "Trinity of Great American Leaders." But the battlefield commander-turned-commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first century.
Based on seven years of research with primary documents -- some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars -- this is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader -- a willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in… Read More

America's Second Revolution: How George Washington Defeated Patrick Henry and Saved the Nation by Harlow Giles Unger
The Declaration of Independence liberated one continent from domination by another, but the Constitution revolutionized the world -- by entrusting citizens with rights never before in history granted to ordinary people. Far from the genteel unity implied by the Constitution's opening words "We the people," the struggle to create and ratify this powerful document was as difficult as the fight for independence from Britain had been.
The road to independence had led straight to hell. America was ablaze in anarchy and civil strife. As civil war threatened, George Washington called for a new constitution creating a powerful new federal government to restore order. For the majority of Americans, the new Constitution drafted in Philadelphia seemed a disaster, creating a new American government with the same powers of taxation as the former British government and led by a president with powers… Read More

Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle that Shaped America's Destiny by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger
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The War of 1812 saw America threatened on every side. Encouraged by the British, Indian tribes attacked settlers in the West, while the Royal Navy terrorized the coasts. By mid-1814, President James Madison's generals had lost control of the war in the North, losing battles in Canada. Then British troops set the White House ablaze, and a feeling of hopelessness spread across the country.
Into this dire situation stepped Major General Andrew Jackson. A native of Tennessee who had witnessed the horrors of the Revolutionary War and Indian attacks, he was glad America had finally decided to confront repeated British aggression. But he feared that President Madison's men were overlooking the most important target of all: New Orleans.
If the British conquered New Orleans, they would control the mouth of the Mississippi… Read More

Apostles of Revolution: Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe by John Ferling
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe were in the vanguard of Revolutionary ideas in the eighteenth century. As founding fathers, they risked their lives for American independence but they also wanted more. Each wished for profound changes in the political and social fabric of pre-1776 America and hoped that the American Revolution would spark republican and egalitarian revolutions throughout Europe, sweeping away the old monarchical order. Ultimately, each rejoiced at the opportunity to be a part of the French Revolution, though each grew disappointed as the cause gave way to the bloody Reign of Terror.
Apostles of Revolution spans a crucial period in Western Civilization ranging from the American insurgency against Great Britain to the Declaration of Independence, from desperate engagements on American battlefields to the threat posed to the ideals of the… Read More

Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation by J.M. Opal
Most Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a "populist" champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date the onset of American democracy to his 1829 inauguration.
Despite his reverence for the "sovereign people," however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets. He made his name as a lawyer, businessman, and official along the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers, at times ejecting white squatters from native lands and returning slaves to native planters in the name of federal authority and international law. On the other hand, he waged total war on the Cherokees and Creeks who terrorized western settlements and raged at the national statesmen who refused to "avenge the blood" of innocent colonists. During the long war in the… Read More

The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 by Marc Ambinder
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The Cold War's most dangerous moment: a high-stakes and secretive game of nuclear brinksmanship that played out in the forests of Germany, in stealthy submarines underneath the Atlantic and Pacific, in hidden London compounds, in fortified bunkers and code rooms across the globe. The year was 1983. The world was on the brink. And American spies were missing the warning signals.
Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the Able Archer 83 war game as the fulcrum of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary men and powerful leaders. Ambinder explains how political leadership triumphed over misunderstandings and the strife of interests, helping the two countries work toward a fragile peace.
The… Read More

Cabal!: The Plot Against General Washington by Mark Edward Lender
In the spring of 1778, General George Washington wrote to his friend Landon Carter about a rumored "disposition in the Northern Officers to see me superseded in my Command." This was as candid a statement as the general ever made about the so-called Conway Cabal of patriot officers and politicians critical of his leadership. Most early historians of the Revolution took the threat to Washington seriously, but by the mid-twentieth century, interpretations had reversed, with the plot-if one existed-posing no real danger to the commander-in-chief. Yet, as historian Mark Edward Lender reveals in this compelling book, clues found in original new research provide a more comprehensive understanding of the personalities and political maneuverings of those involved in the Cabal, unlocking the real nature of the challenge to Washington.
Rather than the "classic Cabal" of Generals Horatio Gates, Thomas Mifflin, and Thomas Conway in a plot to remove… Read More

Chester A. Arthur: The Accidental President by John M. Pafford
Chester Alan Arthur, surely our unlikeliest president, may have been saved from complete obscurity only by his mutton-chop whiskers which stand out among the full-bearded visages of most late-nineteenth-century presidents. But as this highly readable portrait of Arthur and his age reveals, duty's unexpected call turned the quintessential patronage politician into a statesman who skillfully guided America's first steps on the road to becoming a world power.
No one is likely to follow Arthur's path to the White House again. A product of the spoils system that once governed the federal civil service, Arthur had been rewarded for his loyalty to the Republican machine with the most lucrative patronage position in the country -- customs collector of the Port of New York. In 1880, having never held elective office, he was chosen as James Garfield's running mate in a bid to heal a factional rift in the party. When Garfield's assassination made… Read More

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush by Jon Meacham
In this brilliant biography, Jon Meachm, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush. Drawing on President Bush's personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.
His was one of the great American lives. Born into a loving, privileged, and competitive family, Bush joined the… Read More

Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America's Soul by A.J. Baime
In 1948, America was a fractured country. Racism was rampant, foreign relations were fraught, and political parties were more divided than ever. Americans were certain that President Harry S. Truman's political career was over. "The ballots haven't been counted," noted political columnist Fret Othman, "but there seems to be no further need for holding up an affectionate farewell to Harry Truman." Truman's own staff did not believe he could win. Nor did his wife, Bess. The only man in the world confident that Truman would win was Mr. Truman himself. And win he did.
The year 1948 was a fight for the soul of a nation. In Dewey Defeats Truman, A.J. Baime sheds light on one of the most action-packed six months in American history, as Truman both triumphs and oversees watershed events -- the passing of the Marshall Plan, the acknowledgment of Israel as a state, the dawning of the Cold War, the Operation Sandstone… Read More

Eisenhower vs. Warren: The Battle for Civil Rights and Liberties by James F. Simon
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren were two of the most revered American leaders of the twentieth century. Yet, when it came to the protection of basic civil rights and liberties, they staunchly disagreed on how best to move into an uncertain future -- and their disagreements disintegrated into mutual suspicion and harsh recrimination.
In Eisenhower vs. Warren, prize-winning legal historian James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that "dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren." Warren, author of the Supreme Court's historic, unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, had demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system, While Eisenhower, who had built his reputation as a brilliant tactician and… Read More

Eisenhower: The White House Years by Jim Newton
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America's thirty-fourth president was belittled by his critics as the babysitter in chief. This new look reveals how wrong they were. Dwight Eisenhower was bequeathed the atomic bomb and refused to use it. He ground down Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism until both became, as he said, "McCarthywasm." He stimulated the economy to lift it from recession, built an interstate highway system, and turned an $8 billion deficit in 1953 into a $500 million surplus in 1960. (Ike was the last president until Bill Clinton to leave his country in the black.)
The President Eisenhower of popular imagination is a benign figure, armed with a putter, a winning smile, and little else. The Eisenhower of verteran journalist Jim Newton's rendering is shrewd, sentimental, and tempestuous. He mourned the death of his first son and doted on his grandchildren, but could, as one aide recalled, "peel the varnish off a… Read More

Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage by Dino A. Brugioni
Dino A. Brugioni, author of the bestselling account of the Cuban Missile crisis, Eyeball to Eyeball draws on his long CIA career as one of the world's premier experts on aerial reconnaissance to provide the inside story of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's efforts to use spy planes and satellites to gather military intelligence. He demonstrates that Eisenhower was a hands-on president who, contrary to popular belief, took an active role in assuring that the latest technology was used to gather aerial intelligence. This previously untold story of the secret Cold War espionage program makes full use of the author's own firsthand knowledge and of the information gained from interviews with important participants. As a founder and senior officer of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, Brugioni was a key player in keeping Eisenhower informed of all developments, and he sheds new light on the president's… Read More

The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch
In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington's bodyguards. Washington trusted and relied on them, but unbeknownst to him, some of the guards were part of a treasonous plan. In the early months of the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York and Mayor of New York City, launched a deadly scheme against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself.
This is the story of the secret plot against George Washington and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters, and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how difficult the battle was for George Washington -- and how close America was to losing the war.
Taking place during the most critical period of our nation's birth, THE FIRST CONSPIRACY tells a remarkable and little-known piece of American history. The story not only reveals George… Read More

The First Inauguration: George Washington and the Invention of the Republic by Stephen Howard Browne
"Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and recieved on the fourteenth day of the present month." With these words to the assembled members of the Senate and House of Representatives on April 30, 1789, George Washington inaugurated the American experiment. It was a momentous occasion and an immensely important moment for the nation. Never before had a people dared to invent a system of government quite like the one that Washington was preparing to lead, and the tensions between hope and skepticism ran high.
In this book, distinguished scholar of early America Stephen Howard Browne chronicles how the efforts of the first president of the United States of America united the nation through ceremony, celebrations, and oratory. The story follows Washigton on his journey from Mount Vernon… Read More

The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson by David S. Brown
A number of biographies have been written about the seventh president of the United States, but non has positioned Andrew Jackson so firmly in the forefront of the country's populist tradition. Now, historian David S. Brown traces Jackson's unusual life and legacy, shedding new light on his place in our nation's history and focusing on his role as a leader "of the people."
Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty in the carolinas to become the dominant figure in American politics between the ages of Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description.Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early nineteenth-century voting rights expanded for propertyless white males. Others stress Jackson's prominent role in removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands, which became the center of a thriving southern cotton kingdom worked by more than a million enslaved people.
A combative,… Read More

For Fear of an Elective King: George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789 by Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon
In the spring of 1789, within weeks of the establishment of the new federal government based on the U.S. Constitution, the Senate and House of Representatives fell into dispute regarding how to address the president. Congress, the press, and individuals debated more than thirty titles, many of which had royal associations and some of which were clearly monarchical. For Fear of an Elective King is Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon's rich account of the title controversy and its meanings. The short, intense legislative phase and the prolonged, equally intense public phase animated and shaped the new nation's broadening political community. Rather than simply reflecting an obsession with etiquette, the question challenged Americans to find an acceptable balance between power and the people's sovereignty while assuring the country's place in the Atlantic world. Bartoloni-Tuazon argues that… Read More