Biography & autobiography / Presidents & Heads of State

Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years

von David Talbot

For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and reckless personal behavior. But the real story of the Kennedys...

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero

von Chris Matthews

“What was he like?”

Jack Kennedy said the reason people read biography is to answer that basic question.

With the verve of a novelist, Chris Matthews gives us just that. We see this most beloved president...

Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything

von Frank J. Fleming

It's hard to remember the dark days before 2008. It was a time of hatred, racism, violence, obese children, war, untaxed rich people, and incandescent light bulbs -- perhaps the worst days we had ever seen....

Truman

von David McCullough

An intemperate general. An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray.

Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan....

Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir

von Clint Hill & Lisa McCubbin

HE CALLED HER MRS. KENNEDY. SHE CALLED HIM MR. HILL.

For four years, from the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in November 1960 until after the election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Clint Hill was the Secret...

The Notes

von Ronald Reagan

Collected by the Ronald Reagan Foundation, The Notes is a fascinating window into the mind of our fortieth president. While the #1 New York Times bestselling Reagan Diaries detailed daily life inside the Oval...

Spoken from the Heart

von Laura Bush

In this brave, beautiful, and deeply personal memoir, Laura Bush, one of our most beloved and private first ladies, tells her own extraordinary story. 

Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura...

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography 1980

von Edmund Morris

Thirty years ago, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Although Theodore Rex fully recounts TR’s years in the White House (1901–1909), The Rise of Theodore...

Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

von Thomas Jefferson

In his riveting autobiography, Jefferson details many of the events that shaped his personal philosophy and would ultimately define his political career. Allowing the reader to step into the shoes of the author...

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

von Jon Meacham

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY

The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In this magnificent biography, the...

The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate

von Barry Sussman

No American history, government, or journalism collection is complete without this new edition of "The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate," by Barry Sussman, the best account of the fall of Richard...

John Adams

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography 2002

von David McCullough

In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot -- "the colossus of independence,"...

The Age of Alexander

von Plutarch & Ian Scott-Kilvert

The nine Lives in this selection trace a crucial phase in ancient history. Plutarch's Lives of the great Greek statesmen and men of action were designed to pair with the now better-known Roman portraits and...

Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage

von Jeffrey Frank

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had a political and private relationship that lasted nearly twenty years, a tie that survived hurtful slights, tense misunderstandings, and the distance between them in...

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

von William Manchester & Paul Reid

Spanning the years of 1940-1965, THE LAST LION picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister-when his tiny island nation stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The Churchill...

American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies

von Michael W. Kauffman

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end...

My Life

von Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work,...

Barack Obama: The Story

von David Maraniss

From one of our preeminent journalists and modern historians comes the epic story of Barack Obama and the world that created him.

In Barack Obama: The Story, David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational...

The Passions of Andrew Jackson

von Andrew Burstein

Most people vaguely imagine Andrew Jackson as a jaunty warrior and a man of the people, but he was much more—a man just as complex and controversial as Jefferson or Lincoln. Now, with the first major reinterpretation...

The Passage of Power

The Years of Lyndon Johnson #4

National Book Critics Circle for Biography 2012, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography 2012

von Robert A. Caro

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZE

NAMED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE...