A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction From the moment Chief Justice Roberts botched Barack Obama's oath of office, the relationship between the Court and the White House has been a fraught one. Grappling with issues as diverse as campaign finance, abortion, and the right to bear arms, the Roberts court has put itself squarely at the center of American political life. Jeffrey Toobin brilliantly portrays key personalities and cases and shows how the President was fatally slow to realize the importance of the judicial branch to his agenda. Combining incisive legal analysis with riveting insider details, The Oath is an essential guide to understanding the Supreme Court of our interesting times.

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard--breaking the link between gold and the dollar--transforming the entire global monetary system. Over the course of three days--from August 13 to 15, 1971--at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen. In making his decision, Nixon shocked world leaders, bankers, investors, traders and everyone involved in global finance. Jeffrey E. Garten argues that many of the roots of America's dramatic retrenchment in world affairs began with that momentous event that was an admission that America could no longer afford to uphold the global monetary system. It opened the way for massive market instability and speculation that has plagued the world economy ever since, but at the same time it made possible the gigantic expansion of trade and investment across borders which created our modern era of once unimaginable progress. Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten's own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.

Explores the growing demand for school choice among poor families in the inner city. Stern describes the dramatic successes and occasional failures of this 'new civil rights movement' in three key cities: Milwaukee, Cleveland, and New York. Filled with timely insights and human drama, Breaking Free vividly describes how cash-starved Catholic schools in the South Bronx are performing small educational miracles every day with children the public schools have given up on. large numbers of poor minority children from violent, chaotic and failing public schools and allowed them to attend parochial and private schools where high expectations often result in high achievement. Drawing on personal observation and intimate conversations with parents, students and educators, Breaking Free is the first book to transform school choice from an abstract policy issue into a question of basic personal freedom, and indeed, for minority children at the bottom of the social ladder, into a question of survival. Equal access to the American dream through quality education is, Sol Stern convinces us, the unfinished business before us.

The ultimate insider takes us behind the scenes, in the book everyone is waiting for. As Jean Chrétien’s right-hand man for thirty years in Ministries all over Ottawa, Eddie Goldenberg got to know how things worked — especially from 1993 to 2003, when he was Senior Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister. What did this title mean? It meant that Eddie made things happen. For example, during Paul Martin’s years at Finance, Eddie was the go-between who linked Chrétien and Martin, who were for much of the time barely on speaking terms. Or when vital decisions about the Iraq War had to be made, Eddie was the man who wrote the words, “If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate.” And that’s the way this revealing book works; important decisions are used as case studies as we learn how things really happen in the tough world of politics. Those less concerned with mastering the system will simply enjoy reading this as an engaging account of an exciting arena, filled with memorable anecdotes about the world’s biggest names. “Journalists look for winners and losers so as to make good headlines. The real story is much more interesting, but is harder to write, and is very difficult to put in a clip of a few seconds.” “President Bush smiled and said, ‘You know the guy who wanted to see me, What’s-his-name? I didn’t see him.’ I thought, poor Joe Clark; he had gone from ‘Joe Who’ to ‘What’s-his-name’ in less than twenty years.” — Excerpt from The Way it Works