Empfehlungen basierend auf "Who Is Barack Obama?"

From MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki, a lively and sweeping history of the birth of political tribalism in the 1990s—one that brings critical new understanding to our current political landscape from Clinton to TrumpIn The Red and the Blue, cable news star and acclaimed journalist Steve Kornacki follows the twin paths of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, two larger-than-life politicians who exploited the weakened structure of their respective parties to attain the highest offices. For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him Speaker.The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns—their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the ’90s were not just about them. Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo’s stubborn presence around Clinton’s 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton’s star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot’s wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others.With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.

The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made self-destructive decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In spellbinding detail, Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions by which key players, namely Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, exploited September 11 to further a long held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment. With a new afterward.  One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year National Bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist  A Best Book of the Year: Salon, Slate, The Economist, The Washington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer

A NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLERAn intimate, powerful, and galvanizing memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner, human rights advocate, and former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. Named one of the best books of the year:The New York Times • National Public Radio • Time • The Economist • The Washington Post • Vanity Fair • Christian Science Monitor • Publishers Weekly • Audible“Her highly personal and reflective memoir . . . is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world.”—President Barack ObamaIncludes an updated afterwordTracing her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official, Samantha Power’s acclaimed memoir is a unique blend of suspenseful storytelling, vivid character portraits, and shrewd political insight. After her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of Senator Barack Obama, he invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. When Obama won the presidency, Power went from being an activist outsider to serving as his human rights adviser and, in 2013, becoming the youngest-ever US Ambassador to the United Nations. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy, offering a compelling and deeply honest look at navigating the halls of power while trying to put one’s ideals into practice. Along the way, she lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life, shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children, and makes the case for how we each can advance the cause of human dignity. This is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism—and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.“This is a wonderful book. […] The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly and with unblinking honesty.”—THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times Book Review“Truly engrossing…A pleasure to read.”—RACHEL MADDOW“A beautiful memoir about the times we’re living in and the questions we must ask ourselves…I honestly couldn’t put it down.” —CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild“Power’s compelling memoir provides critically important insights we should all understand as we face some of the most vexing issues of our time.” —BRYAN STEVENSON, author of Just Mercy

The gripping inside story of the 2008 presidential election, by two of the best political reporters in the country. “It’s one of the best books on politics of any kind I’ve read. For entertainment value, I put it up there with Catch 22.” —The Financial Times “It transports you to a parallel universe in which everything in the National Enquirer is true….More interesting is what we learn about the candidates themselves: their frailties, egos and almost super-human stamina.” —The Financial Times “I can’t put down this book!” —Stephen Colbert Game Change is the New York Times bestselling story of the 2008 presidential election, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the best political reporters in the country. In the spirit of Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes and Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1960, this classic campaign trail book tells the defining story of a new era in American politics, going deeper behind the scenes of the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin campaigns than any other account of the historic 2008 election.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a preeminent presidential historian comes a “superb and important” (The New York Times Book Review) saga of America’s wartime chief executives“Fascinating and heartbreaking . . . timely . . . Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw important crosscutting lessons about presidential leadership.”—Bill GatesWidely acclaimed and ten years in the making, Michael Beschloss’s Presidents of War is an intimate and irresistibly readable chronicle of the Chief Executives who took the United States into conflict and mobilized it for victory. From the War of 1812 to Vietnam, we see these leaders considering the difficult decision to send hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths; struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. Through Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants and findings in original letters and once-classified national security documents, we come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—or were broken by them.Presidents of War combines this sense of immediacy with the overarching context of two centuries of American history, traveling from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.Praise for Presidents of War"A marvelous narrative. . . . As Beschloss explains, the greatest wartime presidents successfully leaven military action with moral concerns. . . . Beschloss’s writing is clean and concise, and he admirably draws upon new documents. Some of the more titillating tidbits in the book are in the footnotes. . . . There are fascinating nuggets on virtually every page of Presidents of War. It is a superb and important book, superbly rendered.”—Jay Winik, The New York Times Book Review"Sparkle and bite. . . . Valuable and engrossing study of how our chief executives have discharged the most significant of all their duties. . . . Excellent. . . . A fluent narrative that covers two centuries of national conflict.” —Richard Snow, The Wall Street Journal

"Terrific . . . Vibrant . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core." ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times"When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly." ―Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post"Lively and kaleidoscopic." ―Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker"John Ganz is the most important young political writer of his generation―just the one our dark moment needs." ―Rick PerlsteinA revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era―and their dark legacy today.With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the “paleo-con” right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserk” took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War–era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the “Middle American Radicals” whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government.   Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display.   Praise for The March of Folly   “A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review   “An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe   “A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.”—Chicago Sun-Times

From the MSNBC Senior National and Political Correspondent and New York Times bestselling author of Separated, a gripping and revelatory account of the devastating 2025 Los Angeles fires, which he covered on the ground as an LA native. On the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged the phone of Jacob Soboroff, a national correspondent for NBC News. "Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating," his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living. "Really bad." An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief. "I should go. I grew up in the Palisades." Soon he was on the front line of the blaze--his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena. In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, met with displaced residents and workers, and pressed Governor Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press. But no story Soboroff has covered at home or abroad--the trauma of family separation at the border, the displacement of the war in Ukraine, the collapse of order in Haiti--could have prepared him for reporting live as the hallmarks of his childhood were engulfed in flames around him while his hometown burned to the ground. But for Soboroff, questions remained after the fires were controlled: what had he just witnessed? How could it have happened? Is it inevitable something like it will happen again? This set Soboroff off on months of reporting--with firefighters, fire victims, political leaders, academics, earth scientists, wildlife biologists, meteorologists and more--that made him keenly aware of how the misfortune of seeing his past carbonize was also a form of time travel into the dystopian world his children will inhabit. This is because the 2025 LA fires were not an isolated tragedy, but rather they are a harbinger--"the fire of the future," in the words of one senior emergency--management official. Firestorm is the story of the costliest wildfire in American history, the people it affected and the deeply personal connection to one journalist covering it. It is a love letter to Los Angeles, a yearning to understand the fires, and why America's new age of disaster we are living through portends that--without a reckoning of how Los Angeles burned--there is more yet, and worse, to come.

From Pete Souza, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait, comes a potent commentary on the Presidency -- and our country. As Chief Official White House Photographer, Pete Souza spent more time alongside President Barack Obama than almost anyone else. His years photographing the President gave him an intimate behind-the-scenes view of the unique gravity of the Office of the Presidency -- and the tremendous responsibility that comes with it. Now, as a concerned citizen observing the Trump administration, he is standing up and speaking out. Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza's unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House. What began with Souza's Instagram posts soon after President Trump's inauguration in January 2017 has become a potent commentary on the state of the Presidency, and our country. Some call this "throwing shade." Souza calls it telling the truth. In Shade, Souza's photographs are more than a rejoinder to the chaos, abuses of power, and destructive policies that now define our nation's highest office. They are a reminder of a President we could believe in, and a courageous defense of American values.

A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB 'MUST-READ' #1 ON COSMOPOLITAN'S 11 BEST NEW NON-FICTION BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR PILE IN 2023 CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds. How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back? In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not? Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes. In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.