Explores the growth of the executive branch’s power and influence on the US government. A “brilliant” examination of the growth of presidential power from George Washington to George W. Schlesinger Jr. Kennedy and Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, by a pulitzer Prize–winning historian Newsweek. From george washington to Abraham Lincoln, John F.

Bush, presidential power has both served and harmed the US Constitution. Hailed by the christian science monitor as “brilliant and provocative, ” this is a book that explores the history of what happened when the constitutional balance was upset in favor of presidential power, and questions how Americans should allow that balance to shape the future.

But is the current role of the potus what the founding Fathers intended: a strong leader with an equally strong system of accountability? In The Imperial Presidency, Arthur M. Over the course of two centuries, the power of the president of the United States has grown exponentially.

The Cycles of American History

In this updated edition, schlesinger reflects on the dawn of a new millennium and how new social and technological revolutions could lead to a revolution in American political cycles. Whatever the nation’s political future, it can benefit from the intelligence and regard for our country’s best traditions evident in these informed and humane essays.

Thenew york times “displays the author at his best: trenchant, erudite, crisp. Foreign affairs “an excellent and provocative primer on the challenges surrounding the contemporary American political setting . . . Draws on decades of astute observation to construct a dialectic of American politics, or as Time magazine called it, a “recurring struggle between pragmatism and idealism in the American soul.

The cycles of american History traces two conflicting visions of America—Experiment vs. Schlesinger Jr. A pulitzer prize–winning historian discusses “the Cold War, political parties, the presidency, and many broader philosophical issues with incisive wit” Library Journal. First-rate history mixed with a strong sense of public service.

The christian Science Monitor. Destiny—through two centuries of political evolution, conflict, and progress.

The Crosswinds of Freedom, 1932–1988 The American Experiment Book 3

The crosswinds of freedom is an articulate and incisive examination of the United States during its rise to become the world’s sole superpower. Here is a young democracy transformed by the Great Depression, the Cold War, the rapid pace of technological change, the Second World War, and the distinct visions of nine presidents.

Spanning fifty-six years and touching on many corners of the nation’s complex cultural tapestry, Burns’s work is a remarkable look at the forces that gave rise to the “American Century. ” . A pulitzer prize winner’s “immensely readable” history of the United States from FDR’s election to the final days of the Cold War Publishers Weekly.

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Lyndon: An Oral Biography

Interlaced with interviews from Lady Bird Johnson, John Kenneth Galbraith, J. William fulbright, Larry O’Brien, Hubert H. Humphrey, and hundreds of others, Miller provides an extensive and objective image of the life of LBJ. From his birth in 1908 to his death in 1973, the story of Lyndon B. Johnson is told without sparing his personal excesses and contentious public image—while also highlighting the strength of his greatest accomplishments in Washington.

Miller allows his posse of turncoats—336 in all, myself among them—to lead him to the Johnson few ever knew: at his best, magnificent; at his worst, outrageous. Horace busby, the washington post “The domestic triumphs and the Johnson style come across like the Fourth of July . . . No secret remains.

Page-by-page, this is the low-down up to the Presidency—and one long book that never flags. Kirkus Reviews. This is lyndon johnson true, ‘screaming at the universe, lunging through life, ’ flogging system, ranting, pouring ‘every ounce of his energy’ into whatever he did, shouting, raving, staff and self to achieve what others pronounced unachievable .

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Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism

A constitutional crisis ensued. Congress was supposed to resolve the tie, but would the Federalists hand over power peacefully to their political enemies, to Jefferson and his Republicans? For weeks on end, nothing was certain. Dunn, a scholar of eighteenth-century american history, has provided a valuable reminder of an election in which the stakes were truly enormous and the political vituperation was far more poisonous than the relatively moderate attacks heard today.

. . . Jefferson defeated adams but, tied with his own running mate, through a quirk in Electoral College balloting, Aaron Burr. In the election of 1800, federalist incumbent John Adams, and the elitism he represented, faced Republican Thomas Jefferson. An “excellent” history of the tumultuous early years of American government, and a constitutional crisis sparked by the Electoral College Booklist.

The federalists delayed and plotted, while Republicans threatened to take up arms. An excellent work that effectively explains this critical contest that shaped the history of the new republic. Booklist “dunn does a superb job of recounting the campaign, its cast of characters, and the election’s bizarre conclusion in Congress.

She captures its great drama, gives us fresh, ﬁnely drawn portraits of the founding fathers, and brilliantly parses the enduring signiﬁcance of the crisis. That tense standoff could have plunged the country into a disastrous armed conflict, Dunn explains, if not smooth, but instead cemented the legitimacy of peaceful, transfers of power.

The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights

The bill of rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. With helpful comments and fun facts in the margins, exhibiting that it is not a stagnant document but one with an evolving meaning shaped by historical events, the book will provide a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, such as the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

. A comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide to the Bill of Rights for everyday Americans from a constitutional law expert and a US politician. This elementary guidebook presents a short historical survey of the people, in England and the American colonies, legislation, and cultural milestones, writings, events, decrees, that influenced the Founding Fathers as they drafted the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Uncluttered and well organized, this text is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so. Who doesn’t know about the first amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this pocket-sized volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding.

Many americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States.

Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America

A wide-ranging and nuanced group portrait of the Founding Fathers” by a Pulitzer Prize winner The New Yorker. An eminently readable account of the men who led the Revolution, wrote the Constitution and persuaded the citizens of the thirteen original states to adopt it. San francisco chronicle “Superb .

. . A distinctive, fresh retelling of this epochal tale . . . Men like john dickinson, and henry and John Laurens, George Mason, rarely leading characters in similar works, put in strong appearances here. We see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as ordinary men who became extraordinary, altered by history.

In the early 1770s, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, the men who invented America were living quiet, devoted to family and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. Will want to read this book. Publishers Weekly, starred review . Everyone interested in the founding of the U.

S. In revolutionaries, madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers—how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker.

From the boston tea party to the first continental congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, war, diplomacy, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, and society that shaped our nation.

The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963

Kennedy and the Cold War. Among the cast of characters are robert kennedy, Fidel Castro, Robert McNamara, Adlai Stevenson, Leonid Brezhnev, Willy Brandt, and Andrei Gromyko. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This bestselling history takes us into the tumultuous period from 1960 through 1963 when the Berlin Wall was built and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the United States and Soviet Union to the abyss.

In this compelling narrative, white house, author michael beschloss, kgb, and politburo, praised by Newsweek as “the nation’s leading Presidential historian, Pentagon, ” draws on declassified American documents and interviews with Kennedy aides and Soviet sources to reveal the inner workings of the CIA, and show us the complex private relationship between President John F.

Beschloss discards previous myths to show how the miscalculations and conflicting ambitions of those leaders caused a nuclear confrontation that could have killed tens of millions of people. . Impressively researched and engrossingly narrated” los angeles Times, The Crisis Years brings to vivid life a crucial epoch in a book that David Remnick of the New Yorker has called the “definitive” history of John F.

The groundbreaking and revelatory tale of the most dangerous years of the Cold War and the two leaders who held the fate of the world in their hands. The bay of pigs invasion, the vienna summit, the Berlin Crisis, and what followed are rendered with urgency and intimacy as the author puts these dangerous years in the context of world history.

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The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940

He was there. As an international war correspondent and radio commentator, William L. An acclaimed historian unfolds a monumental, eyewitness page-turner on the tragic fall of France to Hitler’s Third Reich at the outset of WWII. Based on in-person conversation with the leaders, and ordinary citizens who both shaped the events of this time and lived through them on a daily basis, generals, diplomats, Shirer shapes a compelling account of historical events—without losing sight of the personal experience.

From the heroic efforts of the freedom fighters to the tactical military misjudgments that caused the fall and the daily realities of life for French citizens under Nazi rule, this fascinating and exhaustively documented account from one of the twentieth Century’s most important historians makes the events of the fall accessible to a younger audience in vivid and memorable style.

Shirer didn’t just research the fall of France. In just six weeks, he watched the Third Reich topple one of the world’s oldest military powers—and institute a rule of terror and paranoia.

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

From jfk’s battle with nixon during the 1960 election, but unsparing, like the skybolt missile mix-up, Schlesinger takes a close and fond, look at Kennedy’s tenure in the White House, to international conflict and domestic unrest, covering well-known successes, like his involvement in the Civil Rights movement; infamous humiliations, like the Bay of Pigs; and often overlooked struggles, to the seemingly charmed inaugural days, alike.

Schlesinger Jr. Pulitzer prize and national Book Award winner: “Of all the Kennedy books . . . This is the best. Time Arthur M. Kennedy throughout his presidency—from the long and grueling campaign to Kennedy’s tragic and unexpected assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald. Served as special assistant to President John F.

Praised by the new york times as “at once a masterly literary achievement and a work of major historical significance, ” A Thousand Days is not only a fascinating look at an American president, but a towering achievement in historical documentation. In a thousand days, schlesinger combines intimate knowledge as one of President Kennedy’s inner circle with sweeping research and historic context to provide a look at one of the most legendary presidential administrations in American history.

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Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair

In rich and fascinating detail, ” the us government’s misconceived attempt to cover up the true purpose of the flight, which Eisenhower deemed “an act of war, Mayday explores the years of U-2 flights, Khrushchev’s dramatic revelation that Powers was alive and in Soviet custody, and the show trial that sentenced the pilot to prison and hard labor.

This forced president dwight eisenhower to decide whether, to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and the world—that he had secretly ordered Powers’s flight, in an effort to save the meeting, or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval. On may day 1960, soviet forces downed a cIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit.

. From a u-2’s cramped cockpit to tense meetings in the oval office, diaries, the Élysée palace, and number ten downing street, which also include Richard Nixon, Camp David, and letters, to reveal the full high-stakes drama and bring to life its key figures, historian Michael Beschloss draws on previously unavailable CIA documents, the Kremlin, as well as the recollections of Eisenhower’s aides, Allen Dulles, CIA headquarters, and Charles de Gaulle.

An impressive work of scholarship with the dramatic pacing a spy thriller, Mayday “may be one of the best stories yet written about just how those grand men of diplomacy and intrigue conducted our business” Time. The “definitive” book on the U-2 episode and its disastrous impact on the future of the Cold War Kirkus Reviews.

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