Download or read book Behind the Oval Office written by Dick Morris and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Recapturing the Oval Office written by Brian Balogh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several generations of historians figuratively abandoned the Oval Office as the bastion of out-of-fashion stories of great men. And now, decades later, the historical analysis of the American presidency remains on the outskirts of historical scholarship, even as policy and political history have rebounded within the academy. In Recapturing the Oval Office, leading historians and social scientists forge an agenda for returning the study of the presidency to the mainstream practice of history and they chart how the study of the presidency can be integrated into historical narratives that combine rich analyses of political, social, and cultural history. The authors demonstrate how "bringing the presidency back in" can deepen understanding of crucial questions regarding race relations, religion, and political economy. The contributors illuminate the conditions that have both empowered and limited past presidents, and thus show how social, cultural, and political contexts matter. By making the history of the presidency a serious part of the scholarly agenda in the future, historians have the opportunity to influence debates about the proper role of the president today.
Download or read book Beyond My Dreams written by Peter Marmureanu and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Peter Marmureanu started learning tennis in communist-held Romania, he was ten years old, playing barefoot on clay courts, swinging a wooden paddle that served as a racket. Eight years later, as a member of Romanias Davis Cup team, Marmureanu was traveling side by side with Ilie Nastase and Ion Tiriac to the worlds capitals playing tournaments in Cairo, Monte Carlo, Paris, London, Moscow, and scores of other cities. In Beyond My Dreams, Marmureanu recounts his life story and how he was forced to become a designated courier for the Securitate, traveling with packets of top-secret documents concealed in his racket cover for delivery to Romanian embassies. In a last-minute flight to freedom that sounds like an espionage thriller, Marmureanu narrates how he made his escape. But even in America, where Donald Rumsfeld and President Gerald Ford helped secure his citizenship, he lived for many years under FBI protection, carrying a handgun for his own safety, knowing the danger that loomed over Romanias defectors and what might happen if he ever went back. And yet, for the sake of his family, Marmureanu risked a returnwitnessing, firsthand, the initial moments of insurrection preceding the fall of an evil regime. In this memoirfilled with intrigue, courage, and defianceMarmureanu tells how he escaped one of the most repressive regimes on earththe incredible but true adventure of one mans flight to freedom.
Download or read book In the Shadow of the Oval Office written by Ivo H. Daalder and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most solemn obligation of any president is to safeguard the nation's security. But the president cannot do this alone. He needs help. In the past half century, presidents have relied on their national security advisers to provide that help. Who are these people, the powerful officials who operate in the shadow of the Oval Office, often out of public view and accountable only to the presidents who put them there? Some remain obscure even to this day. But quite a number have names that resonate far beyond the foreign policy elite: McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice. Ivo Daalder and Mac Destler provide the first inside look at how presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have used their national security advisers to manage America's engagements with the outside world. They paint vivid portraits of the fourteen men and one woman who have occupied the coveted office in the West Wing, detailing their very different personalities, their relations with their presidents, and their policy successes and failures. It all started with Kennedy and Bundy, the brilliant young Harvard dean who became the nation's first modern national security adviser. While Bundy served Kennedy well, he had difficulty with his successor. Lyndon Johnson needed reassurance more than advice, and Bundy wasn't always willing to give him that. Thus the basic lesson -- the president sets the tone and his aides must respond to that reality. The man who learned the lesson best was someone who operated mainly in the shadows. Brent Scowcroft was the only adviser to serve two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Learning from others' failures, he found the winning formula: gain the trust of colleagues, build a collaborative policy process, and stay close to the president. This formula became the gold standard -- all four national security advisers who came after him aspired to be "like Brent." The next president and national security adviser can learn not only from success, but also from failure. Rice stayed close to George W. Bush -- closer perhaps than any adviser before or since. But her closeness did not translate into running an effective policy process, as the disastrous decision to invade Iraq without a plan underscored. It would take years, and another national security aide, to persuade Bush that his Iraq policy was failing and to engineer a policy review that produced the "surge." The national security adviser has one tough job. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. Daalder and Destler provide plenty of examples of both. This book is a fascinating look at the personalities and processes that shape policy and an indispensable guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully in the shadow of the Oval Office.
Download or read book Off the Record written by Madeleine Westerhout and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madeleine Westerhout, the former "gatekeeper" of the Trump White House, writes about her relationship with the president, and tells the story of the terrible mistake that led to her losing her job. From the first day President Trump stepped into the White House, Madeleine Westerhout was by his side, first as his executive assistant, then as the Director of Oval Office Operations. From her desk outside the Oval, she saw everyone who came in to see the president. She placed his phone calls, and was in the room for several historic moments. During her time working with President Trump at the White House, Camp David, Mar a Lago, and Bedminster, she grew to love her job and admire the president. Then, in an unguarded moment during a dinner with reporters, she made a terrible mistake. In Off the Record, Westerhout tells the full story of this dinner for the first time, revealing the circumstances that led to her fateful mistake. She also writes about her relationship with President Trump -- all the lessons she learned working with him, and why she believes he is a much different man than the one the media portrays every day. Westerhout describes President Trump as a kind and generous boss who continues to be a great leader for our country.
Download or read book The Room Where It Happened written by John Bolton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.” The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.
Download or read book A Promised Land written by Barack Obama and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-08-13 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Slate • Vox • The Economist • Marie Claire In the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.
Download or read book The Unfinished Presidency written by Douglas Brinkley and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1998 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed by "Time" magazine as "a fascinating . . . rich, energetic American story", this extraordinary biography will transform America's perception of Jimmy Carter. Photos. National radio telephone tour.
Download or read book All the President s Women written by Barry Levine and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With groundbreaking interviews, behind-the-scenes reporting, and never-before-seen photos, All the President's Women records 43 new allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, including that of E. Jean Carroll, the woman at the center of the civil trial that found Trump liable for sexual abuse in 2023. During his 2016 presidential run, the revelation of the Access Hollywood tape and subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct lodged against Donald Trump looked like they might doom his candidacy. Trump survived, and the first two years of the real estate scion's presidency were marked not by controversy over his behavior around women but by the Mueller investigation. Outside of being found liable for sexual abuse in a 2023 civil trial that awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages, Trump has widely dodged the #MeToo bullet that has taken down so many once-powerful men. But despite the decades of tabloid fascination with his personal life, the story of Trump's relationship with women has never been fully told. Considering his bully pulpit in the White House, the reckoning is overdue. All the President's Women offers the most detailed account yet of Trump's history with women, dating back to his childhood and high school days through his rise in real estate, reality TV, and politics. This book will show that Trump's behavior goes far beyond occasional "locker-room talk" and unwanted advances. Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy detail more than a dozen new allegations against Trump, including a disturbing attack on a woman at Mar-a-Lago, an incident at a private Manhattan sex club involving a teenage girl, as well as Trump's behavior at fashion shows and beauty pageants--events that gave the future president a hunting ground to harass young women. Veteran journalists Levine and El-Faizy tell the story of Trump from the point of view of the women in his orbit--wives, mistresses, playmates, and those whom the president has dated, kissed, groped, or lusted after.
Download or read book From the Corner of the Oval written by Beck Dorey-Stein and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • What if you lived out the drama of your twenties on Air Force One? “[This] breezy page turner is essentially Bridget Jones goes to the White House.”—The New York Times RECOMMENDED READING theSkimm • Today • Entertainment Weekly • Refinery29 • Bustle • PopSugar • Vanity Fair • The New York Times Editors’ Choice • Paste In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein is working five part-time jobs and just scraping by when a posting on Craigslist lands her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate D.C. outsider, she joins the elite team who accompany the president wherever he goes, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forges friendships with a dynamic group of fellow travelers—young men and women who, like her, leave their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. As she learns to navigate White House protocols and more than once runs afoul of the hierarchy, Beck becomes romantically entangled with a consummate D.C. insider, and suddenly the political becomes all too personal. Against a backdrop of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman learning what truly matters, and, in the process, discovering her voice. Praise for From the Corner of the Oval “Who knew the West Wing could be so sexy? Beck Dorey-Stein’s unparalleled access is obvious on every page, along with her knife-sharp humor. I tore through the entire book on a four-hour flight and loved reading all about the brilliant yet hard-partying people who once surrounded the leader of the free world. Lots of books claim to give real insider glimpses, but this one actually delivers.”—Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada “Dorey-Stein . . . writes with wit and self-deprecating humor.”—The Wall Street Journal “Addictively readable . . . Dorey-Stein’s spunk and her sparkling, crackling prose had me cheering for her through each adventure. . . . She never loses her starry-eyed optimism, her pinch-me wonderment, her Working Girl pluck.”—Paul Begala, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
Download or read book All Too Human written by George Stephanopoulos and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All Too Human is a new-generation political memoir, written from the refreshing perspective of one who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age. At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.
