Political Figure Memoirs

Karl Marx (1818-1883) - philosopher, historian, sociologist, economist, current affairs journalist, and editor - was one of the most influential and revolutionary thinkers of modern history, but he is rarely thought of as a Jewish thinker, and his Jewish background is either overlooked or misrepresented. Avineri puts Marx's Jewish background in its proper and balanced perspective, and traces Marx's intellectual development in light of the historical, intellectual, and political contexts in which he lived.

In this groundbreaking biography of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, Herbert P. Bix offers the first complete, unvarnished look at the enigmatic leader whose 63-year reign ushered Japan into the modern world. Never before has the full life of this controversial figure been revealed with such clarity and vividness. Bix describes what it was like to be trained from birth for a lone position at the apex of the nation's political hierarchy and as a revered symbol of divine status.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world. Now, in a special program commissioned and authorized by his family, here is the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring King's I Have a Dream Speech.

More than 50 years after her death, Eleanor Roosevelt is remembered as a formidable first lady and tireless social activist. Often overlooked, however, is her deep and inclusive spirituality. Her personal faith was shaped by reading the New Testament in her youth, giving her a Jesus - centered spirituality that fueled her commitment to civil rights, women's rights, and the rights of all "little people" marginalized in American society. She took seriously Jesus's words and despite her life of privilege, she made the needs of those on the margins her priority.

Hubert Humphrey was one of the great liberal leaders of postwar American politics, yet because he never made it to the Oval Office, he has been largely overlooked by biographers. Historian Arnold A. Offner has explored vast troves of archival records to recapture Humphrey's life, giving us previously unknown details of the vice president's fractious relationship with Lyndon Johnson, showing how Johnson colluded with Richard Nixon to deny Humphrey the presidency, and describing the most neglected aspect of Humphrey's career.

"What makes you think black people will vote for you? Because the word on the street is, you're a racist." With those blunt words to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, Pastor Darrell Scott began a journey he never expected to take - becoming the future president's most prominent African-American supporter and advisor. In Nothing to Lose, Pastor Scott recounts how and why he boarded "the Trump Train", revealing the considerable difficulties he experienced along the way.

Empowered by the Brand New Congress initiative in 2018, evangelical pastor and progressive Republican Robb Ryerse embarked on a long-shot, grassroots congressional campaign. After he ultimately lost his race, Ryerse worked with the Vote Common Good campaign, traveling across the United States to help turn Congress blue. Throughout his political journey, Ryerse gained new insights on the relationship between religion and politics in America today, the dynamics of our deep partisan divide, and the power of faithful people working for the common good.

In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly 20 years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.

Two centuries after his death, Alexander Hamilton is shining once more under America's spotlight - and we need him now more than ever. Orphaned as a kid, this young, scrappy, and hungry self-starter came from nothing and then helped win the Revolutionary War, created the country's financial system, seduced New York's most eligible ladies, ratified the Constitution, and landed his face on our $10 bill. (In his spare time he also formed the Coast Guard and the US Mint.) He is the ultimate underdog.

Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history - including Vietnam, the Pentagon, Panama, and Desert Storm - but a history that until now has been known only on the surface.

With Princess Sultana's Circle, the extraordinary story of Princess Sultana continues. The forced marriage of Sultana's niece to a cruel and depraved older man, and Sultana's discovery of the harem of sex slaves kept by a royal cousin, makes this brave royal princess more determined than ever to fight the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia. Princess Sultana's cause is given an extra sense of urgency against the background of increased dissent against the Al Sa'uds, and the looming specter of Islamic fundamentalism.

When Rupert Murdoch enlisted Roger Ailes to launch a cable news network in 1996, American politics and media changed forever. With a remarkable level of detail and insight, Vanity Fair magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman puts Ailes’s unique genius on display, along with the outsize personalities - Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Gretchen Carlson, Bill Shine, and others - who have helped Fox News play a defining role in the great social and political controversies of the past two decades.

A century after his death, Grigory Rasputin remains fascinating: the Russian peasant with hypnotic eyes who befriended Tsar Nicholas II and helped destroy the Russian Empire, but the truth about his strange life has never fully been told. Written by the world's leading authority on Rasputin, this new biography draws on previously closed Soviet archives to offer new information on Rasputin's relationship with Empress Alexandra, sensational revelations about his sexual conquests, a re-examination of his murder, and more.

Pope Francis is the most liberal pope in the history of the Catholic Church. He is not only championing the causes of the global Left but also undermining centuries-old Catholic teaching and practice. In the words of the late radical Tom Hayden, his election was "more miraculous, if you will, than the rise of Barack Obama in 2008". But to Catholics in the pews, his pontificate is a source of alienation. It is a pontificate, at times, beyond parody.

Perhaps no American president is more associated with nature and wildlife than Theodore Roosevelt, a prodigious hunter and adventurer and an ardent conservationist. We think of Roosevelt as an original, yet in The Naturalist, Darrin Lunde shows how from his earliest days Roosevelt actively modeled himself in the proud tradition of museum naturalists - the men who pioneered a key branch of American biology through their desire to collect animal specimens and develop a taxonomy of the natural world.

At the age of 19, scared and illiterate, James Pennington, escaped from slavery in 1827 and soon became one of the leading voices against slavery prior to the Civil War. Just 10 years after his escape, Pennington was ordained as a priest after studying at Yale and was soon traveling all over the world as an anti-slavery advocate. He was so well respected by European audiences that the University of Heidelberg awarded him an honorary doctorate, making him the first person of African descent to receive such a degree.

Many of us find ourselves caught somewhere between unbelieving activists and inactive believers. We can write a check to feed starving children or hold signs in the streets and feel like we've made a difference without ever encountering the faces of the suffering masses. In this book, Shane Claiborne describes an authentic faith rooted in belief, action, and love, inviting us into a movement of the Spirit that begins inside each of us and extends into a broken world.

When he woke up in jail in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2015, Tim Murtaugh had no way of knowing he'd be a senior leader on the reelection campaign for the president of the United States less than four years later.

An in-depth biography of the towering 20th-century Chinese military and political figure who led the government, first on the mainland and then in exile in Taiwan, from the acclaimed New Yorker correspondent who lived in China when he was head of state.

On January 29, 1774, Benjamin Franklin was called to appear before the Privy Council--a select group of the king's advisors--in an octagonal-shaped room in Whitehall Palace known as the Cockpit. Spurred by jeers and applause from the audience in the Cockpit, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn unleashed a withering tirade against Franklin. Though Franklin entered the room as a dutiful servant of the British crown, he left as a budding American revolutionary.