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"From a preeminent presidential historian comes a groundbreaking and often surprising saga of America's wartime chief executives. Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of Waris a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending...
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America's unique form of democracy separates power among three branches of government: the legislative, judicial and executive. The President of the United States, who heads the executive branch, holds the position that most embodies the aspirations of the American people. Join HISTORY for a fresh perspective on how the Oval Office has evolved over the past 200 years through stories about and learn about the 43 men who have served as Commander in...
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"Although the framers gave the president little authority, George Washington knew whatever he did would set precedents for generations of future leaders. To ensure their ability to defend the nation, he simply ignored the Constitution when he thought it necessary. In a revealing new look at the birth of American government, [this book] describes Washington's presidency in a time of continual crisis, as rebellion and attacks by foreign enemies threatened...
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However bitter, complex, and urgent today's controversies over executive power may be, Yoo reminds readers that they are nothing new. Here, he explores a factor too little consulted in current debates: the past. Through shrewd and lucid analysis, he shows how the bold decisions made by Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR changed more than just history; they also transformed the role of the American president.
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"Presidents of War is a narrative of how a procession of Chief Executives took the nation into major conflicts, mobilized Americans for victory, and seized greater power for themselves. Michael Beschloss's findings in original letters, diaries, and declassified documents, and his interviews with surviving participants in the drama, allow him to bring us into the room and into the minds of these men as they make the most difficult decisions that face...
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In the sobering aftermath of America's invasion of Iraq, documentarian Jarecki launches a penetrating inquiry into how forces within the American political, economic, and military systems have come to undermine the carefully crafted structure of our republic--upsetting its balance of powers, vastly strengthening the hand of the president in taking the nation to war, and imperiling the workings of American democracy. Surveying a scorched landscape...
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"A thought provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump, from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world's 'indispensable nation, ' its 'sole superpower,...
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"In this sweepingly ambitious volume, the nation's foremost experts on the American presidency and the U.S. Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how each American president has confronted and shaped the Constitution. Each occupant of the office--the first president to the forty-fourth--has contributed to the story of the Constitution through the decisions he made and the actions he took as the nation's chief executive. By...
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"An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present....