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How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country
Daniel O'Brien · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAmerica (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin, David Javerbaum, Rich Bloomquist, Steve Bodow, Tim Carvell, Eric Drysdale, J.R. Havlan, Scott Jacobson, Tom Johnson, Rob Kutner, Chris Regan, Jason Reich, Jason Ross · 227 pages
Offers tongue-in-cheek insight into American democracy with coverage of such topics as the republican qualities of ancient Rome, the antics of our nation's founders, and the ludicrous nature of today's media.
Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell
A tour of key historic sites in America where incidents of political violence have occurred reveals lesser-known points of interest pertaining to each and shares information about how history has been shaped by popular culture and tourism.
The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House
Kate Andersen Brower · 336 pages
America's First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and
Dead Presidents: An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation's Leaders
Brady Carlson · 336 pages
In *Dead Presidents*, NPR host Brady Carlson takes listeners to presidential gravesites, monuments, and memorials to tell the death stories of our greatest leaders. Mixing biography and travelogue, Carlson explores whether William Henry Harrison really died of a cold, why Zachary Taylor's remains were exhumed 140 years after his death, and how what killed James A. Garfield wasn't an assassin's bul
So You Want to Be President?
Judith St. George, David Small · 52 pages
Presents an assortment of facts about the qualifications and characteristics of U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Bill Clinton.
Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip
Matthew Algeo · 262 pages
From Missouri to New York and back again, this recounting of an amazing journey chronicles the road trip of a former president and his wife and their amusing, failed attempts to keep a low profile. Diners, bellhops, and cabbies shouted out “Hiya, Harry!” whenever they recognized the former president, and, out for his daily constitutional on the streets of New York, Harry even stumbled into the sid
Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Steve Sheinkin · 265 pages
Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie
Hunter S. Thompson · 252 pages
"Bill Clinton would have played the Jew's harp stark naked on 60 Minutes if he thought it would help him get elected. He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman from Arkansas who has the loyalty of a lizard with its tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double-date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.". So writes famed political analyst Hunter S. Thompson in Better Than
The Mental Floss History of the United States: The (Almost) Complete and (Entirely) Entertaining Story of America
Erik Sass, Mangesh Hattikudur, Will Pearson · 426 pages
Smarter than a history teacher, funnier than the Founding Fathers, and more American than Alaska, an almost (but not entirely) comprehensive primer on American history (or at least, the good stuff). Chapters include interactive worksheets, and the book features a selection of "best of" lists, such as the 10 most notorious mobsters and 7 most corrupt presidents.
Colonel Roosevelt
Edmund Morris · 775 pages
This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize -- and National Book Award -- winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, marks the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third politic
The Path to Power
Robert A. Caro · 882 pages
Traces Johnson's life from his Texas childhood through his rise to political power and his successful 1948 senatorial campaign.
Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History
John Dickerson · 439 pages
"Whistlestop tells the human story of nervous gambits hatched in first-floor hotel rooms, failures of will before the microphone, and the cross-country crack-ups of long-planned stratagems. At the bar at the end of a campaign day, these are the stories reporters rehash for themselves and embellish for newcomers. In addition to the familiar tales, Whistlestop ... is a ride through the American camp
Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard · 325 pages
In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligenc
Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America
Chris Matthews · 400 pages
Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865
Abraham Lincoln · 788 pages
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Robert F. Kennedy
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
Joseph J. Ellis · 282 pages
John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation and its second president, spent nearly the last third of his life in retirement grappling with contradictory views of his place in history and fearing his reputation would not fare well in the generations after his death. In an incomplete autobiography, and in numerous publications and voluminous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and many o
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
James W. Douglass · 514 pages
In this fascinating and disturbing book James Douglass presents a compelling account of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and why the unmasking of this truth remains crucial for the future of our country and the world. Drawing on a vast field of investigation, including many sources available only in recent years, Douglass lays out a sequence of steps by JFK that transformed him, o
The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War
H.W. Brands · 480 pages
"From master storyteller and historian H.W. Brands, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked by a reporter about t
The Making of the President 1968
Theodore H. White · 459 pages
Franklin and Lucy
Joseph E. Persico · 443 pages
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably the greatest figure of the twentieth century. While FDR's official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women--particularly with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd--that most vividly bring to light the human being beneath this towering statesman. It is no coincidence that Rutherfurd was with Roosevelt the day he died in Warm Springs, Georgia, alon
A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers and Others Who Let Freedom Swing
Michael Farquhar · 384 pages
A witty compendium of the most salacious, outrageous, and quirky misdeeds in American historyFollowing on the heels of his national bestseller A Treasury of Royal Scandals, Michael Farquhar turns his attention to matters a little closer to home with A Treasury of Great American Scandals. From the unhappy family relationships of prominent Americans to the feuds, smear campaigns, duels, and infamous
Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
Del Quentin Wilber · 305 pages
On March 30, 1981, after giving a lunchtime speech, President Ronald Reagan walked out of a hotel in Washington, D.C., and heard gunfire. Hustled into his limousine, Reagan didn't immediately realize that he had been injured. But soon he -- and the world -- learned that he had been shot and badly wounded. For years, few people knew the truth about how close the president came to dying, and no one