Download or read book Fire and Fury written by Michael Wolff and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-01-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller With extraordinary access to the West Wing, Michael Wolff reveals what happened behind-the-scenes in the first nine months of the most controversial presidency of our time in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the country—and the world—has witnessed a stormy, outrageous, and absolutely mesmerizing presidential term that reflects the volatility and fierceness of the man elected Commander-in-Chief. This riveting and explosive account of Trump’s administration provides a wealth of new details about the chaos in the Oval Office, including: -- What President Trump’s staff really thinks of him -- What inspired Trump to claim he was wire-tapped by President Obama -- Why FBI director James Comey was really fired -- Why chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner couldn’t be in the same room -- Who is really directing the Trump administration’s strategy in the wake of Bannon’s firing -- What the secret to communicating with Trump is -- What the Trump administration has in common with the movie The Producers Never before in history has a presidency so divided the American people. Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion. “Essential reading.”—Michael D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, CNN.com “Not since Harry Potter has a new book caught fire in this way...[Fire and Fury] is indeed a significant achievement, which deserves much of the attention it has received.”—The Economist
Download or read book The President s Book of Secrets written by David Priess and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power. Since John F. Kennedy's presidency, this relationship has been distilled into a personalized daily report: a short summary of what the intelligence apparatus considers the most crucial information for the president to know that day about global threats and opportunities. This top-secret document is known as the President's Daily Brief, or, within national security circles, simply "the Book." Presidents have spent anywhere from a few moments (Richard Nixon) to a healthy part of their day (George W. Bush) consumed by its contents; some (Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush) consider it far and away the most important document they saw on a regular basis while commander in chief. The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character-rich stories revealed here for the first time.
Download or read book Presidents of War written by Michael Beschloss and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a preeminent presidential historian comes a “superb and important” (The New York Times Book Review) saga of America’s wartime chief executives “Fascinating and heartbreaking . . . timely . . . Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw important crosscutting lessons about presidential leadership.”—Bill Gates Widely acclaimed and ten years in the making, Michael Beschloss’s Presidents of War is an intimate and irresistibly readable chronicle of the Chief Executives who took the United States into conflict and mobilized it for victory. From the War of 1812 to Vietnam, we see these leaders considering the difficult decision to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths; struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. Through Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants and findings in original letters and once-classified national security documents, we come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—or were broken by them. Presidents of War combines this sense of immediacy with the overarching context of two centuries of American history, traveling from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race. Praise for Presidents of War "A marvelous narrative. . . . As Beschloss explains, the greatest wartime presidents successfully leaven military action with moral concerns. . . . Beschloss’s writing is clean and concise, and he admirably draws upon new documents. Some of the more titillating tidbits in the book are in the footnotes. . . . There are fascinating nuggets on virtually every page of Presidents of War. It is a superb and important book, superbly rendered.”—Jay Winik, The New York Times Book Review "Sparkle and bite. . . . Valuable and engrossing study of how our chief executives have discharged the most significant of all their duties. . . . Excellent. . . . A fluent narrative that covers two centuries of national conflict.” —Richard Snow, The Wall Street Journal
Download or read book The President Is Dead written by Louis L. Picone and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Updated Edition* A fun, anecdote-filled, encyclopedic look at the circumstances surrounding the deaths of every president and a few “almost presidents,” such as Jefferson Davis. Packed with fun facts and presidential trivia, The President Is Dead! tells you everything you could possibly want to know about how our presidents, from George Washington to George H. W. Bush (who was the most recent president to die), met their ends, the circumstances of their deaths, the pomp of their funerals, and their public afterlives, including stories of attempted grave robbings, reinterments, vandalism, conspiracy theories surrounding their deaths, and much more. The President Is Dead! is filled with never-before-told stories, including a suggestion by one prominent physician to resurrect George Washington from death by transfusing his body with lamb’s blood. You may have heard of a plot to rob Abraham Lincoln’s body from its grave site, but did you know that there was also attempts to steal Benjamin Harrison's and Andrew Jackson’s remains? The book also includes “Critical Death Information,” which prefaces each chapter, and a complete visitor’s guide to each grave site and death-related historical landmark. An “Almost Presidents” section includes chapters on John Hanson (first president under the Articles of Confederation), Sam Houston (former president of the Republic of Texas), David Rice Atchison (president for a day), and Jefferson Davis. Exhaustively researched, The President Is Dead! is richly layered with colorful facts and entertaining stories about how the presidents have passed. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Download or read book Front Row at the White House written by Helen Thomas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999 with total page 763 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: White House journalist for more than five decades chronicles her work covering all of the presidents since John F. Kennedy. Shares personal reminiscences of the U.S. leaders as well as of the first ladies. Bestseller.
Download or read book The Presidents Club written by Nancy Gibbs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-04-17 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines presidential power within the context of U.S. history and the ongoing relationships presidents and ex-presidents formed with one another.
