“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.

America's political system isn't broken: it's working exactly as designed. But Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us--and how we are polarizing it--with disastrous results. In examining the structural and psychological forces behind America's descent into division and dysfunction, he shows that everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Now our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together--Adapted from jacket

An explosive inside reckoning with one of the most fateful conspiracies inAmerican political history—the concerted effort by the President’s team to hidehis mental decline. In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. 2024 is theyear American politics became a Greek tragedy. From the beginning of the Biden administration, some journalists, including Alex Thompsonand Jake Tapper, focused attention on signs of Joe Biden’s frailty. For their efforts they weresubject to extraordinary levels of personal vitriol from the White House, and even fromsome of their journalistic colleagues. Whatever the self-awareness of the perpetrators, itwas sheer gaslighting. In Original Sin, the check comes due. Tapper and Thompson relate in vivid detail what Team Biden knew, when they knew it, andwhat they did or didn't do about it—including many news-making stories from some of themost powerful players in American politics. There is a general awareness of the effort toprotect his public image, but the details the authors have unearthed are genuinelyshocking. They raise fundamental issues of government accountability and responsibility,and of the role the news media plays. The irony is biting: in the name of defeating anexistential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle lost their way, and ensured thathis party’s nomination process was short-circuited, the public was given cause to doubt hisgood faith, and his Vice President was put in a situation that more than anything elsedoomed her to defeat. The deception, sometimes self-deception, surrounding Joe Biden'sdecline was the original sin of the administration and led directly to Donald Trump's returnto power and all that has happened as a consequence. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is a reminder that the ends mustnever justify the means. The ends are ultimately unpredictable, and in reality, the meansare all we have.

In The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define--and divide--our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln's fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Ronald Reagan's and Donald Trump's conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government. Rosen also shows how Hamilton and Jefferson's disagreement over how to read the Constitution has shaped landmark debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power, from John Marshall's early battles with Andrew Jackson to the current divisions among the justices on issues from presidential immunity to control over the administrative state. More than ever, the clash between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals resonates today in our most urgent national debates over the question of whether modern presidents are consolidating power and subverting the Constitution -- the very threat to American democracy that both Hamilton and Jefferson were determined to avoid. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and the ongoing struggle to define the balance between liberty and power. -- Provided by publisher.

"Thoughtful and convincingly argued . . . Rauch's impressive book is as enthusiastic an encomium to marriage as anyone, gay or straight, could write." — David J. Garrow, The Washington Post Book World In May 2004, gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, but it remains a divisive and contentious issue across America. As liberals and conservatives mobilize around this issue, no one has come forward with a more compelling, comprehensive, and readable case for gay marriage than Jonathan Rauch. In this book, he puts forward a clear and honest manifesto explaining why gay marriage is important—even crucial—to the health of marriage in America today, grounding his argument in commonsense, mainstream values and confronting social conservatives on their own turf. Marriage, he observes, is more than a bond between individuals; it also links them to the community at large. Excluding some people from the prospect of marriage not only is harmful to them but also is corrosive of the institution itself. Gay marriage, he shows, is a "win-win-win" for strengthening the bonds that tie us together and for remaining true to our national heritage of fairness and humaneness toward all.

Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times : "Those hungry for political news will read Double Down for the scooplets and insidery glimpses it serves up about the two campaigns, and the clues it offers about the positioning already going on among Republicans and Democrats for 2016 ... The book testifies to its authors’ energetic legwork and insider access... creating a novelistic narrative that provides a you-are-there immediacy... They succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile... sense of what it looked like from the inside." In their runaway bestseller Game Change , Mark Halperin and John Heilemann captured the full drama of Barack Obama’s improbable, dazzling victory over the Clintons, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. With the same masterly reporting, unparalleled access, and narrative skill, Double Down picks up the story in the Oval Office, where the president is beset by crises both inherited and unforeseen—facing defiance from his political foes, disenchantment from the voters, disdain from the nation’s powerful money machers, and dysfunction within the West Wing. As 2012 looms, leaders of the Republican Party, salivating over Obama’s political fragility, see a chance to wrest back control of the White House—and the country. So how did the Republicans screw it up? How did Obama survive the onslaught of super PACs and defy the predictions of a one-term presidency? Double Down follows the gaudy carnival of GOP contenders—ambitious and flawed, famous and infamous, charismatic and cartoonish—as Mitt Romney, the straitlaced, can-do, gaffe-prone multimillionaire from Massachusetts, scraped and scratched his way to the nomination. Double Down exposes blunders, scuffles, and machinations far beyond the klieg lights of the campaign trail: Obama storming out of a White House meeting with his high command after accusing them of betrayal. Romney’s mind-set as he made his controversial “47 percent” comments. The real reasons New Jersey governor Chris Christie was never going to be Mitt’s running mate. The intervention held by the president’s staff to rescue their boss from political self-destruction. The way the tense détente between Obama and Bill Clinton morphed into political gold. And the answer to one of the campaign’s great mysteries—how did Clint Eastwood end up performing Dada dinner theater at the Republican convention? In Double Down , Mark Halperin and John Heilemann take the reader into back rooms and closed-door meetings, laying bare the secret history of the 2012 campaign for a panoramic account of an election that was as hard fought as it was lastingly consequential.

Now a New York Times Best Seller and a National Book Award finalist. Charged with racial, sexual, and political overtones, the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice was one of the most divisive spectacles the country has ever seen. Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment by Thomas, and the attacks on her that were part of his high-placed supporters' rebuttal, both shocked the nation and split it into two camps. One believed Hill was lying, the other believed that the man who ultimately took his place on the Supreme Court had committed perjury. In this brilliant, often shocking book, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, two of the nation's top investigative journalists examine all aspects of this controversial case. They interview witnesses that the Judiciary Committee chose not to call, and present documents never before made public. They detail the personal and professional pasts of both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and lay bare a campaign of lobbying, public rela

Why have recent presidents failed to create the change they promised? Should we blame the individual men, all flawed in their own ways? Or are there fundamental reasons why modern presidents fail to deliver, time and time again? In The Impossible Presidency, historian Jeremi Suri charts the long rise and quick fall of the world's most important job, from the 1790s to the present day. As he shows, early presidents greatly expanded the power of the office beyond the limited role envisioned by the founders. Suri argues that the immense accomplishments of Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR left their successors with outsized and unrealistic expectations. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan lost control of their agendas as they were buffeted by the onrush of events and threats their predecessors never had to face. Clinton and Obama were propelled to the presidency by their personal stories but hamstrung by prurient, partisan, and prejudiced criticisms of their leadership. Contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world and a rapid twenty-four-our news cycle. There is little room left for bold, strategic thinking. Suri traces our disenchantment with recent presidents to the current mismatch between presidential promises and the limitations of the office.

A Forbes columnist discusses the ideological breakdown of the Republican Party, its failure to diminish the deficit or the size of government in twelve years of control, and outlines a plan for renewal through a return to basic issues.Part reportage, part manifesto, Dead Right leads readers on a witty and opinionated tour through the chaos of post-Reagan conservatism. It explains why the “Religious Right” is a phony menace … why President Reagan failed to eliminate even one major spending program … why the 1992 Republican convention, originally conceived as a cunning ploy, backfired … and much more. David Frum analyzes the conservative movement's turn away from the economic issues that dominated the 1980s to a new preoccupation with race, ethnicity, and sex. He explains how and why conservatives decided to stop fighting Big Government and start using it. And he warns that a conservatism that loses its anti–Big Government faith is doomed to futility. Dead Right dissects the new conservative position on issues ranging from education to workfare, immigration to enterprise zones, and ruthlessly scrutinizes the leadership of the conservative movement. Always lively and provocative, this is the one book that conservatives and their critics must read to understand the past and future of the American Right.

