Describes the life of the American statesman and political theorist who served as Vice President under John Quincy Adams and argued in favor of slavery and laid the groundwork for the South to secede the Union. "A new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession--the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today. John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American...

"A candid new political memoir from Senator John McCain -- his most personal book in years -- covering everything from 2008 up to the present."--Provided by publisher. "An American hero reflects on his life -- and what matters most. 'I don't know how much longer I'll be here. Maybe I'll have another five years. Maybe, with the advances in oncology, they'll find new treatments for my cancer that will extend my life. Maybe I'll be gone before you read...

Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the...

The Rise of a Prairie Statesman is the first volume of a major biography of the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who became America's most eloquent and prescient critic of the Vietnam War. In this masterful book, Thomas Knock traces George McGovern's life from his rustic boyhood in a South Dakota prairie town during the Depression to his rise to the pinnacle of politics at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where police and antiwar...

"Fourteen years before Kirsten Gillibrand succeeded Hillary Rodham Clinton as senator from New York, she heard her future mentor say these life-changing words: 'Decisions are being made every day in Washington, and if you are not part of those decisions, you might not like what they decide, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself.' A young corporate lawyer at the time, Gillibrand felt as if she'd been struck by lightning. She instantly knew that...

"A standout cadet at the Air Force Academy, rejected from pilot training for being too short, [Martha McSally] refused to give up. Instead she became America's first woman to fly a fighter jet in combat and the first to command a fighter squadron. A decorated aviator, she took on the Pentagon on behalf of women -- and won. A rape and sexual assault survivor, she has fought for victims in and out of uniform. With candor, attitude, and fresh insights,...