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Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times best-selling author of John Adams (RB# 96791), David McCullough pens a fascinating and sweeping biography of America's 33rd president. Born and raised on the Missouri frontier, Harry S. Truman began life as a clerk, farmer, and soldier, but grew to be one of history's most courageous leaders.

Acclaimed poet and award-winning children's author Jonah Winter-inspired by a political rally he attended during the historic 2008 presidential campaign-tells the moving story of Barack Obama. Beginning in Africa and Kansas, this enlightening biography describes Obama's life as an ongoing journey, from his birth in Hawaii to his election as president. Obama emerges as someone who, even from an early age, wondered where he belonged and who he might become.

New York Times editor and critic Wilborn Hampton is the acclaimed author of gripping narratives like Kennedy Assassination, Meltdown, and September 11, 2001. In War in the Middle East, the veteran journalist offers a fascinating account of his early 1970s reports from the volatile desert region amidst Black September and the Yom Kippur War. This insider's view of life in a war zone shows Hampton trying to write stories inside a besieged hotel with no electricity or water as fighting rages all around.

A former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff explains how government's oldest problem is its greatest destabilizing force. Thieves of State argues that corruption is not just a nuisance; it is a major source of geopolitical turmoil. Since the late 1990s, corruption has grown such that some governments now resemble criminal gangs, provoking extreme reactions ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion.

"Behold! Human beings living in an underground den. Like ourselves, they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave." With that statement, Plato--one of the greatest thinkers in the history of mankind--introduces one of his of most important philosophical constructs: the relationship between truth and the image of truth.

He was a publisher, printer, scientist and inventor, but Ben Franklin's greatest success lay in his work as a diplomat. In this unique recording of his account of his experiences as a spokesman for the Colonies, we listen in on the secret political transactions and undercover dealings of colonial America, filtered through Franklin's inimitable wit.

Presents a revelatory account of the transformation of the CIA and America's special forces into competing covert paramilitary agencies responsible for the defeat of Osama bin Laden and other strategic war efforts, offering insight into the new ways that the nation is fighting wars.

Lewis offers a scathing assessment of fiscal blunders in foreign lands--and details how economic repercussions are sure to be felt on American soil. Financial bubbles grew--and burst--not only in the U.S. but in countries as diverse as Iceland, Germany, and Greece. Mixing humor with prescient insight, Lewis depicts a precarious situation that demands listeners' attention.

CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century, a ghost of American power. From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel�s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security.

Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics-not just as analysts, but also for clandestine operations.