Activism History

This is a major political biography of a great American president - who won a war, transformed the government, and doubled the size of the United States...in four years. When Polk was sworn in as the 11th president, what followed was one of the most consequential presidencies in history.

When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No." As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: "We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death." What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence - some recently declassified - that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina.

A groundbreaking, explosive account of the Kennedy assassination that will rewrite the history of the 20th century's most controversial murder investigation. The questions have haunted our nation for half a century: Was the President killed by a single gunman? Was Lee Harvey Oswald part of a conspiracy? Did the Warren Commission discover the whole truth of what happened on November 22, 1963? Philip Shenon, a veteran investigative journalist who spent most of his career at The New York Times, finally provides many of the answers.

At the end of the summer of 1859, 22-year-old Peachy Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, who had been involved in more than 3,000 cases - including more than 25 murder trials - during his two-decades-long career, was hired to defend him.

With rich detail, compelling honesty, and a storyteller’s gift, RFK Jr. describes growing up Kennedy in a tumultuous time in history that eerily echoes the issues of nuclear confrontation, religion, race, and inequality that we confront today. This powerful book combines the best aspects of memoir and political history. The third child of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK takes us on a journey through his life, including watershed moments in the history of our nation.

There is a great debate among historians about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's actions during the Holocaust. Was FDR the hero that defeated the Germans, or did he turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jews as long as he possibly could? In Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Robert Beir analyzes specific actions and legislation to get at the truth behind Roosevelt's role in the Holocaust. Beir has a unique perspective. He is a Jew who was raised during the extreme anti-Semitism of the Great Depression. Having witnessed the fruits of the New Deal firsthand, Beir became a Roosevelt scholar.

Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War. When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues.

The man behind some of the greatest political changes of the last decade, David Axelrod has devoted a lifetime to questioning political certainties and daring to bring fresh thinking into the political landscape. Whether as a child hearing John F. Kennedy stump in New York or as a strategist guiding the first African American to the White House, Axelrod shows in Believer how his own life stands at the center of the tumultuous American century.

Spanning the years of transition, 1944 to 1948, Ascent to Power illuminates Truman’s struggles to emerge as president in his own right. Yet, from a relatively unknown Missouri senator to the most powerful man on Earth, Truman’s legacy transcends. With his come-from-behind campaign in the fall of 1948, his courageous civil rights advocacy, and his role in liberating millions from militarist governments and brutal occupations, Truman’s decisions during these pivotal years changed the course of the world in ways so significant we live with them today.

When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country’s most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but if newly freed citizens were condemned to lives as share croppers, how much improvement would their lives really see?

On the first anniversary of the events at Parkland, the acclaimed, New York Times best-selling author of Columbine offers an intimate, deeply moving account of the extraordinary teenage survivors who became activists and pushed back against the NRA and feckless Congressional leaders - inspiring millions of Americans to join their grassroots #neveragain movement.

The Three Edwards, third in Thomas B. Costain's survey of Britain under the Plantagenets, covers the years between 1272 and 1377 when three Edwards ruled England. Edward I brought England out of the Middle Ages. Edward II had a tragic reign but gave his country Edward III, who ruled gloriously, if violently.

The ancient Sibylline prophecies had foretold that the Roman Empire would last for 1000 years. As the time for the expected dissolution approached in the middle of the third century AD, the empire was lapsing into chaos, with seemingly interminable civil wars over the imperial succession. The western empire had seceded under a rebel emperor and the eastern empire was controlled by another usurper. Barbarians took advantage of the anarchy to kill and plunder all over the provinces.

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh.

John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (1644-1722), was one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen in the history of England. Victorious in the Battles of Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706) and countless other campaigns, Marlborough, whose political intrigues were almost as legendary as his military skill, never fought a battle he didn't win. Marlborough also bequeathed the world another great British military strategist and diplomat, his descendant, Winston S. Churchill.

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain - soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France. We remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than 30 years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America.

Based on previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and dramatic interviews with Hitler's colleagues and associates, this is the definitive biography of one of the most despised yet fascinating figures of the 20th century. Painstakingly documented, it is a work that will not soon be forgotten.

Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.

She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer.

A hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, and one of the most enigmatic. And now, after more than a decade of research and writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. Scott Berg has completed Wilson - the most personal and penetrating biography ever written about the 28th President. This is not just Wilson the icon - but Wilson the man.