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Truman
"It was the watershed time of the century and Truman stands forth now - especially now in the aftermath of the Cold war - as a figure of utmost importance." David McCullough
Hailed by critics as an American masterpiece, McCullough's sweeping biography of Harry S. Truman captured the heart of the nation. The life and times of the thirty-third President of the United States, Truman provides a deeply moving look at an extraordinary, singular American. More info...
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Angela's ashes
When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood .More info...
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Einstein: His Life and Universe
How did Einstein's mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson's biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. More info...
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John Adams
In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who thought, wrote, and spoke out for the "Great Cause" come what might, who traveled far and wide in all seasons and often at extreme risk.
He rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was rightly celebrated for his integrity, and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Among other things, Franklin was a printer, philosopher, inventor, statesman, and not least, a writer. Franklin's autobiography captures the essence of his spirit. In it we can see him as a product of the 18th century enlightenment, a type of Yankee statesman who could use the language of Addison, Steele, Swift and Defoe.
In his autobiography, Franklin asks himself, "Who am I, how did I come to be, and why am I a human being as I am?" and he answers with the honesty, wit, and charm that have made this possibly the most famous of all autobiographies.
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Against All Enemies
Richard Clarke chronicles the recent decline and fall of democracy in the US. The real war on terror has happened largely behind closed doors, run by the White House, drawing on secret intelligence and operations around the world. There is no man who knows more about it than Richard Clarke, the former Counterterrorism Czar for both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the man who has led our efforts against al Qaeda and all other terrorist enemies for years, serving under seven presidents and in the White House for George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, until he resigned in March 2003. He has had a front-row seat at every major battle in this war, from the first World Trade Center bombing, to 9/11, to Afghanistan, to Iraq.
Clarke knows the secret stories of Bill Clinton's great victories... and when President Bush took office, Clarke was ready to present him with a master plan to roll back and destroy al Qaeda - yet the president did not grant a briefing for months. Why is that? Clarke knows why we failed to shut down terrorist financing within our borders prior to 2001.
After ignoring existing plans to attack al Qaeda when he first took office, George Bush made disastrous decisions when he finally did pay attention. Thanks to the determined, even conspiratorial views of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Bush, we went after the wrong enemy
The charges Clarke levels against the current administration must be taken seriously by every American, Democrat or Republican. Our security depends upon it.
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Alistair Cooke at the BBC
'Such experience, wisdom and education are unlikely ever again to combine in one journalist' - Mark Lawson
Alistair Cooke looks back on a rich and varied life, one which has taken him across the ocean but never far away from the BBC.
Drawing on archive recordings, this selection includes interviews from radio and television, Cooke's Letter from America, and a speech made to the Royal Television Society at New York's Cosmopolitan Club.
It charts the journalist's career from his first trip to America as a young Cambridge graduate to the establishment of the enormously successful Letter From America, originally scheduled for thirteen weeks but still running today.
Alistair Cooke's biographer, Nick Clarke, introduces this in-depth retrospective which examines the heroes, hobbies and experiences of one of the greatest names in broadcasting.
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American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
"[A] profoundly fascinating, richly complex, and ineffably sad American life. Bird and Sherwin are without peer in capturing the humanity of the man...." Booklist (starred review)
"The definitive biography.Oppenheimer's life doesn't influence us. It haunts us." Newsweek
"A masterful account of Oppenheimer's rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America's own trans-formation. It is a tour de force." Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer's essential nature.It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior." New York Times
Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.
When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's nuclear secrets.
In this magisterial biography twenty-five years in the making, the authors capture Oppenheimer's life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War.
More info...
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Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie, whose lifetime spanned the era from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the First World War was America's first modern titan.
In this magnificent biography, celebrated historian David Nasaw brings to life this period of unprecedented transition-a time of self-made millionaires, scabs, strikes, and a new kind of philanthropy-through the fascinating rags-to-riches story of one of our most iconic business legends.
The Scottish-born son of a failed weaver and a mother who supported the family by binding shoes, Andrew Carnegie is the embodiment of the American dream.
In his rise from a job as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to being the richest man in the world, he was single-minded, relentless and a major player in some of the most violent and notorious labor strikes of the time.
The prototype of today's billionaire, he was a visionary in the way he earned his money and in the way he gave it away. Nasaw explains how Carnegie made his fortune and how he tried to pull the world back from a war he predicted.
Brimming with new material, personal letters, diaries, prenuptial agreements, letters to and from presidents and prime ministers, Nasaw plumbs the core of this fascinating man, fixing him in his place as one of the most compelling, elusive and multifaceted personalities of the twentieth century. More info...
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Ayn Rand and the World She Made
Ayn Rand is the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over twelve million copies in the United States alone. Through them, she built a right-wing cult following in the late 1950s and became the guiding light of Libertarianism and of White House economic policy in the 1960s and ’70s.
Her defenses of radical individualism and of selfishness as a "capitalist virtue" have permanently altered the American cultural landscape. More info... |
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