Books about Politics from Amazon.com

Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson’s election in 1828 ushered in a new and lasting era in which the people, not distant elites, were the guiding force in American politics. Democracy made its stand in the Jackson years, and he gave voice to the hopes and the fears of a restless, changing nation facing challenging times at home and threats abroad. To tell the saga of Jackson’s presidency, acclaimed author Jon Meacham goes inside the Jackson White House. Drawing on newly discovered family letters and papers, he details the human drama–the family, the women, and the inner circle of advisers–that shaped Jackson’s private world through years of storm and victory.

One of our most significant yet dimly recalled presidents, Jackson was a battle-hardened warrior, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the architect of the presidency as we know it. His story is one of violence, sex, courage, and tragedy. With his powerful persona, his evident bravery, and his mystical connection to the people, Jackson moved the White House from the periphery of government to the center of national action, articulating a vision of change that challenged entrenched interests to heed the popular will–or face his formidable wrath. The greatest of the presidents who have followed Jackson in the White House–from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Truman–have found inspiration in his example, and virtue in his vision.

Jackson was the most contradictory of men. The architect of the removal of Indians from their native lands, he was warmly sentimental and risked everything to give more power to ordinary citizens. He was, in short, a lot like his country: alternately kind and vicious, brilliant and blind; and a man who fought a lifelong war to keep the republic safe–no matter what it took.

Jon Meacham in American Lion has delivered the definitive human portrait of a pivotal president who forever changed the American presidency–and America itself.

Exclusive Amazon.com Q&A with Jon Meacham and H.W. Brands

On the eve of the historic 2008 presidential election, we were fortunate to chat with historians Jon Meacham and H.W. Brands (author of Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) on the similarities of their presidential subjects and how the legacies of FDR and Jackson continue to shape the political world we see today.

Amazon.com: One of Andrew Jackson's childhood friends once remarked that when they wrestled, "I could throw him three times out of four, but he never stayed throwed." How emblematic is this of Jackson's career?

Meacham: Utterly emblematic. Jackson was resilient, tough, and wily, rising from nothing to become the dominant political figure of the age. He was crushed by his loss in 1824, when, despite carrying the popular vote, he was defeated in the House of Representatives. But, tellingly, he began his campaign for 1828 almost immediately, on the way home to Tennessee. And he won the next time.

Amazon.com: What would Jackson think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

Meacham: I think they would have gotten along famously. It is difficult to imagine men from more starkly different backgrounds—to take just one example, Jackson lost his mother early, and FDR was long shaped by his mother—but they both viewed the presidency the same way: they both believed they should be in it, wielding power on behalf of the masses against entrenched interests.

Amazon.com: How important was Jackson's legacy to FDR's Presidency?

Brands: Jackson was FDR’s favorite president, and Jackson’s presidency was the one Roosevelt initially modeled his own after. FDR saw Jackson as the champion of the ordinary people of America; he saw himself the same way. He compared Jackson’s battle with the Bank of the United States to his own battle with entrenched economic interests. And just as Jackson had reveled in the enmity of the rich, so did Roosevelt.

Amazon.com: Although both were regarded as champions of the people, their backgrounds were drastically different. FDR hailed from a wealthy and politically-connected family, while Jackson was an orphaned son of immigrants. How did each manage to endear themselves to the voters of their day?

Meacham: Jackson was in many ways the first great popular candidate. He had “Hickory Clubs,” and there were torchlit parades and barbecues—lots and lots of barbecues. Jackson helped mastermind the means of campaigning that would become commonplace. He also intuitively understood the power of image, and kept a portrait painter, Ralph Earl, near to hand in the White House.

Brands: FDR combined noblesse oblige with felt concern for the plight of the poor. His polio had something to do with this—it introduced him to personal suffering, and it also introduced him, in Georgia, where he went for rehabilitation, to poor farmers unlike any he had spent time with before. He came to know them and to feel the problems they faced. He took people in trouble seriously and communicated that seriousness to them.

Continue reading this Q&A

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Price: $16.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama's call for a new kind of politics—a politics that builds upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans Lucid in his vision of America's place in the world, refreshingly candid about his family life and his time in the Senate, Obama here sets out his political convictions and inspires us to trust in the dogged optimism that has long defined us and that is our best hope going forward..
Price: $4.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The year was 1957, the month September, and I had just turned eight years old. Dwight Eisenhower was President, but in my life it was the diminutive, intense Sister Mary Lurana who ruled, at least in the third-grade class where I was held captive For reasons you will soon understand, my parents had remanded me to the penal institution of St. Brigid’s School in Westbury, New York, a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one.

