Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of “Change We Can Believe In” was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery. In The Promise: President Obama, Year One , Jonathan Alter, one of the country’s most respected journalists and historians, uses his unique access to the White House to produce the first inside look at Obama’s difficult debut. What happened in 2009 inside the Oval Office? What worked and what failed? What is the president really like on the job and off-hours, using what his best friend called “a Rubik’s Cube in his brain?" These questions are answered here for the first time. We see how a surprisingly cunning Obama took effective charge in Washington several weeks before his election, made trillion-dollar decisions on the stimulus and budget before he was inaugurated, engineered colossally unpopular bailouts of the banking and auto sectors, and escalated a treacherous war not long after settling into office. The Promise is a fast-paced and incisive narrative of a young risk-taking president carving his own path amid sky-high expectations and surging joblessness. Alter reveals that it was Obama alone—“feeling lucky”—who insisted on pushing major health care reform over the objections of his vice president and top advisors, including his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who admitted that “I begged him not to do this.” Alter takes the reader inside the room as Obama prevents a fistfight involving a congressman, coldly reprimands the military brass for insubordination, crashes the key meeting at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, and bounces back after a disastrous Massachusetts election to redeem a promise that had eluded presidents since FDR. In Alter’s telling, the real Obama is an authentic, demanding, unsentimental, and sometimes overconfident leader. He adapted to the presidency with ease and put more “points on the board” than he is given credit for, but neglected to use his leverage over the banks and failed to connect well with an angry public. We see the famously calm president cursing leaks, playfully trash-talking his advisors, and joking about even the most taboo subjects, still intent on redeeming more of his promise as the problems mount. This brilliant blend of journalism and history offers the freshest reporting and most acute perspective on the biggest story of our time. It will shape impressions of the Obama presidency and of the man himself for years to come.

When Mickie Siebert arrived in New York in the mid-1950s, she had $500 in her wallet and drove a used Studebaker. Almost fifty years later she is known as the "First Woman of Finance," the only woman to head a publicly traded national brokerage firm. Pithy, vastly entertaining, and full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes, Changing the Rules reveals how Siebert forged her phenomenal success in the chaotic and cutthroat world of Wall Street. Three four-letter words are behind Siebert's career success: One is work -- she learned everything there was to know about a company before recommending its stock. The second is luck -- as an analyst in training, she had the good fortune to follow a fledgling industry that nobody else wanted. (The "dog" industry was airlines.) The third word is risk -- she knew how to assess liability and make a decision. Siebert recounts the resistance of the good gray Stock Exchange when she dared to infiltrate the boys' club, threatening to have a Port-O-San delivered to the NYSE luncheon club if they didn't add a women's bathroom. She reveals the backstage stories about saving Lockheed and selling Conrail (at the time, the largest stock offering in Wall Street history), as well as the changes on the Street that led to May Day, 1975, when she was first in line as a discount broker (and considered a pariah by industry standards). She tells of her memorable encounters with such legendary figures as Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace who ran Eastern Airlines, and Robert Brimberg, the iconoclastic "Scarsdale Fats" whose investing acumen was the envy of the Street. Writing with equal candor about the politics of finance and the finance of politics, Siebert recalls her five years as Superintendent of Banking for New York State -- when she helped to prevent a national fiscal crisis during the Iran hostage situation -- and her experiences as a pro-choice Republican senatorial candidate. Siebert's reputation for rocking the boat is legendary, and Changing the Rules is both a fascinating biography of a true pioneer, and a valuable strategic and informational tool for anyone who deals with or dabbles in the money game.

The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family. Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy ) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the renowned Warburg family, from her great-great-uncle, the eccentric art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness inspired modern theories of iconography, to her great-grandfather Paul M. Warburg, the architect of the Federal Reserve System whose unheeded warnings about the stock-market crash of 1929 made him “the Cassandra of Wall Street.” As she throws new light on her beloved grandmother’s life and many amours, Weber also considers the role the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg played in her family history, along with the ways the Warburg family has been as celebrated for its accomplishments as it has been vilified over the years by countless conspiracy theorists (from Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan), who labeled Paul Warburg the ringleader of the so-called international Jewish banking conspiracy. Her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, but their unlikely union, Weber believes, was a direct consequence of George Gershwin’s looming presence in the Warburg family. A notorious womanizer, Weber’s father was a peripatetic filmmaker who made propaganda and training films for the OSS during World War II before producing the first movie with smells, the regrettable flop that was AromaRama. He was as much an enigma to his daughter as he was to the FBI, which had him under surveillance for more than forty years, and even noted Katharine’s birth in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover. Colorful, evocative, insightful, and very funny, The Memory of All That is an enthralling look at a tremendously influential—and highly eccentric—family, as well as a consideration of how their stories, with their myriad layers of truth and fiction, have both provoked and influenced one of our most prodigiously gifted writers.

Earlier this year, 2012, I published a book with Ishi Press entitled, Ron Paul for President in 2012: Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty. That book title has been overtaken by the press of events. I write, now, on August 31, 2012, and Mitt Romney has just been chosen as the standard bearer for the GOP in the upcoming November election. I persist in believing that had the Republican Party played fair, to say nothing of the mainstream media, Dr. Paul might have had a real chance to beat Governor Romney for that nomination. If Paul had won the GOP nomination, I still maintain that the Congressman from Texas would have easily overwhelmed President Barack Obama in the fall vote. Recent head to head surveys between the two resulted in a dead heat. My thought is that when the Obama voters realize that Paul stands with them on peace, on legalization of drugs, on opposition to bail outs to those to the fat cat crony capitalists who are “too big to fail,” on the closure of Guantanamo, on personal liberties, there would not have been much of a contest between the two of them. But this is not to be. So, I am coming out with another book, exactly like the previous one, except for this preface to what might be considered the second edition of that publication, and also except for the change in title. This new book is now entitled: Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty. Did Ron Paul fail in his presidential bid? When the Republican primaries began, these were the candidates: Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, John Huntsman, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Guess who, after a long grueling contest, were the last two standing? Despite the fact that Ron Paul was the last one to leave the race, obviously, yes, he “failed.” He received more votes from Democrats and Independents than any other person in the primary race, and more financial contributions from members of our armed forces, but Dr. Ron Paul will still not be on the November ballot. So why publish this “new” book? Because our beloved rEVOLution goes on. Ron Paul will continue to expose millions of Americans, and billions of people all around the world, to the evils of imperialistic war-mongering, to the mischief of the Federal Reserve System, to the benefits of true free market capitalism. He will again and again make the case in favor of Austrian economics, the gold standard and private property rights. He will demonstrate, again and again and yet again, the evils of the National Defense Authorization Ac, of murdering American citizens without a trial, of water boarding, of indefinite detention. He will defend whistle blowers such as Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. He will make the case that the war on drugs is no more justified, nor pragmatic, than alcohol prohibition. He will make the case that American troops in 900 foreign military bases in some 140 different countries does not at all constitute “defense”; that had any other country done anything like this, we would all see it for the imperialism that it really is. He will convince people that the best course of action is to “legalize freedom.”