For scholars, pundits, the public, and presidents themselves, presidential approval is an evergreen subject. Its actual impact, however, is often unclear: all too frequently approval is reported in a vacuum, dissociated from the American state writ large. Presidential Leverage reaffirms the importance of this contested metric. By situating approval within the context of public trust in government, Daniel E. Ponder reveals how approval shapes presidential strategies for governing, ...

In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.At the c...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past fifty years, you’re aware of the many hypotheses that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not done by one man. Whether you’ve read one or a dozen of the books on this topic, there’s no way to fully grasp the depth of this conspiracy.For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling authors Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell have teamed up with some of the most respected and influential assassination researche...

FROM INSIDE OBAMA’S SITUATION ROOM . . . THE CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE COVERT WAR AGAINST IRAN, THE STRUGGLES TO DEAL WITH A RECALCITRANT PAKISTAN AND ITS FAST-GROWING NUCLEAR ARSENAL, THE TENSIONS WITH THE AMERICAN MILITARY OVER AFGHANISTAN AND WITH ALLIES SWEPT UP IN THE CHAOS OF THE ARAB SPRINGThree and a half years ago, David Sanger’s book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power described how a new American preside...

**A New York Times bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Inspiration for the film Vice"Jaw-dropping . . . It reads like a thriller." —The New York TimesThe landmark exposé of the most powerful and secretive vice president in American history**Barton Gellman shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for a keen-edged reckoning with Dick Cheney's domestic agenda in The Washington Post. In Angler, Gellman...

This "perceptive" and "satisfying" biography of George Washington by an award-winning historian "deserves a place on every American's bookshelf" ( The New York Times Book Review).James Thomas Flexner's masterful four-volume biography of America's first president, which received a special Pulitzer Prize citation and a National Book Award for its concluding installment, is the definitive chronicle of Washington's life and a...

This is the book that cracks the code of the Bush presidency. Unstintingly yet compassionately, and with no political ax to grind, Slate editor in chief Jacob Weisberg methodically and objectively examines the family and circle of advisers who played crucial parts in George W. Bush’s historic downfall.In this revealing and defining portrait, Weisberg uncovers the “black box” from the crash of the Bush presidency. Using in-depth research, revealing analysis, and keen psychological a...

Scott McClellan was one of a few Bush loyalists from Texas who became part of his inner circle of trusted advisers, and remained so during one of the most challenging and contentious periods of recent history. Drawn to Bush by his commitment to compassionate conservatism and strong bipartisan leadership, McClellan served the president for more than seven years, and witnessed day-to-day exactly how the presidency veered off course.In this refreshingly clear-eyed book, written with n...

Barack Obama Sr., father of the American president, was part of Africa's "independence generation" and in 1959 it seemed his star would shine brightly. He came to the U.S. from Kenya and was given a university scholarship. While in the Hawaii, he met Ann Dunham in 1961, and his son Barack was born. He left his young family to gain a master's degree from Harvard.After that, Obama's life became progressively more complicated. He was a brilliant economist, yet never held the coveted g...

In this inside assessment of Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy, Derek Chollet tackles the prevailing consensus to argue that Obama has profoundly altered the course of American foreign policy for the better and positioned the United States to lead in the future.The Long Game combines a deep sense of history with new details and compelling insights into how the Obama Administration approached the most difficult global challenges. With the unique perspective of having ser...

Fred I. Greenstein has long been one of our keenest observers of the modern presidency. In The Presidential Difference, he provides a fascinating and instructive account of the presidential qualities that have served well and poorly in the Oval Office, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's first hundred days. He surveys each president's political skill, vision, cognitive style, organizational capacity, ability to communicate, and emotional intelligence--and argues that the last i...

After George H. W. Bush lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992, John Robert Greene’s verdict on the 41st president of the United States was that he “brought no discredit to the office” and “was both patient and prudent. . . mak [ing] few mistakes.” In the years since the release of Greene’s profile of the senior Bush, deemed by Publishers Weekly, “the essential introduction to Bush’s abbreviated, but still consequential, tenure in office,” a wealth of materials about Bus...