651 results for "Science"

Countdown 1960 - The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the 312 Days that Changed America's Politics Forever

Chris Wallace
Instant New York Times Bestseller The riveting new book on the momentous year, campaign, and election that shaped American history It’s January 2, 1960: the day that Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy declared his candidacy; and with this opening scene, Chris Wallace offers readers a front-row seat to history. From the challenge of primary battles in a nation that had never elected a Catholic president, to the intense machinations of the national conventions—where JFK chose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate over the impassioned objections of his brother Bobby—this is a nonfiction political thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting. Like with many popular histories, readers may be familiar with the story, but few will know the behind-the-scenes details, told here with gripping effect. Featuring some of history’s most remarkable characters, page-turning action, and vivid details, Countdown 1960 follows a group of extraordinary politicians, civil rights leaders, Hollywood stars, labor bosses, and mobsters during a pivotal year in American history. The election of 1960 ushered in the modern era of presidential politics, with televised debates, private planes, and slick advertising. In fact, television played a massive role. More than 70 million Americans watched one or all four debates. The public turned to television to watch campaign rallies. And on the night of the election, the contest between Kennedy and Nixon was so close that Americans were glued to their televisions long after dawn to see who won. The election of 1960 holds stunning parallels to our current political climate. There were—potentially valid—claims of voter fraud and a stolen election. There was also a presidential candidate faced with the decision of whether to contest the result or honor the peaceful transfer of power.
Penguin Group 2026-05-19 448 pages

Lincoln's Last Trial The Murder Case That Propelled Him to the Presidency

David Fisher,Dan Abrams
Instant New York Times bestseller! A Winner of the Barondess/Lincoln Award A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite Book of 2018 A Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2018 A Mental Floss Best Book of 2018 A USA Today Top 10 Hot Book for Summer "Makes you feel as if you are watching a live camera riveted on a courtroom more than 150 years ago." --Diane Sawyer The true story of Abraham Lincoln's last murder trial, a case in which he had a deep personal involvement--and which played out in the nation's newspapers as he began his presidential campaign At the end of the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was hired to defend him. This was to be his last great case as a lawyer. What normally would have been a local case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln's debates with Stephen Douglas had gained him a national following. He was being urged to make a run for the presidency. His reputation was untarnished, but should he lose this trial, the spotlight now focused so brightly on him might be dimmed. The case also posed personal challenges for Lincoln. The victim had trained for the law in his office, and Lincoln had been his friend and his mentor. The accused killer, the young man Lincoln would defend, was the son of a close friend and supporter. And to win this trial he would have to form an allegiance with a bitter political rival. Lincoln's Last Trial captures the presidential hopeful's dramatic courtroom confrontations in vivid detail as he fights for his client--but also for his own political future.
Harlequin Enterprises ULC 2020-04-28 416 pages

Franklin D. Roosevelt A Political Life

Robert Dallek
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and NPR “We come to see in FDR the magisterial, central figure in the greatest and richest political tapestry of our nation’s entire history” —Nigel Hamilton, Boston Globe “Meticulously researched and authoritative” —Douglas Brinkley, The Washington Post “A workmanlike addition to the literature on Roosevelt.” —David Nasaw, The New York Times “Dallek offers an FDR relevant to our sharply divided nation” —Michael Kazin “Will rank among the standard biographies of its subject” — Publishers Weekly A one-volume biography of Roosevelt by the #1 New York Times bestselling biographer of JFK, focusing on his career as an incomparable politician, uniter, and deal maker In an era of such great national divisiveness, there could be no more timely biography of one of our greatest presidents than one that focuses on his unparalleled political ability as a uniter and consensus maker. Robert Dallek’s Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: how did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country’s needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country’s economic and social institutions? How did Roosevelt work such a profound change in the country’s foreign relations? For FDR, politics was a far more interesting and fulfilling pursuit than the management of family fortunes or the indulgence of personal pleasure, and by the time he became president, he had commanded the love and affection of millions of people. While all Roosevelt’s biographers agree that the onset of polio at the age of thirty-nine endowed him with a much greater sense of humanity, Dallek sees the affliction as an insufficient explanation for his transformation into a masterful politician who would win an unprecedented four presidential terms, initiate landmark reforms that changed the American industrial system, and transform an isolationist country into an international superpower. Dallek attributes FDR’s success to two remarkable political insights. First, unlike any other president, he understood that effectiveness in the American political system depended on building a national consensus and commanding stable long-term popular support. Second, he made the presidency the central, most influential institution in modern America’s political system. In addressing the country’s international and domestic problems, Roosevelt recognized the vital importance of remaining closely attentive to the full range of public sentiment around policy-making decisions—perhaps FDR’s most enduring lesson in effective leadership.
Penguin 2018-11-06 720 pages

Pharma: greed, lies, and the poisoning of America

Posner, Gerald L.
"Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry. Pharma introduces brilliant scientists, in-corruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed. A business that profits from treating ills can create far deadlier problems than it cures. Addictive products are part of the industry's DNA, from the days when corner drugstores sold morphine, heroin, and cocaine, to the past two decades of dangerously overprescribed opioids. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America's wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. Relying on thousands of pages of government and corporate archives, dozens of hours of interviews with insiders, and previously classified FBI files, Posner exposes the secrets of the Sacklers' rise to power--revelations that have long been buried under a byzantine web of interlocking companies with ever-changing names and hidden owners. The unexpected twists and turns of the Sackler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients." -- Publisher's description
Avid Reader Press 2020 802 pages

A Picture Book of Thomas Jefferson

David A. Adler
A President who could hunt, plow, and shoe a horse, Jefferson was an avid reader, a lawyer, an inventor, a statesman, and the author of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson was one of America's Founding Fathers. He was George Washington's secretary of state, John Adam's vice president, and the third President of the United States. Adler's biography of President Jefferson is interesting, easy to read and filled with colorful pictures that help young children learn the story of one of America's greatest founders from his time as a boy until his death on July 4, 1826—fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” ( Booklist ) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history, or who need reliable sources for school book reports.
Holiday House 2018-04-10 32 pages

A Picture Book of Davy Crockett

David A. Adler
Separating truth from tall tales, this easy-to-read biography details the life of a great American frontiersman. Legends say Davy Crockett weighed two hundred pounds when he was born, and leapt right out of his cradle ready to fight. Though those stories are an exagerration, Crockett's life was anything but boring. Farmer, soldier, sharp-shooter and politician, he was a well-known figure in the early 1800s—and even after his death, his reputation as an American folk hero grew and grew. In this illustrated biography, David Adler retells the true story of David Crockett's life—from his birth in Tennessee to his death at the Alamo. Using contemporary primary sources, Adler distinguishes between fact and legend, providing details about Crockett's family life and political career, as well as a note about the historical origins of many of the famed tall tales. A timeline of important dates is included. For almost thirty years, David Adler’s Picture Book Biography series has profiled famous people who changed the world. Colorful, kid-friendly illustrations combine with Adler’s “expert mixtures of facts and personality” (Booklist) to introduce young readers to history through compelling biographies of presidents, heroes, inventors, explorers, and adventurers. These books are ideal for first and second graders interested in history or who need reliable sources for school book reports.
Candlewick Press 1996-01-01 32 pages

America's bitter pill: money, politics, backroom deals, and the fight to fix our broken healthcare

Brill, Steven
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.” — The New York Times America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.” —The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ” — Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.” — The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.” —Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.” — The New York Review of Books
Random House 2015-08-18 528 pages

Camelot's Court Inside the Kennedy White House

Robert Dallek
Fifty years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek, whom The New York Times calls “Kennedy’s leading biographer,” delivers a riveting new portrait of this president and his inner circle of advisors—their rivalries, personality clashes, and political battles. In Camelot’s Court, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy’s administration—including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam—were indelible. Kennedy purposefully put together a dynamic team of advisors noted for their brilliance and acumen, including Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and trusted aides Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger. Yet the very traits these men shared also created sharp divisions. Far from being unified, this was an uneasy band of rivals whose ambitions and clashing beliefs ignited fiery internal debates. Robert Dallek illuminates a president deeply determined to surround himself with the best and the brightest, who often found himself disappointed with their recommendations. The result, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House, is a striking portrait of a leader whose wise resistance to pressure and adherence to principle offers a cautionary tale for our own time.
HarperCollins 2014-09-16 528 pages

Unfreedom of the press

Levin, Mark R.
Fox News host Mark Levin shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within: "not government oppression or suppression," he writes, but self-censorship, group-think, bias by omission, and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events, and outright lies as news. Levin takes the reader on a journey through the early American patriot press, which proudly promoted the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, followed by the early decades of the Republic during which newspapers around the young country were open and transparent about their fierce allegiance to one political party or the other. It was only at the start of the Progressive Era and the twentieth century that the idea of "objectivity of the press" first surfaced, leaving us where we are today: with a partisan party-press overwhelmingly aligned with a political ideology but hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature
Threshold Editions 2020-08-11 258 pages

To End a Presidency The Power of Impeachment

Laurence Tribe,Joshua Matz
As Congress prepares articles of impeachment of President Trump, read the definitive book on presidential impeachment and how it should be used today. Impeachment is our ultimate constitutional check against an out-of-control executive. But it is also a perilous and traumatic undertaking for the nation. In this authoritative examination, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz rise above the daily clamor to illuminate impeachment's proper role in our age of broken politics. Now revised with a new epilogue, To End a Presidency is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand how this fearsome power should be deployed.
Basic Books 2019-03-05 336 pages

The Tyranny of Clichés How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas

Jonah Goldberg
“An indispensable and enduring field guide to the arguments the left makes—and the ones it tries to avoid.” — The Claremont Review of Books According to Jonah Goldberg, if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick liberals ever pulled was convincing themselves they’re not ideological. Today, “objective” journalists, academics, and “moderate” politicians peddle some of the most radical arguments by hiding them in homespun apho­risms. Barack Obama casts himself as a disciple of reason: He’s a pragmatist, opposed to the ideology and drama of the Right, solely concerned with “what works.” And today’s liberals follow his lead, spouting countless clichés such as: • One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter: Sure, if the other man is an idiot. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was Bin Laden a freedom fighter? • Violence never solves anything: Really? It solved our problems with King George III and ended slavery. • We need complete separation of church and state: In other words, all expressions of faith should be barred from politics . . . except when they support liberal programs. With humor and passion, Goldberg dismantles these and many other Trojan horses that liberals use to cheat in the war of ideas. He shows that the Pro­gressive tradition of denying an ideological agenda while pursuing it vigorously under the false flag of reasonableness is alive and well. And he reveals how this dangerous game may lead us further down the path of self-destruction.
Penguin 2013-04-30 336 pages

The Supreme Court The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America

Jeffrey Rosen,Thirteen/WNET
"Superbly well written . . . a wonderfully informative guide to the Supreme Court both past and present."—David J. Garrow, American History Jeffrey Rosen recounts the history of the Supreme Court through the personal and philosophical rivalries that have transformed the law—and by extension, our lives. With studies of four crucial conflicts—Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson; post–Civil War justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes; liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas; and conservative stalwarts William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia—Rosen brings vividly to life the perennial rivalry between those justices guided by strong ideology and those who cared more about the court as an institution, forging coalitions and adjusting to new realities. He ends with a revealing conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts, who is attempting to change the court in unexpected ways. The stakes, he shows, are nothing less than the future of American jurisprudence.
St. Martin's Press 2007-12-26 288 pages

Wildland The Making of America's Fury

Evan Osnos
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER After a decade abroad, the National Book Award – and Pulitzer Prize – winning writer Evan Osnos returns to three places he has lived in the United States—Greenwich, CT; Clarksburg, WV; and Chicago, IL—to illuminate the origins of America’s political fury. Evan Osnos moved to Washington, D.C., in 2013 after a decade away from the United States, first reporting from the Middle East before becoming the Beijing bureau chief at the Chicago Tribune and then the China correspondent for The New Yorker . While abroad, he often found himself making a case for his home country, urging the citizens of Egypt, Iraq, or China to trust that even though America had made grave mistakes throughout its history, it aspired to some foundational moral commitments: the rule of law, the power of truth, the right of equal opportunity for all. But when he returned to the United States, he found each of these principles under assault. In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020—a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil—he focused on three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of twenty-first-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution. He finds answers in the rightward shift of the financial elite in Greenwich, in the collapse of social infrastructure and possibility in Clarksburg, and in the compounded effects of segregation and violence in Chicago. The truth about the state of the nation may be found not in the slogans of political leaders but in the intricate details of individual lives, and in the hidden connections between them. As Wildland weaves in and out of these personal stories, events in Washington occasionally intrude, like flames licking up on the horizon. A dramatic, prescient examination of seismic changes in American politics and culture, Wildland is the story of a crucible, a period bounded by two shocks to America’s psyche, two assaults on the country’s sense of itself: the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Following the lives of everyday Americans in three cities and across two decades, Osnos illuminates the country in a startling light, revealing how we lost the moral confidence to see ourselves as larger than the sum of our parts.
Picador 2022-09-13 496 pages

Things that make white people uncomfortable

Bennett, Michael,Zirin, Dave
"Defensive lineman Michael Bennett adds his voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field."--Provided by publisher.
Haymarket Books 2018 220 pages

The First Conspiracy The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington

