Ron Chernow tells the story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow's biography argues that the political and economic greatness of today's America is the result of Hamilton's countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. Chernow here recounts Hamilton's turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington's aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Historians have long told the story of America's birth as the triumph of Jefferson's democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we've encountered before -- from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton's famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

The Kennedys may well be the most photographed, written about, talked about, admired, hated, and controversial family in American history. But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys. An immediate classic, The Kennedys combines intimate knowledge with a perspective free of obligations to family loyalties and myths, bringing the story of four generations of "America's family" fully into view. Collier and Horowitz capture the strain of ambition; the dynastic ebb and flow; the invention of a mythic identity; the corrosive underside of the dream of Camelot--developed over four generations--that led one young Kennedy to say, "We broke the rules and in turn we were broken by them." The Kennedys: An American Drama is a fascinating and brilliantly comprehensive history that brings together, for the first time, all the complex strains of the story of the Kennedys' rise and fall. The authors have added new material showing the effect of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the other family tragedies of the last few years, on the Kennedys and their mythic role in American life. In addition to The Kennedys , Peter Collier and David Horowitz are the authors of dynastic biographies of the Fords, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, and Fondas.

In this first volume of his memoirs, Dr Kissinger covers his first four years (1969-1973) as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and President Nixon's closest adviser on foreign policy. It is undoubtedly the most significant book to come out of the Nixon Administration. Among the countless great and critical moments Dr Kissinger recalls are his first meeting with Nixon, his secret trip to China, the first SALT negotiation, the Jordan crisis of 1970, the India-Pakistan war of 1971, and the historic summit meetings in Peking and Moscow. He covers the major controversies over Indochina policy during that period, including events in Laos, the overthrow of Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk, his secret talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris, his 'Peace is at hand' press conference, and the breakdown of the talks that led to the 'Christmas bombing' of 1972. He offers his insight s into the Middle East conflicts, Sadat's break with the Soviets, the election of Salvador Allende in Chile, issues of defence strategy, and relations with Europe and Japan. Other highlights are his relationship with Nixon, brilliant portraits of major foreign leaders, and his views as to the handling of crises and the art of diplomacy. Few men have wielded as much influence in the arena of American foreign policy as Henry Kissinger. This record makes an invaluable and lasting contribution to the history of this crucial time.

Twice Israel’s prime minister, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, bold leader in a war-torn region, Shimon Peres was one of the great statesmen of the modern world. Peres was also a fascinating, complex man–a brilliant intellectual who was entirely at home in the corridors of power; an individual revered by the world and yet highly controversial in his own country; at once a hero and a figure of tragedy. Now, in this definitive biography, Michael Bar-Zohar takes the full measure of a towering, enigmatic leader. Drawing on his decades-long association with Peres, as well as the full cooperation of the leader’s family, friends, supporters, and political rivals, Bar-Zohar has crafted a vibrant, daring, richly textured portrait of a man whose life and career span the entire history of Israel. Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to the Holy Land at the age of twelve, already a fiercely idealistic Zionist. Peres joined a kibbutz and, while still in his teens, became the leader of a major youth movement. When the struggle for Israeli independence broke out, future prime minister David Ben-Gurion tapped him to join his inner circle.As director general of the Defense Ministry under Ben-Gurion, Peres spearheaded a far-reaching campaign to turn Israel into a major military power. He jump-started Israel’s aircraft industry, forged a secret alliance with France, and successfully pursued his dream of making Israel a nuclear power. And yet Peres’s real triumph came not as a man of war but as a peacemaker.Elected prime minister in 1984, Peres brought new hope by pulling Israeli troops out of the quagmire in Lebanon, defusing tensions with Jordan, and, at the risk of his own political future, making serious overtures to the Palestinians. Peres and his longtime rival Yitzhak Rabin together secured the top-secret Oslo Accords of 1993, which won them and Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize–only to see the hope of peace shattered in a resurgence of regional violence.In a half-century of leadership, Peres has worked beside–or fought against–such giants as Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, and, tragically, Rabin, who was slain at the rally that marked his reconciliation with Peres. In this stunning, courageously frank, and scrupulously factual biography, Michael Bar-Zohar gives an eminent man his due.