Already, I had barely survived my first two years at St. Brigid’s because I was, well, a little nitwit. Not satisfied with memorizing the Baltimore Catechism’s fine prose, which featured passages like “God made me to show his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven,” I was constantly annoying my classmates and, of course, the no-nonsense Sister Lurana. With sixty overactive students in her class, she was understandably short on patience. For survival, she had also become quick on the draw.

Then it happened. One day I blurted out some dumb remark, and Sister Lurana was on me like a panther. Her black habit blocked out all distractions as she leaned down, looked me in the eye, and uttered words I have never forgotten: “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.”

And she was dead-on.

One day in 1957, in the third-grade classroom of St. Brigid’s parochial school, an exasperated Sister Mary Lurana bent over a restless young William O’Reilly and said, “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.” Little did she know that she was, early in his career as a troublemaker, defining the essence of Bill O’Reilly and providing him with the title of his brash and entertaining issues-based memoir.

And this time it’s personal. In his most intimate book yet, O’Reilly goes back in time to examine the people, places, and experiences that launched him on his journey from working-class kid to immensely influential television personality and bestselling author. Readers will learn how his traditional outlook was formed in the crucible of his family, his neighborhood, his church, and his schools, and how his views on America’s proper role in the world emerged from covering four wars on five continents over three-plus decades as a news correspondent. What will delight his numerous fans and surprise many others is the humor and self-deprecation with which he handles one of his core subjects: himself, and just how O’Reilly became O’Reilly.

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Price: $10.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Here are the facts:

The United States has released 425 terrorists from Guantánamo, at least 50 of whom have returned to the battlefield to fight our troops.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both say they're fiscally responsible. But each has called for $1 trillion in tax increases over the next ten years—and dressed them up as tax cuts!

Mainstream Media has been given marching orders from the Society of Professional Journalists: never refer to "Islamic terrorists" or "Muslim terrorists." And they are obeying! Whenever our brave agents disrupt a terror plot, The media dismisses the culprits as a gang of idiots—lulling us into a false sense of security.

If the liberals win the 2008 election, they will cripple talk radio—forcing stations to give equal time to left-wing programs, and insisting that liberals play a key role in station management.

Up to a quarter of all state pension funds in the United States are invested in companies that are helping Iran, Syria, North Korea, or the Sudan—for a total of nearly $200 billion.

The Do-Nothing Congress is still doing nothing—and the worst offenders are the presidential candidates Clinton, Obama, and McCain, who never show up for their day jobs as senators . . . except to pick up their $165,000 paycheck!

Is it any wonder that Americans feel fleeced at every turn?

As more and more critical problems develop that need national attention, the White House and Congress appear to be AWOL.

Who's calling the shots instead?

Big business, big government, big labor, and big lobbyists. And their self-serving agendas are doing nothing to help the ever-increasing number of American people who are losing their homes, paying credit card interest rates higher than 25 percent, and finding their jobs increasingly outsourced to foreign countries.

In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American tax-payers are routinely fleeced—by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions and American public opinion; by Washington lobbying firms that are pushing the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators on Capitol Hill; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS.

With their characteristic blend of sharp analysis and insider insight, Morris and McGann call offenders of all kinds on the carpet—and offer practical agendas we all can follow to help turn the tide.

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Price: $14.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1999, in The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that those crises were a warning for all of us: like diseases that have become resistant to antibiotics, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In the years that followed, as Wall Street boomed and financial wheeler-dealers made vast profits, the international crises of the 1990s faded from memory. But now depression economics has come to America: when the great housing bubble of the mid-2000s burst, the U.S. financial system proved as vulnerable as those of developing countries caught up in earlier crises and a replay of the 1930s seems all too possible.

In this new, greatly updated edition of The Return of Depression Economics, Krugman shows how the failure of regulation to keep pace with an increasingly out-of-control financial system set the United States, and the world as a whole, up for the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s. He also lays out the steps that must be taken to contain the crisis, and turn around a world economy sliding into a deep recession. Brilliantly crafted in Krugman's trademark style--lucid, lively, and supremely informed--this new edition of The Return of Depression Economics will become an instant cornerstone of the debate over how to respond to the crisis.