Brad Meltzer,Josh Mensch
Taking place during the most critical period of our nation’s birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington’s character, but also illuminates the origins of America’s counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA. In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington’s bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them. But unbeknownst to Washington, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York, William Tryon, and Mayor David Mathews, launched a deadly plot against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself. This is the story of the secret plot and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters, and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how hard the battle was for George Washington and how close America was to losing the Revolutionary War. In this historical page-turner, New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer teams up with American history writer and documentary television producer, Josh Mensch to unravel the shocking true story behind what has previously been a footnote in the pages of history. Drawing on extensive research, Meltzer and Mensch capture in riveting detail how George Washington not only defeated the most powerful military force in the world, but also uncovered the secret plot against him in the tumultuous days leading up to July 4, 1776.
Flatiron Books 2020-01-07 432 pages

Family Properties Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black America (10th Anniversary Edition)

Beryl Satter
“Beryl Satter's Family Properties is really an incredible book. It is, by far, the best book I've ever read on the relationship between blacks and Jews. That's because it hones in on the relationship between one specific black community and one specific Jewish community and thus revels in the particular humanity of all its actors.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic Part family story and part urban history, a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago -- and cities across the nation The "promised land" for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly became the most segregated city in the North, the site of the nation's worst ghettos and the target of Martin Luther King Jr.'s first campaign beyond the South. In this powerful book, Beryl Satter identifies the true causes of the city's black slums and the ruin of urban neighborhoods throughout the country: not, as some have argued, black pathology, the culture of poverty, or white flight, but a widespread and institutionalized system of legal and financial exploitation. In Satter's riveting account of a city in crisis, unscrupulous lawyers, slumlords, and speculators are pitched against religious reformers, community organizers, and an impassioned attorney who launched a crusade against the profiteers—the author's father, Mark J. Satter. At the heart of the struggle stand the black migrants who, having left the South with its legacy of sharecropping, suddenly find themselves caught in a new kind of debt peonage. Satter shows the interlocking forces at work in their oppression: the discriminatory practices of the banking industry; the federal policies that created the country's shameful "dual housing market"; the economic anxieties that fueled white violence; and the tempting profits to be made by preying on the city's most vulnerable population. Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America is a monumental work of history, this tale of racism and real estate, politics and finance, will forever change our understanding of the forces that transformed urban America. "Gripping . . . This painstaking portrayal of the human costs of financial racism is the most important book yet written on the black freedom struggle in the urban North."—David Garrow, The Washington Post
Picador 2021-04-27 544 pages

The ideological origins of the American Revolution

Bailyn, Bernard
In his most influential work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bailyn exhibits through a thorough analysis of pre-Revolutionary political pamphlets that the colonists believed that the British intended to establish a tyrannical state that would abridge the historical rights of the colonists. He thus argued that the Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty and freedom was not simply propagandistic but rather central to their understanding of the situation. This evidence was used to displace Charles A. Beard's theory, then the dominant understanding of the American Revolution, that the American Revolution was primarily a matter of class warfare and that the rhetoric of liberty was meaningless. Bailyn maintained that ideology was ingrained in the revolutionaries, an attitude he said exemplified the "transforming radicalism of the American Revolution"
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1992-03 396 pages

The people vs. Barack Obama: the criminal case against the Obama administration

Shapiro, Ben
"New York Times bestselling author Ben Shapiro presents a comprehensive case against Barack Obama's abuses of power during his time in office. From the DOJ to the NSA, from the EPA to the Department of Health and Human Services, Barack Obama's administration has become a labyrinth of corruption and overreach touching every aspect of Americans' lives. The People vs. Barack Obama strips away the soft media picture of the Obama administration to reveal a regime motivated by pure, unbridled power and details how each scandal has led to dozens of instances of as-yet-unprosecuted counts of espionage, involuntary manslaughter, violation of internal revenue laws, bribery, and obstruction of justice. The story of the Obama administration is a story of abuse, corruption, and venality on the broadest scale ever to spring from the office of the presidency. President Obama may be the culmination of a century of government growth--but more important, he is the apotheosis of the imperial presidency. Obama chooses when to enforce immigration laws, delays his own Obamacare proposals when it is politically convenient to do so, micromanages the economy, attacks the Supreme Court, Congress, and the sovereign states. And he proclaims that he alone is the voice of the people while encroaching on their rights. In The People vs. Barack Obama, Ben Shapiro brings Obama into the people's court and addresses each of his abuses of power"--
Threshold Editions 2014-06-10 292 pages