In 1831, the then twenty-seven year old Alexis de Tocqueville, was sent with Gustave de Beaumont to America by the French Government to study and make a report on the American prison system. Over a period of nine months the two traveled all over America making notes not only on the prison systems but on all aspects of American society and government. From these notes, Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America", an exhaustive analysis of the successes...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist revisits the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era and draws bold parallels to our own Age of Anxiety. For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis of the Republican senators who cynically used McCarthy to win...

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...

In 1775, the American colonies were a hotbed of political discord. Many of the British policies, specifically taxes, had caused American colonial leaders to consider the unthinkable: declaring independence from the British Empire and its King George. One such leader, Thomas Jefferson, wrote Common Sense: a pamphlet that explained the advantages of immediate and complete independence. In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, Common...

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH. 
Politician, evangelist, and reformer William Jennings Bryan was the most popular public speaker of his time. In this acclaimed biography—the first major reconsideration of Bryan’s life in forty years–award-winning historian Michael Kazin illuminates his astonishing career and the richly diverse

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According to Edward D. Berkowitz, the end of the postwar economic boom, Watergate, and Vietnam all contributed to an unraveling of the national consensus in 1970's America. His unique history-which touches on everything from the decline of the steel industry to the blossoming of Bill Gates, from Saturday Night Fever to the Sunday morning fervor of evangelical preachers-argues that the postwar faith in sweeping social programs and a global U.S. mission...

When President William McKinley was murdered at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901, Americans were bereaved and frightened. Rumor ran rampant: A wild-eyed foreign anarchist with an unpronounceable name had killed the commander-in-chief. Eric Rauchway's brilliant Murdering McKinley restages Leon Czolgosz's hastily conducted trial and then traverses America with Dr. Vernon Briggs, a Boston alienist who sets out to...

Chronicles the life of America's second president, including his youth, his career as a Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, his marriage to Abigail, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his influence on the birth of the United States.

Offers a detailed examination of how the decisions President Obama is making, the programs he is championing, and the support and opposition he is getting from others will ultimately impact ordinary Americans.