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Price: $14.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When Governor Mike Huckabee entered the Republican presidential race, he was the ultimate dark horse, with almost no money, no consultants, and no name recognition beyond Arkansas The so-called experts were highly amused by this former small state governor from blue-collar roots who also played bass in a rock band. He wouldn’t have a prayer against the well-connected and financially wired pros like Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson.

But Huckabee had one big advantage: a common sense message that connected with millions of people, and not just his fellow evangelical Christians. He spoke about family values, fair taxes, and helping hard-working, middle-class Americans in a tough economy. And to the dismay of some Republicans, he talked about fighting Wall Street greed and K Street corruption.

Huckabee shocked the country by winning the all-important Iowa caucuses and seven other states, while spending far less than the other major candidates. He created an army of passionate volunteers and small donors, transforming his campaign into a true movement that will endure long after Election Day.

Do The Right Thing is Huckabee’s amazing story, in his own words—from making commercials with Chuck Norris to meeting a Michigan woman who insisted on donating her wedding ring. But this is more than just a campaign memoir. It’s a vision for a smarter, fairer type of politics—“vertical politics”—that focuses on common sense solutions for education, health care, the economy, and many other issues. It’s not about right versus left; it’s about taking America up rather than down.
Huckabee also shows how the Republican Party can heal its divisions—between social and fiscal conservatives, the wealthy and the middle class, the religious and the secular—and become a true majority party again..
Price: $12.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble,nineteenth-century humorist Josh Billings remarked. “It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”


In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on ten of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country—in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In The 10 Big Lies About America, Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues.

The myths that Medved deftly debunks include:

Myth: The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor.

Fact: The colonies that became the United States accounted for, at most, 3 percent of the abominable international slave trade; the persistence of slavery in America slowed economic progress; and the U.S. deserves unique credit for ending slavery.

Myth: The alarming rise of big business hurts the United States and oppresses its people.

Fact: Corporations played an indispensable role in building America, and corporate growth has brought progress that benefits all with cheaper goods and better jobs.

Myth: The Founders intended a secular, not Christian, nation.

Fact: Even after ratifying the Constitution, fully half the state governments endorsed specific Chris­tian denominations. And just a day after approving the First Amendment, forbidding the establishment of religion, Congress called for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to acknowledge “the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

Myth: A war on the middle class means less comfort and opportunity for the average American.

Fact: Familiar campaign rhetoric about the victimized middle class ignores the overwhelming statistical evidence that the standard of living keeps rising for every segment of the population, as well as the real-life experience of tens of millions of middle-class Americans.

Each of the ten lies—widely believed among elites and taught as truth in universities and public schools—is a grotesque, propagandistic distortion of the historical record. For everyone who is tired of hearing America denigrated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, The 10 Big Lies About America supplies the ammunition necessary to fire back the next time somebody tries to recycle these baseless beliefs. Medved’s witty, well-documented rebuttal is a refreshing reminder that as Americans we should feel blessed, not burdened, by our heritage..
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This stunning and cutting-edge package provides access to the world as reflected in its most influential and respected newspaper. From wars and political assassinations to social movements and space exploration, all the news that is fit to print—or download—can be found in this extraordinary book-and-DVD set.

More than 300 of the most significant New York Times front pages have been carefully selected and beautifully reproduced in the book. Read the headlines and stories covering such world-changing events as Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ten foldouts present twenty key front pages at their magnificent full size. News summaries throughout highlight the most significant events of each era and put the front pages into a historical context. Seventeen insightful essays by prominent Times writers comment on pivotal moments, including "The End of Slavery" by William Safire, "Women’s Suffrage" by Gail Collins, and "The Age of Television" by Frank Rich.

The 3 DVDs include each of the 54,266 front pages printed by the Times over the past 157 years. Completely searchable and user-friendly, the disks are designed to provide access to the full stories that made front-page news each day since the paper’s founding in 1851. Click on a page—the day you were born, for example—and you're instantly transported to the Times' online archive.

The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages is the ultimate gift for history buffs, news junkies, students, and anyone who strives to be well-informed.

DVD-ROMs run on a PC (Windows 2000/XP or later) or Mac (OSX I0.4.8 or later) with Adobe 8.o or later.  Free download available on the DVD-ROMs..
Price: $37.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]