Peerless commentary on recent politics and history from one of the preeminent reporters of our time?now with new material AN INSTITUTION at CBS for decades and a twenty-year mainstay of NPR, Daniel Schorr is a legend in journalism. Come to Think of It collects in one place, for the first time, Schorr?s observations on politics and American life during the past two decades. His essays reveal his mastery of pithy, get-to-the-point analysis, and his experience gives him an authority and range that permeate every page. In these essays we get his on-the-spot reactions to the major and minor events around the turn of the millennium?from the shock of 9/11 to the mainstreaming of Yiddish. Come to Think of It is an unparalleled account of political analysis and personal memory.

As one of the foremost liberal voices in television and radio today, Alan Colmes has long been braving the wilds of controversial issues and conservative slander. The host of the talk-radio show Fox News Live with Alan Colmes and cohost of Fox News Channel's hit debate show Hannity & Colmes, Colmes now offers this witty, passionate wake-up call to America. Colmes takes on the fundamental question: How can we protect our nation without diminishing our liberties, and regain our place in the world as an example of democracy? Colmes urges Americans to see past the government's manipulation of the War on Terror to silence critics; the lies we've been force-fed about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the conservative smear campaign that has turned "liberal" into a four-letter word. From debunking the myth of the liberal media to exposing conservative hypocrisy, Colmes presents the issues with thoughtful, provocative arguments, hard facts and logic, and searing humor. Certain to spark debate and cause readers to reevaluate and reaffirm their beliefs, Red, White & Liberal powerfully argues that despite our differences, we must extend our hands across party lines to find solutions, protect our shores, and preserve our freedoms.

"According to the media, Donald Trump could never become president. Now many are on a mission to prove he shouldn't be president. The Trump administration and the press are at war -- and as in any war, the first casualty has been truth. Bestselling author Howard Kurtz, host of Fox News's Media Buzz and former Washington Post columnist, offers a stunning exposé of how supposedly objective journalists, alarmed by Trump's success, have moved into the opposing camp. Kurtz's exclusive, in-depth, behind-the-scenes interviews with reporters, anchors, and insiders within the Trump White House reveal the unprecedented hostility between the media and the president they cover."--Jacket.

The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America. This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f&# $d up beyond all recognition. Wel-come to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report. If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too). Along the way, they'll answer your most pressing questions, like: I'm gay. Can I still be a Republican? Do I need to own my own congressman, or is a time share okay? Is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's mustache, in fact, the sign of the Beast? I thought we ran the media. What happened? Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

Locked in the Cabinet is a close-up view of the way things work, and often don't work, at the highest levels of government--and a uniquely personal account by the man whose ideas inspired and animated much of the Clinton campaign of 1992 and who became the cabinet officer in charge of helping ordinary Americans get better jobs. Robert B. Reich, writer, teacher, social critic--and a friend of the Clintons since they were all in their twenties--came to be known as the "conscience of the Clinton administration and one of the most successful Labor Secretaries in history. Here is his sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant chronicle of trying to put ideas and ideals into practice. With wit, passion, and dead-aim honesty, Reich writes of those in Washington who possess hard heads and soft hearts, and those with exactly the opposite attributes. He introduces us to the career bureaucrats who make Washington run and the politicians who, on occasion, make it stop; to business tycoons and labor leaders who clash by day and party together by night; to a president who wants to change America and his opponents (on both the left and the right) who want to keep it as it is or return it to where it used to be. Reich guides us to the pinnacles of power and pretension, as bills are passed or stalled, reputations built or destroyed, secrets leaked, numbers fudged, egos bruised, news stories spun, hypocrisies exposed, and good intentions occasionally derailed. And to the places across America where those who are the objects of this drama are simply trying to get by--assembly lines, sweatshops, union halls, the main streets of small towns and the tough streets of central cities. Locked in the Cabinetis an intimate odyssey involving a memorable cast--a friend who is elected President of the United States, only to discover the limits of power; Alan Greenspan, who is the most powerful man in America; and Newt Gingrich, who tries to be. Plus a host of others: White House staffers and cabinet members who can't find "the loop; political consultant Dick Morris, who becomes "the loop; baseball players and owners who can't agree on how to divide up $2 billion a year; a union leader who accuses Reich of not knowing what a screwdriver looks like; a heretofore invisible civil servant deep in the Labor Department whose brainchild becomes the law of the land; and a wondrous collection of senators, foreign ministers, cabinet officers, and television celebrities. And it is also an odyssey for Reich's wife and two young sons, who learn to tolerate their own cabinet member but not to abide Washington. Here is Reich--determined to work for a more just society, laboring in a capital obsessed with exorcising the deficit and keeping Wall Street happy--learning that Washington is not only altogether different from the world of ordinary citizens but ultimately, and more importantly, exactly like it: a world in which Murphy's Law reigns alongside the powerful and the privileged, but where hope amazingly persists. There are triumphs here to fill a lifetime, and frustrations to fill two more. Never has this world been revealed with such richness of evidence, humor, and warmhearted candor.

