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

A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland by Seth G. Jones THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. December 1981 -- the CIA learns that the Polish government has cut telephone communications with the West and closed the border. The agency's leaders rush to brief President Ronald Reagan at Camp David. Within… Read more about this item

Washington's End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle by Jonathan Horn THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. Washington's End begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered by partisan criticism and eager to return… Read more about this item

White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port by Kate Storey THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, is synonymous with the Kennedy family. It is where, for a hundred years, America's most storied political family has come to celebrate, bond, play, and grieve. It is also the setting of… Read more about this item

Unlikely Heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, His Four Lieutenants, and the World They Made by Derek Leebaert THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. Unlikely Heroes provides an entirely new understanding of Franklin Roosevelt and his presidency. Only four people served at the top echelon of FDR's administration from the frightening early months of spring 1933 until he died in… Read more about this item

The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird THERE IS A RED "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. Four decades after Ronald Reagan's landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter's one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But… Read more about this item

James Monroe: A Life by Tim McGrath THERE IS A RED "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" ON THE BOTTOM EDGES. Monroe lived a life defined by revolutions. From the battlefields of the War for Independence, to his ambassadorship in Paris in the days of the guillotine, to his own role in the creation of Congress's partisan divide, he was a man who embodied the restless spirit… Read more about this item

Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. In the early 1960s, Dallas was brewing with political passions, a city crammed with larger-than-life characters dead-set against the Kennedy presidency. These included rabid warriors like defrocked military general Edwin A. Walker; the world's richest oil baron, H.L. Hunt; the leader of… Read more about this item

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson -- champion of American democracy, but also of segregation, advocate for free trade and a new world order based on freedom and justice -- thrust the United States into the First World… Read more about this item

Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House by Eleanor Herman THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE TOP PAGE EDGES. While Americans have a reputation for being straitlaced, many of the nation's leaders have been anything but puritanical. Alexander Hamilton had a steamy affair with a blackmailing prostitute. Warren G. Harding and Grover… Read more about this item

The Black Man's President: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, & the Pursuit of Racial Equality by Michael Burlingame In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as men." To justify that description, Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and… Read more about this item

Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency by Mark K. Updegrove Nearly sixty years after his death, JFK still holds an outsize place in the American imagination. While Baby Boomers remember his dazzling presence as president, millennials more likely know him from advertisements for Omega watches or Ray-Ban sunglasses. Yet his years in office were marked by more than his style and… Read more about this item

The President and the Freedom Fighter: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul by Brian Kilmeade In 1861, a bloody civil war loomed on America's horizon. No longer was it possible to pretend that slaveholding was consistent with the values of America's founding, but how fast could the country change? And could slavery be abolished while keeping… Read more about this item

Presidents of War: The Epic Story from 1807 to Modern Times by Michael Beschloss Ten years in the making, Presidents of War is a fresh, intimate, irresistibly readable narrative of how a procession of Chief Executives took the nation into major conflicts, mobilized Americans for victory, and seized greater power for themselves. Beschloss's findings in original letters, diaries, and declassified documents,… Read more about this item

A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland by Troy Senik Grover Cleveland's political career -- a dizzying journey that saw him rise from obscure lawyer to president of the United States in just three years -- was marked by contradictions. A politician of uncharacteristic honesty and principle, he was nevertheless dogged by secrets from his… Read more about this item

Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill by Mark Lee Gardner THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. The explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February 1898 stunned the world and triggered a war between the United States and Spain. Congress authorized President McKinley to recruit a… Read more about this item

The Strategy of Victory: How General George Washington Won the American Revolution by Thomas Fleming Led by the Continental Congress, the Americans almost lost the war for independence because their military thinking was badly muddled. Following the victory in 1775 at Bunker Hill, patriot leaders were convinced that the key to victory was the home-grown militia -- local men defending their… Read more about this item

The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century by Clay Risen THERE IS A BLACK "CLOSEOUT/REMAINDER" MARK ON THE BOTTOM PAGE EDGES. The Crowded Hour is the dramatic story of the most famous regiment in American history: the Rough Riders, a motley group of soldiers led by Theodore Roosevelt, whose daring exploits marked the beginning… Read more about this item

Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. That day, after hours of drenching rain, tens of thousands crowded Washington's Capitol grounds to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term as president. In… Read more about this item

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution by James Oakes The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes's brilliant history of Lincoln's antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin… Read more about this item

The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy by Jay Cost There is perhaps no more influential falling-out between friends in American history as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Together they helped draft the United States Constitution and then defended it in the Federalist Papers, yet soon after it was ratified they broke… Read more about this item