Political Authors

Alyssa Mastromonaco is back with a bold, no-nonsense, and no-holds-barred 21st-century girl's guide to life, tackling the highs and lows of bodies, politics, relationships, moms, education, life on the internet, and pop culture. Whether discussing Barbra Streisand or The Bachelor, working in the West Wing or working on finding a wing woman, Alyssa leaves no stone unturned...and no awkward situation unexamined.

It is a Tuesday evening in June when Ruth receives the phone call that all parents dread. Her daughter Daisy has been hit by a car during a deadly storm in Puerto Rico. How Ruth wishes she could tell Daisy she loves her. That she is sorry her own muddy feelings about Daisy's move to San Juan caused them to fight. What a waste of precious breath. Instinctively, it's her mother, Rafaela, Ruth wants to turn to. Rafaela whose own memories of growing up in Puerto Rico are becoming ever more vivid, as have her sudden flashes of forgetfulness.

On the eve of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself into her apartment, where she will remain for the next thirty years. She lives off vegetables and pigeons, burns her furniture and books to stay alive, and keeps herself busy by writing her story on the walls of her home. As the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the outside world slowly seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of a man fleeing his pursuers, and a note attached to a bird’s foot.

A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act - FOIA - and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers.

In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator. With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a wild cast of characters, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.

On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. According to official reports, the students commandeered several buses to travel to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre. During the journey, local police intercepted the students and a confrontation ensued. By the morning, they had disappeared without a trace. Hernández reconstructs almost minute-by-minute the events of those nights in late September 2014, giving us what is surely the most complete picture available.

"Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class." So begins Vivian Gornick's exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project.

Refuge seeks to restore moral purpose and clarity to refugee policy. Rather than assuming indefinite dependency, Collier - author of The Bottom Billion - and his Oxford colleague Betts propose a humanitarian approach integrated with a new economic agenda that begins with jobs, restores autonomy, and rebuilds people's ability to help themselves and their societies.

The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency's current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with secret overseas prisons and torture programs.

Hunted for more than 20 years by a mysterious terrorist known as the Benefactor, former Navy Seabee Tom Sexton is done running. Working with his girlfriend, Stella, for a private-sector spec ops team, Tom has a plan to eliminate the elusive stranger who murdered his family. But Tom didn’t just emerge from deep cover. He might have been lured. A former colleague gone rogue has warned Tom of a shadow agent hiding in plain sight. If Tom trusts the intel, that means he can’t trust anyone else.

This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts. Drawing from more than 75 in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.

David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog, Bolivar, to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon, and he should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simon and Ines work, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky.

On Liberty is an 1859 philosophical treatise by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) which applies an ethical system of utilitarianism to society and the state. Mill starts with a brief overview of the meaning of liberty and proffers his basic argument in favor of liberty for the individual, to the degree that it harms no one else. The value of liberty of opinion and liberty of action are set forth in two chapters.

The Great Recession, institutional dysfunction, a growing divide between urban and rural prospects, and failed efforts to effectively address immigration have paved the way for a populist backlash that disrupts the postwar bargain between political elites and citizens. Whether today's populism represents a corrective to unfair and obsolete policies or a threat to liberal democracy remains up for debate. To respond to today's crisis, good leaders must strive for inclusive economic growth while addressing social and cultural issues, including demographic anxiety, with frank attention.

While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the US Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center. In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert's account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate's lost luster.

In The Browns of California, journalist and scholar Miriam Pawel weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead 140 years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance.

There is a point in everybody's life at which a tough decision will have to be made - a hard call. For inspiration and direction, we can look to the remarkable individuals in John McCain and Mark Salter's book, which dramatically describes the anatomy of a great decision.

In MI5 a scandal is brewing and there are bad actors everywhere. A key member of a Downing Street think-tank has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk of MI5's Regent's Park, is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to Regent's Park HQ itself, with its chief, Diana Taverner, as prime suspect. Meanwhile her Russian counterpart has unexpectedly shown up in London but has slipped under MI5's radar.

Attempted murders, intrigue, and scandal are all in a day’s work for Eve, one of DC’s most sought-after escorts. Her admirers include corporate executives, DC cops, and other smitten johns who have seen her dance at the Tahiti men’s club. None of them know her secret. She’s April Walsh, a housewife and writer who has gone deep undercover to investigate DC vice from the inside. Her first priority has always been her marriage. Her writing career has had to take a back seat. That changes when April is assigned to write a story about the sex industry.

In the midst of political chaos and corruption, The Spiritual Price of Political Silence is a clarion call to action while providing hope and practical advice for people of faith in America.