His Final Battle

His Final Battle
Author: Joseph Lelyveld
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 034580659X

A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg In March 1944, as World War II raged and America’s next presidential election loomed, Franklin D. Roosevelt was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Driven by a belief that he had a duty to see the war through to the end, Roosevelt concealed his failing health and sought a fourth term—a term that he knew he might not live to complete. With unparalleled insight and deep compassion, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Joseph Lelyveld delves into Roosevelt’s thoughts, preoccupations, and motives during his last sixteen months, which saw the highly secretive Manhattan Project, the roar of D-Day, the landmark Yalta Conference and FDR’s hopes for a new world order—all as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax. His Final Battle delivers an extraordinary portrait of this famously inscrutable man, who was full of contradictions but a consummate leader to the very last.

The President Is Dead!

The President Is Dead!
Author: Louis L. Picone
Publisher: Skyhorse
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1510754547

*Updated Edition* A fun, anecdote-filled, encyclopedic look at the circumstances surrounding the deaths of every president and a few “almost presidents,” such as Jefferson Davis. Packed with fun facts and presidential trivia, The President Is Dead! tells you everything you could possibly want to know about how our presidents, from George Washington to George H. W. Bush (who was the most recent president to die), met their ends, the circumstances of their deaths, the pomp of their funerals, and their public afterlives, including stories of attempted grave robbings, reinterments, vandalism, conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths, and much more. The President Is Dead! is filled with never-before-told stories, including a suggestion by one prominent physician to resurrect George Washington from death by transfusing his body with lamb’s blood. You may have heard of a plot to rob Abraham Lincoln’s body from its grave site, but did you know that there was also attempts to steal Benjamin Harrison's and Andrew Jackson’s remains? The book also includes “Critical Death Information,” which prefaces each chapter, and a complete visitor’s guide to each grave site and death-related historical landmark. An “Almost Presidents” section includes chapters on John Hanson (first president under the Articles of Confederation), Sam Houston (former president of the Republic of Texas), David Rice Atchison (president for a day), and Jefferson Davis. Exhaustively researched, The President Is Dead! is richly layered with colorful facts and entertaining stories about how the presidents have passed. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

This Republic of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering
Author: Drew Gilpin Faust
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0375703837

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An "extraordinary ... profoundly moving" history (The New York Times Book Review) of the American Civil War that reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. An estiated 750,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be seven and a half million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust describes how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God. Throughout, the voices of soldiers and their families, of statesmen, generals, preachers, poets, surgeons, nurses, northerners and southerners come together to give us a vivid understanding of the Civil War's most fundamental and widely shared reality. With a new introduction by the author, and a new foreword by Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

No Ordinary Time

No Ordinary Time
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 790
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439126194

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Author: Conrad Black
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 1329
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1610392132

Franklin Delano Roosevelt stands astride American history like a colossus, having pulled the nation out of the Great Depression and led it to victory in the Second World War. Elected to four terms as president, he transformed an inward-looking country into the greatest superpower the world had ever known. Only Abraham Lincoln did more to save America from destruction. But FDR is such a large figure that historians tend to take him as part of the landscape, focusing on smaller aspects of his achievements or carping about where he ought to have done things differently. Few have tried to assess the totality of FDR's life and career. Conrad Black rises to the challenge. In this magisterial biography, Black makes the case that FDR was the most important person of the twentieth century, transforming his nation and the world through his unparalleled skill as a domestic politician, war leader, strategist, and global visionary -- all of which he accomplished despite a physical infirmity that could easily have ended his public life at age thirty-nine. Black also takes on the great critics of FDR, especially those who accuse him of betraying the West at Yalta. Black opens a new chapter in our understanding of this great man, whose example is even more inspiring as a new generation embarks on its own rendezvous with destiny.

The Dying President

The Dying President
Author: Robert H. Ferrell
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780826211712

In this authoritative account, Robert H. Ferrell shows how the treatment of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's illness in 1944- 1945 was managed by none other than the president himself. Although this powerful American president knew that he suffered from cardiovascular disease, he went to great lengths to hide that fact--both from his physician and from the public. Why Roosevelt disguised the nature of his illness may be impossible to discern fully. He was a secretive man who liked to assign only parts of tasks to his assistants so that he, the president, would be the only one who knew the whole story. The presidency was his life, and he did not wish to give it up. The president's duplicity, though not easily measurable, had a critical effect on his performance. Placed on a four-hour-a-day schedule by his physicians, Roosevelt could apply very little time to his presidential duties. He took long vacations in South Carolina, Warm Springs, the Catoctin Mountains, and Hyde Park, as well as lengthy journeys to Hawaii, Canada, and Yalta. Important decisions were delayed or poorly made. America's policy toward Germany was temporarily abandoned in favor of the so-called Morgenthau Plan, which proposed the "pastoralization" of Germany, turning the industrial heart of Europe into farmland. Roosevelt nearly ruined the choice of Senator Harry S. Truman as his running mate in 1944 by wavering in the days prior to the party's national convention. He negotiated an agreement with Winston Churchill on sharing postwar development of nuclear weapons but failed to let the State Department know. And, in perhaps the most profoundly unwise decision, Roosevelt accepted a fourth term when he could not possibly survive it. In his final year, a year in which he faced crucial responsibility regarding World War II and American foreign policy, Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to serve the nation as a healthy president would have. Reading like a mystery story, The Dying President clears up many of the myths and misunderstandings that have surrounded Roosevelt's last year, finally revealing the truth about this missing chapter in FDR's life.