A widely acclaimed biography from the bestselling author of The Romanovs: "One of the great love stories of history” ( The Economist ) between Catherine the Great and the wildly flamboyant and talented Prince Potemkin. • "Captures the genius of two extraordinary Enlightenment figures—and of the age as well." — The Wall Street Journal Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, territories that define the Russian sphere of influence to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving each of them free to take younger lovers. But these “twin souls” never stopped loving each other. Drawing on the pair’s intimate letters and on vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age. "Biography in the grand tradition...Riveting...The author [is] a gifted storyteller." — The Washington Post

“Dray captures the genius and ingenuity of Franklin’s scientific thinking and then does something even more fascinating: He shows how science shaped his diplomacy, politics, and Enlightenment philosophy.” –Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Today we think of Benjamin Franklin as a founder of American independence who also dabbled in science. But in Franklin’s day, the era of Enlightenment, long before he was an eminent statesman, he was famous for his revolutionary scientific work. Pulitzer Prize finalist Philip Dray uses the evolution of Franklin’s scientific curiosity and empirical thinking as a metaphor for America’s struggle to establish its fundamental values. He recounts how Franklin unlocked one of the greatest natural mysteries of his day, the seemingly unknowable powers of lightning and electricity. Rich in historical detail and based on numerous primary sources, Stealing God’s Thunder is a fascinating original look at one of our most beloved and complex founding fathers.

With the detention of Augusto Pinochet, and intense international pressure for the arrest of Slobodan Milosovic, the possibility of international law acting against tyrants around the world is emerging as a reality. In this incendiary book, Hitchens takes the floor as prosecuting counsel and mounts a devastating indictment of a man whose ambitions and ruthlessness have directly resulted in both individual murders and widespread, indiscriminate slaughter. He investigates and reveals Kissingers' involvement in: the deliberate mass killings of civilian populations in Indochina; the deliberate collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh; the personal suborning and planning of a murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation that the USA was not war with - Chile; the incitement and enabling of a mass genocide in East Timor; and the personal involvement in the kidnap and murder of a journalist living in Washinton DC.

A clear-eyed view of Winston Churchill, the workings of his historical imagination, and his successes and failures as a statesman, by the celebrated historian of World War II and best-selling author of Five Days in London, May 1940 John Lukacs has spent a lifetime considering the complex personality and statesmanship of Winston Churchill. In previous books Lukacs has told the story of Churchill's titanic struggle with Adolf Hitler in the early days of World War II. Now, in Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian., he turns his attention to Churchill the man and visionary statesman. Each chapter of this book provides an essential portrait of Churchill. Lukacs treats Churchill's vital relationships with Stalin, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, as well as his complex, farsighted political vision concerning the coming of World War II and the Cold War. Lukacs also assesses Churchill's abilities as a historian looking backward into the origins of the conflicts of which he was so much a part. In addition, the author examines the often contradictory ways Churchill has been perceived by critics and admirers alike. The last chapter is a powerful and deeply moving evocation of the three days Lukacs spent in London attending Churchill's funeral in 1965. In Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian., Lukacs deftly sets forth the essence of this towering figure of twentieth-century history with the consummate mastery of a great historian.

Two time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn has distilled a lifetime of study into this brilliant illumination of the ideas and world of the Founding Fathers. In five succinct essays he reveals the origins, depth, and global impact of their extraordinary creativity. The opening essay illuminates the central importance of America’s provincialism to the formation of a truly original political system. In the chapters following, he explores the ambiguities and achievements of Jefferson’s career, Benjamin Franklin’s changing image and supple diplomacy, the circumstances and impact of the Federalist Papers , and the continuing influence of American constitutional thought throughout the Atlantic world. To Begin the World Anew enlivens our appreciation of how America came to be and deepens our understanding of the men who created it.

The first biography of Pericles in a century, written by a renowned scholar and teacher, offers a classical model for today's political leaders. Kagan reminds readers of the fragility of democracy and uses Pericles as an example of the kind of strong political leadership so urgently needed today.

