331 results for "Pulitzer"

Confidence Man The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

Maggie Haberman
“This is the book Trump fears most.” - Axios “Will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.” - Joe Klein, The New York Times "A uniquely illuminating portrait." - Sean Wilentz, The Washington Post “[A] monumental look at Donald Trump and his presidency.” — David Shribman, Los Angeles Times From the Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump's presidency like no other journalist, Confidence Man is a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its meaning from his rise in New York City to his tortured post-presidency. Few journalists working today have covered Donald Trump more extensively than Maggie Haberman. And few understand him and his motivations better. Now, demonstrating her majestic command of this story, Haberman reveals in full the depth of her understanding of the 45th president himself, and of what the Trump phenomenon means. Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink. The through-line of Trump’s life and his presidency is the enduring question of what is in it for him or what he needs to say to survive short increments of time in the pursuit of his own interests. Confidence Man is also, inevitably, about the world that produced such a singular character, giving rise to his career and becoming his first stage. It is also about a series of relentlessly transactional relationships. The ones that shaped him most were with girlfriends and wives, with Roy Cohn, with George Steinbrenner, with Mike Tyson and Don King and Roger Stone, with city and state politicians like Robert Morgenthau and Rudy Giuliani, with business partners, with prosecutors, with the media, and with the employees who toiled inside what they commonly called amongst themselves the “Trump Disorganization.” That world informed the one that Trump tried to recreate while in the White House. All of Trump’s behavior as President had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and newsmaking book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.
National Geographic Books 2022-11-08 1056 pages

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed

Diamond, Jared M.
A study of the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, includes coverage of such cultures as the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Viking colony on Greenland, tracing patterns of environmental damage, climate change, poor political choices, and other factors that were pivotal to their demise. 250,000 first printing.
Penguin Books 2006 575 pages

All the President's men

Bernstein, Carl
The full account of the Watergate scandal from the two Washington Post reporters who broke the story. This is “the work that brought down a presidency…perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history” (Time, All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books). This is the book that changed America. Published just two months before President Nixon’s resignation, All the President’s Men revealed the full scope of the Watergate scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious “Deep Throat.” Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon's shocking downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters. All the President’s Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in U.S. history as it unfolded in real time. It is, as former New York Times managing editor Gene Roberts has called it, “maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time.”
Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 1987 349 pages

The demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark

Sagan, Carl
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions. Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.--Amazon.com.
Ballantine Books 1997-03 457 pages

Twilight of democracy: the seductive lure of authoritarianism

Applebaum, Anne
"A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist explains, with electrifying clarity, why some of her contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states. Across the world today, from the U.S. to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while different forms of authoritarianism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum argues that we should not be surprised by this change: There is an inherent appeal to political systems with radically simple beliefs, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. People are not just ideological, she contends in this captivating extended essay; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunist. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Describing politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and others who have abandoned democratic ideals in the UK, U.S., Spain, Poland, and Hungary, Applebaum reveals the patterns that link the new advocates of illiberalism and charts how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and nostalgia to change their societies"-- Provided by publisher.
Doubleday 2020-07-21 206 pages

Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Anne Applebaum
From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America. International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for "containment" of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
Random House 2024-07-23 272 pages

Red famine: Stalin's war on Ukraine

Applebaum, Anne
"From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag and the National Book Award finalist Iron Curtain, a revelatory history of one of Stalin's greatest crimes--the consequences of which still resonate today. In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic's borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil. Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum's compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first."--Provided by publisher.
Doubleday 2017 461 pages

Legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA

Weiner, Tim
Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security. For sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world--when it did not succeed, it set out to change the world instead. Now Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA, based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence.--From publisher description.
Doubleday 2007 702 pages

Playing for keeps: Michael Jordan and the world he made

Halberstam, David
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist comes “the best Jordan book so far” ( The Washington Post ), the story of Michael Jordan’s legendary years with the Chicago Bulls, capped by the 1998 NBA Finals and the team’s second three-peat. From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of ’49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the insider knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sports. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself the greatest challenge and produced his greatest triumph. In Playing for Keeps, Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan’s epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan’s life that have shaped him in to history’s greatest basketball player and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.
Franklin Library 1999 432 pages

New Cold Wars: China's rise, Russia's invasion, and America's struggle to defend the West

Sanger, David E.,Brooks, Mary K.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The fast-paced inside story of America’s plunge into a volatile rivalry with the other two great nuclear powers—Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon “[A] cogent, revealing account of how a generation of American officials have grappled with dangerous developments in the post-Cold War era . . . vividly captures Washington.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy. Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined. Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world? Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where Russia uses bullets from North Korea and drones from Iran—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.
Crown 2026-04-07 544 pages

The coldest winter: America and the Korean War

Halberstam, David
Pulitzer-winning historian Halberstam first decided to write this book more than thirty years ago and it took him nearly ten years. It stands as a lasting testament to its author, and to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles. Halberstam gives us a full narrative of the political decisions and miscalculations on both sides, charting the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu, and that caught Douglas MacArthur and his soldiers by surprise. He provides vivid portraits of all the major figures--Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, and Mao, and Generals MacArthur, Almond, and Ridgway. He also provides us with his trademark narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. At the heart of the book are the stories of the soldiers on the front lines who were left to deal with the consequences of the dangerous misjudgments and competing agendas of powerful men.--From publisher description.
Hyperion 2007-09-25 719 pages

From Beirut to Jerusalem

Friedman, Thomas L.
National Bestseller Winner of the National Book Award Updated with a New Chapter Author of The World Is Flat and That Used to Be Us One of the most thought-provoking books ever written about the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem remains vital to our understanding of this complex and volatile region of the world. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman drew upon his ten years of experience reporting from Lebanon and Israel to write this now-classic work of journalism. Rich with anecdote, history, analysis, and autobiography, From Beirut to Jerusalem will continue to shape how we see the Middle East for many years to come.
Picador 2012-01-17 632 pages

Finishing the hat: collected lyrics (1954-1981) with attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes

Sondheim, Stephen
Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors. His lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and here Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions. Along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981--including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd--Sondheim treats us to never-before-published songs cut or discarded from each show. He discusses his relationship with his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his collaborations with extraordinary talents from Leonard Bernstein to Angela Lansbury. The anecdotes--filled with pointed observations and intimate details--transport us back to a time when theater was a major pillar of American culture. Best of all, Sondheim offers unparalleled insights into songwriting.--From publisher description.
Knopf 2010-10-26 445 pages

The Warburgs: the twentieth-century odyssey of a remarkable Jewish family

Chernow, Ron
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning bestselling author of Alexander Hamilton , the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical, comes this definitive biography of the Warburgs, one of the great German-Jewish banking families of the twentieth century. Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists, and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and, later, of German-American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy. Ron Chernow's hugely fascinating history is a group portrait of a clan whose members were renowned for their brilliance, culture, and personal energy yet tragically vulnerable to the dark and irrational currents of the twentieth century.
Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC 2016-11-15 820 pages

Horse A Novel

Geraldine Brooks
“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” — The New York Times Book Review “ Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” — TIME “ A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty . . . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its conclusion—you just can’t look away.” — Oprah Daily Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award · Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize · A Massachusetts Book Award Honor Book A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850 . An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. New York City, 1954 . Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance. Washington, DC, 2019 . Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
Diversified Publishing 2022-06-21 576 pages

Bellevue Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

David Oshinsky
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine. Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe—or groundbreaking scientific advance—that did not touch Bellevue. David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story , was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution. From its origins in 1738 as an almshouse and pesthouse, Bellevue today is a revered public hospital bringing first-class care to anyone in need. With its diverse, ailing, and unprotesting patient population, the hospital was a natural laboratory for the nation's first clinical research. It treated tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers, launched the first civilian ambulance corps and the first nursing school for women, pioneered medical photography and psychiatric treatment, and spurred New York City to establish the country's first official Board of Health. As medical technology advanced, "voluntary" hospitals began to seek out patients willing to pay for their care. For charity cases, it was left to Bellevue to fill the void. The latter decades of the twentieth century brought rampant crime, drug addiction, and homelessness to the nation's struggling cities—problems that called a public hospital's very survival into question. It took the AIDS crisis to cement Bellevue's enduring place as New York's ultimate safety net, the iconic hospital of last resort. Lively, page-turning, fascinating, Bellevue is essential American history.
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2017-10-24 416 pages