Everything Trump Touches Dies

Everything Trump Touches Dies
Author: Rick Wilson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1982103159

From Rick Wilson—longtime Republican strategist, political commentator, Daily Beast contributor—the #1 New York Times bestseller about the disease that is destroying the conservative movement and burning down the GOP: Trumpism. Includes an all-new chapter analyzing Trump’s impact on the 2018 elections. In the #1 New York Times bestselling Everything Trump Touches Dies, political campaign strategist and commentator Rick Wilson delivers “a searingly honest, bitingly funny, comprehensive answer to the question we find ourselves asking most mornings: ‘What the hell is going on?’ (Chicago Tribune). The Guardian hails Everything Trump Touches Dies, saying it gives, “more unvarnished truths about Donald Trump than anyone else in the American political establishment has offered. Wilson never holds back.” Rick mercilessly exposes the damage Trump has done to the country, to the Republican Party, and to the conservative movement that has abandoned its principles for the worst President in American history. Wilson unblinkingly dismantles Trump’s deceptions and the illusions to which his supporters cling, shedding light on the guilty parties who empower and enable Trump in Washington and in the media. He calls out the race-war dead-enders who hitched a ride with Trump, the alt-right basement dwellers who worship him, and the social conservatives who looked the other way. Publishers Weekly calls it, “a scathing, profane, unflinching, and laugh-out-loud funny rebuke of Donald Trump and his presidency.” No left-winger, Wilson is a lifelong conservative who delivers his withering critique of Trump from the right. A leader of the Never Trump movement, he warned from the start that Trump would destroy the lives and reputations of everyone in his orbit, and Everything Trump Touches Dies is a deft chronicle the tragicomic political story of our time. From the early campaign days through the shock of election night, to the inconceivable train-wreck of Trump’s first year. Rick Wilson provides not only an insightful analysis of the Trump administration, but also an optimistic path forward for the GOP, the conservative movement, and the country. “Hilarious, smartly written, and usually spot-on” (Kirkus Reviews), Everything Trump Touches Dies is perfect for those on either side of the aisle who need a dose of unvarnished reality, a good laugh, a strong cocktail, and a return to sanity in American politics.

The Unexpected President

The Unexpected President
Author: Scott S. Greenberger
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2017-09-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030682390X

When President James Garfield was shot in 1881, nobody expected Vice President Chester A. Arthur to become a strong and effective president, a courageous anti-corruption reformer, and an early civil rights advocate. Despite his promising start as a young man, by his early fifties Chester A. Arthur was known as the crooked crony of New York machine boss Roscoe Conkling. For years Arthur had been perceived as unfit to govern, not only by critics and the vast majority of his fellow citizens but by his own conscience. As President James A. Garfield struggled for his life, Arthur knew better than his detractors that he failed to meet the high standard a president must uphold. And yet, from the moment President Arthur took office, he proved to be not just honest but brave, going up against the very forces that had controlled him for decades. He surprised everyone -- and gained many enemies -- when he swept house and took on corruption, civil rights for blacks, and issues of land for Native Americans. A mysterious young woman deserves much of the credit for Arthur's remarkable transformation. Julia Sand, a bedridden New Yorker, wrote Arthur nearly two dozen letters urging him to put country over party, to find "the spark of true nobility" that lay within him. At a time when women were barred from political life, Sand's letters inspired Arthur to transcend his checkered past--and changed the course of American history. This beautifully written biography tells the dramatic, untold story of a virtually forgotten American president. It is the tale of a machine politician and man-about-town in Gilded Age New York who stumbled into the highest office in the land, only to rediscover his better self when his nation needed him.

FDR's Deadly Secret

FDR's Deadly Secret
Author: Steven Lomazow
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011-01-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1586489062

The authors re-examine the final years of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and reveal that the president and his staff covered up a stunning secret, that, at the time of his death, FDR suffered from a skin cancer that had spread to his brain and abdomen and could have affected his mental function and ability to make decisions during World War II. Reprint.

Nightmare Scenario

Nightmare Scenario
Author: Yasmeen Abutaleb
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0063066076

Instant #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller From the Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta—the definitive account of the Trump administration’s tragic mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaos, incompetence, and craven politicization that has led to more than a half million American deaths and counting. Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would test the former reality-television host—and they predicted that the president would prove unable to meet the moment. In 2020, that crisis came to pass, with the outcomes more devastating and consequential than anyone dared to imagine. Nightmare Scenario is the complete story of Donald Trump’s handling—and mishandling—of the COVID-19 catastrophe, during the period of January 2020 up to Election Day that year. Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta take us deep inside the White House, from the Situation Room to the Oval Office, to show how the members of the administration launched an all-out war against the health agencies, doctors, and scientific communities, all in their futile attempts to wish away the worst global pandemic in a century. From the initial discovery of this new coronavirus, President Trump refused to take responsibility, disputed the recommendations of his own pandemic task force, claimed the virus would “just disappear,” mocked advocates for safe-health practices, and encouraged his base and the entire GOP to ignore or rescind public health safety measures. Abutaleb and Paletta reveal the numerous times officials tried to dissuade Trump from following his worst impulses as he defied recommendations from the experts and even members of his own administration. And they show how the petty backstabbing and rivalries among cabinet members, staff, and aides created a toxic environment of blame, sycophancy, and political pressure that did profound damage to the public health institutions that Americans needed the most during this time. Even after an outbreak in the fall that swept through the White House and infected Trump himself, he remained defiant in his approach to the virus, very likely costing him his own reelection. Based on exhaustive reporting and hundreds of hours of interviews from inside the disaster zone at all levels of authority, Nightmare Scenario is a riveting account of how the United States government failed its people as never before, a tragedy whose devastating aftershocks will linger and be felt by generations to come.