After four years in the White House, Martin Van Buren quipped, "As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it." Even Thomas Jefferson--one of the country's Founding Fathers--struggled with the realities of the job, saying, "No man will ever bring out of the presidency the reputation which carried him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and...

James C. Humes reveals shocking predictions made by Britain's most famous prime minister. Churchill didn't need a crystal ball to tell the future. Using his skills as a historian, he studied patterns of the past to make his eerily accurate forecasts, including the rise of European fascism, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the exact day of his own death as he entered his final years.

It is an image etched in the minds of a generation: Ronald Reagan perched atop his horse, riding through the dusty trails and canyons of his California ranch with his beloved wife, Nancy, at his side. But what most of us did not see was the man who always rode just a few steps away. John Barletta was a Vietnam veteran and Secret Service agent who spent over a decade with the Reagans, poised to give his own life at any moment to save the 40th president...

(Excerpt): "MacIver was born on Christmas Day, 1841, at sea, a league off the shore of Virginia. His mother was Miss Anna Douglas of that State; Ronald MacIver, his father, was a Scot, a Rossshire gentleman, a younger son of the chief of the Clan MacIver. Until he was ten years, old young MacIver played in Virginia at the home of his father. Then, in order that he might be educated, he was shipped to Edinburgh to an uncle, General Donald Graham. After...

"In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world's largest peasant economy into "socialist modernity, " otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over...

"When the Nazi Blitzkrieg subjugated Europe in World War II, London became the safe haven for the leaders of seven occupied countries--France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Poland--who fled there to avoid imprisonment and set up governments in exile to commandeer their resistance efforts. The lone hold-out against Hitler's offensive, Britain became a beacon of hope to the rest of Europe, as prominent European leaders like...

The bestselling author of Plain Speaking crafts a candid portrait of one of the most complex, fascinating, difficult, and colorful American presidents. From his birth in 1908 to his death in 1973, the story of Lyndon B. Johnson is told without sparing his personal excesses and contentious public image-while also highlighting the strength of his greatest accomplishments in Washington. Interlaced with interviews from Lady Bird Johnson, John Kenneth...

Recounts the events of Reagan's historic, three-day 1988 Moscow Summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, examining the importance of Reagan's speech at Moscow State University that offered a new vision of the future to the Soviet people.

"Camp David is American diplomacy's secret weapon. The home of the 2015 GCC and 2012 G8 summits, the 2000 Peace Summit, and the 1978 Peace Accords, the camp has played a vital role in American history over the past century, inviting Presidents and international leaders alike to converge, converse, and, perhaps most importantly, relax. A peaceful mountaintop setting, crucially removed from the constant scrutiny of the press, Camp David has served as...

How a young general shaped a nation — a fascinating account of George Washington as he faced a war and came out as America's first president

The American Revolution was won not on the battlefields, but through the mind of George Washington. One of America's founding fathers, Washington's story is one that influenced how our entire nation was built. A compulsively readable narrative and extensive history, George Washington's

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