This landmark anthology celebrates The Nation's 125th anniversary with the best of the magazine's articles, essays, poems, and drawings. Contributors include Henry James, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, H. L. Mencken, W. E. B. DuBois, Adolf Hitler, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, Moshe Menuhin, Albert Einstein, James Thurber, Emma Goldman, Federico Garcia Lorca, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Mann, W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Agee, Wallace Stephens, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ralph Nader, Slyvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Pablo Neruda, Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, Carlos Fuentes, Daniel Singer, Alice Walker, and many more.

A study of public interest law in the 1980s and beyond.

The Best of Abbie Hoffman is the inspirational life story of Abbie Hoffman, cofounder of the Yippie movement and one of the most important activists of the twentieth century. Hoffman recounts his growing involvement in the student movement as it rose to national prominence, giving behind-the-scenes details about the historic protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention and subsequent Chicago conspiracy trial, his "levitation" of the Pentagon, and his friendships with other movement leaders. This new edition includes a selection of photographs documenting his continuing activism in the 1980s and a new Afterword by leading historian Howard Zinn about Hoffman's enduring legacy. "This book is a document . . . the autobiography of a bona fide American revolutionary." -- Norman Mailer, from his Introduction

The inadequacies of contemporary forms of governance are increasingly recognized: the brain drain from politics, distrust of governments, the danger of mass media and money-dominated elections, and the failure of governments to find good policy options on major issues. Industry, civil society and non-governmental organizations, however important, cannot compensate for government's incapacity to shape the future, which only it is democratically entitled to do. Radical improvements in governance are urgently needed, but salient proposals are scarce. This book diagnoses contemporary governments as obsolete and proposes changes in values, structures, staffing, public understanding and political culture to equip governance for the radically novel challenges of the 21st century. This is the first Report dealing with governance commissioned and approved by the Club of Rome, testifying to the significance of this book.

Probing the psyche of the American people, this extended essay examines how the countryÍs mindset has changed during the tumultuous presidency of George W. Bush. The investigation draws on individual experiences as well as factual reporting, melding the personal and the political to capture the real mood of a powerful nation. Full of bold insights and brash honesty, this revealing study presents Americans as worried and disillusioned, artfully illustrating their struggles against a new wave of political pessimism.

This book describes political and sociological developments in Israel before and after the February 2009 elections, alongside an analysis of electoral trends. It provides an effective analysis of contemporary political and sociological Israeli history. Rather than focusing narrowly on electoral politics alone, this book broadens its focus to make it relevant to undergraduate and graduate students in Middle Eastern, Israeli and Jewish studies and the liberal arts. Israel at the Polls has been updated and published annually for thirty years, providing readers with up-to-date analysis and continuity of scholarship; this book offers an expert long-term assessment of Israeli politics. This book was published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.