"One of the great statesmen of our century, Shimon Peres, winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, has shaped the history of Israel and the future of the Middle East. In the seventies, as Israel's minister of defense, he engineered the legendary Entebbe raid against PLO terrorists; in the eighties, as prime minister, he saved the Israeli economy from near collapse; and as foreign minister, Shimon Peres is now a key negotiator in the peace accords that he helped bring about. In Battling for Peace, he tells, for the first time, the story of his amazing career. As we follow Peres from his ancestral home in Poland to Israel, from the youth village of Ben-Shemen to Kibbutz Alumot, from youth movement leader to prime minister, we are introduced both to a man and to a nation. A thoughtful, disciplined, and immensely resourceful young man, Peres was singled out by Israel's great leader David Ben-Gurion, who appointed him, while still in his twenties, director general of the Ministry of Defense. From this point on, Peres's life was inseparable from his country's history. Peres writes of his bitter quarrels with Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, and of his great admiration for Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Francois Mitterrand. He discusses the origins of Israel's nuclear program, and tells how he led the way toward the Oslo agreement, describing his secret talks with King Hussein in London ten years ago, and revealing how a chance for peace was thwarted by self-serving politicians and timid American diplomacy"--OCLC

Looks at the relationship between power and sex, using history and literature to explore the trophy wife, the harem, the political marriage, and other evidence of a link between these two forces.

When Armand Hammer died at the age of 92, he was chairman of the Occidental Petroleum Company, lauded for his financial support of cancer research and for his art collection. But behind the facade of respectability lay a lifetime of fraud, both personal and professional. Now, the bestselling author of The Assassination Chronicles reveals the true story of this manipulative and corrupt man. of photos.

184 pages. Ex-Library. Book is in Very good condition throughout. This Book Presents Six Short Biographies, Political Portraits Of Men Who At Dfferent Times Were In Stalin's Immediate Entourage.

Hungary's War of Independence was the bloodiest conflict of the European revolutionary era, exciting nationalist passions that burn hot till this day. The story of this dramatic time unfolds through the towering personality of Louis Kossuth--a principal actor in the dramatic events. He and his fellow noblemen sized the opportunity offered by the continent's upheavals to restore Hungary's sovereignty under the Habsburg Crown. They introduced many administrative, social, and economic reforms...only to run into the opposition of many of the country's most powerful forces. In 1949, Kossuth fled--never to return home again.

Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery. How could a man as gifted as Benjamin, knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices, not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself, a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not, or could not, question the practice on which his own success, and that of the South, was founded.

When Zionists first advocated a national home for the Jewish people, they also propounded a revolution in the values that Jews should live by, a whole new way of thinking about Jewish life and Jewish history. Has this revolution in fact occurred? And what the consequences been for Jews and their neighbors? Especially given the extraordinary circumstances that link the United States and Israel, Americans may find the answers to such questions vexing - but the remarkable work of Avishai Margalit goes far to clarify the issues and enlighten the debate. Over the past two decades, Margalit has written major essays for American readers about the political leaders, cultural crises, and historical background of the contemporary Israeli scene. In Views in Review these essays are brought together with new commentary and observations, and their publication in one volume clearly shows that the whole is much more that the sum of its parts. From Ben Gurion to Netanyahu, from "Israeli kitsch" to the meaning of the Holocaust for "the seventh million," Margalit's work traverses the terrain of Israeli life and history and brings a tragically conflicted country into sharp and memorable focus.

The statesman, scientist, and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) lived a divided life, and in the centuries since his death questions about his true nature have abounded. Deservedly called the "Father of Modern Science," and still best known today for his innovative method of scientific inquiry - a single deductive system covering the entire range of empirical research into the natural world - he spent most of his career immersed not in scientific research but in the cutthroat world of high politics. Was Bacon a noble scholar who longed for solitary contemplation of higher philosophical truths, or a conniving political crook? Was he a captive of his birth and upbringing, an innocent caught in a web of political intrigue? Was he a homosexual? Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart boldly pursue the answers to these questions through a mass of previously untapped archival sources.

"A translation of a biography of the Athenian general Alcibiades by Jacqueline de Romilly, a French scholar and member of the French Academy"--

Trotsky's last battle against the Stalinist murder machine - the only book by him never before published in English. Contains all the articles against the GPU written between the raid on Trotsky's house on May 24, 1940, and his assassination on August 20. The record of a life-and-death struggle against the agents of the bureaucracy, 'Stalin's Gangsters' is essential for training today's generation of revolutionaries in the history of the movement and the fight for its security.