Ronald Reagan called the peaceful transfer of power from one U.S. president to the next a miracle, and it is. It is also the most delicate and hazardous period in the entire political cycle. Americans learned the stakes in 2020, when President Donald Trump’s refusal to trigger the formal start of the transition process to President-Elect Joe Biden created perhaps the worst crisis for American democracy since the Civil War. Even at the best of times, an incoming administration faces a garga...

**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The American Story and How to Lead and host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein—David Rubenstein interviews living American presidents and top historians and journalists who reflect on the US presidency, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Maggie Haberman, Ron Chernow, and more.**For years, bestselling author David M. Rubenstein has disti...

“Right out of the pages of our lives…Compelling portraits placed in the excitement of a period when oppressed and powerless people moving together changed themselves and their country profoundly and permanently.” —The New York Times Book ReviewThe essential moments of the Civil Rights Movement are set in historical context by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy.A masterpiece of sto...

Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history—the tense, feverish first one hundred days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when he and his inner circle completely reinvented the role of the federal government. When FDR took his oath of office in March 1933, more than 10,000 banks had gone under following the Crash of 1929, a quarter of American workers were unemployed, and riots were breaking out at garbage dumps as people fought over scraps of food....

A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France’s leading nonfiction writer.Nearly every day for ten months, from September 2021 to June 2022, life on the Île de la Cité in central Paris came to a standstill. The most expensive and complex trial in French history―featuring twenty men accused of involvement in the 2015 attacks on the Bataclan and other sites across Paris―was underway. More than three hundred lawyers represented thousands of victi...

Named a best book of the summer by Literary HubThe life and times of a militant white supremacist, written by one of his offspring, National Book Award–winner Edward BallLife of a Klansman tells the story of a warrior in the Ku Klux Klan, a carpenter in Louisiana who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War. Edward Ball, a descendant of the Klansman, paints a portrait of his family’s anti-...

A true historical “detective story” full of insight about how we look at art―and the artists and eras that produced itSome five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created work of unearthly beauty. An intimate associate of Florence’s unofficial rulers, the Medici, he was commissioned by a member of their family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by the city’s greates...

**A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 • An NPR Book We Love 2025 • A History Best Book of 2025 • A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2025 • A New York Post Best Book of 2025 • A New York Times Editors' Choice • CBS Sunday Morning Summer Book Report Pick • New York Times “Books to Read in July” • A Town and Country Best Book of July • An Amazon Best Book of July • A Barnes & Noble Best Book of July • A LitHub Best Reviewed No...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Fascinating…the fullest portrait of Kennedy ever written.” —The Washington PostThe first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate and detailed look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing never-before-told stories, his closest friends, confidantes, lovers, classmates, teachers, and colleagues paint a vivid portrait of one of the most beloved figures of ...

Bestselling author David Gessner’s wilderness road trip inspired by America’s greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt, is “a rallying cry in the age of climate change” (Robert Redford).“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s pronouncement signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with t...

This “informative…highly readable” (The Wall Street Journal) New York Times bestselling book from the author of the bestseller Accidental Presidents explores what happens after the most powerful job in the world: President of the United States.Former presidents have an unusual place in American life. King George III believed that George Washington’s departure after two terms made him “the greatest character of the age.” But Alexander Hami...

Finally—a fascinating and authoritative biography of perhaps the most controversial player in baseball history, Ty Cobb.Ty Cobb is baseball royalty, maybe even the greatest player who ever lived. His lifetime batting average is still the highest of all time, and when he retired in 1928, after twenty-one years with the Detroit Tigers and two with the Philadelphia Athletics, he held more than ninety records. But the numbers don’t tell half of Cobb’s tale. The Georgia Peach was by far...