From our foremost historian of World War II, a vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime.

A vivid and incisive portrait of Winston Churchill during wartime from acclaimed historian Max Hastings, Winston’s War captures the full range of Churchill’s endlessly fascinating character. At once brilliant and infuriating, self-important and courageous, Hastings’s Churchill comes brashly to life as never before.

Beginning in 1940, when popular demand elevated Churchill to the role of prime minister, and concluding with the end of the war, Hastings shows us Churchill at his most intrepid and essential, when, by sheer force of will, he kept Britain from collapsing in the face of what looked like certain defeat. Later, we see his significance ebb as the United States enters the war and the Soviets turn the tide on the Eastern Front. But Churchill, Hastings reminds us, knew as well as anyone that the war would be dominated by others, and he managed his relationships with the other Allied leaders strategically, so as to maintain Britain’s influence and limit Stalin’s gains.

At the same time, Churchill faced political peril at home, a situation for which he himself was largely to blame. Hastings shows how Churchill nearly squandered the miraculous escape of the British troops at Dunkirk and failed to address fundamental flaws in the British Army. His tactical inaptitude and departmental meddling won him few friends in the military, and by 1942, many were calling for him to cede operational control. Nevertheless, Churchill managed to exude a public confidence that brought the nation through the bitter war.

Hastings rejects the traditional Churchill hagiography while still managing to capture what he calls Churchill’s “appetite for the fray.” Certain to be a classic, Winston’s War is a riveting profile of one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century.

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Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL (born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar. Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year. He became a foreign correspondent and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC television and for the Evening Standard in London. Hastings was the first journalist to enter the liberated Port Stanley during the Falklands War. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he returned to the Evening Standard as editor in 1996 until his retirement in 2001. He received a knighthood in 2002. He has presented historical documentaries for BBC TV, and is the author of many books, including Bomber Command which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction in 1980. Both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England from 2002-2007. He currently writes a column for the Daily Mail but often contributes articles to other publications such as The Guardian and The New York Review of Books. In his 2007 book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (also known as Retribution in the United States), the chapter on Australia's role in the last year of the Pacific War was criticised by the Returned and Services League of Australia and one of the historians at the Australian War Memorial for, in their view, exaggerating discontent in the Australian Army during this period. Hastings lives with his second wife Penny (née Levinson), with whom he had two children, in west Berkshire. In 1999, his 27-year-old son Charles killed himself in Shanghai, China. Hastings dedicated his book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 to his late son.

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Drawing on thousands of pages of recently discovered government documents, wiretap transcripts, and Al Capone’s handwritten personal letters, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Eig tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the nation’s most notorious criminal in rich new detail.

 

From the moment he arrived in Chicago in 1920, Capone found himself in a world of limitless opportunity. He was an impetuous, affable young man of average intelligence, ill prepared for fame and fortune, whose most notable characteristic was his scarred left cheek. Yet within a few years, Capone controlled an illegal bootlegging business with annual revenue rivaling that of some of the nation’s largest corporations. Along the way he corrupted the Chicago police force and local courts while becoming one of the world’s first international celebrities.

A furious President Herbert Hoover insisted that Capone be brought to justice because the criminal was making a mockery of federal law. Legend credits Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” with apprehending Capone. But it was the U.S. attorney in Chicago and little-known agents working on direct orders from the White House who compromised their ethics—and risked their lives—to get their man.

The most infamous crime attributed to Capone was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a crime that Capone insisted he didn’t commit. Using newly discovered FBI records, Eig offers a surprising explanation for the murders.

Get Capone explores every aspect of the man called “Scarface,” paying particular attention to the myths that have for so long surrounded and obscured him. Capone emerges as a worldly, emotionally complex man, doomed as much by his ego as by his vicious criminality. This is the real Al Capone. 

The author, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, brings his uncompromising standards for research and his superb knack for storytelling to one of the most thrilling stories in American history. This eye-opening biography reveals that Capone was the target of one of the most intense criminal investigations in American history — with orders coming directly from the White House. And, despite his many misdeeds, Capone may have been the victim of a rigged trial.

Jonathan Eig (born April 26, 1964) is a best-selling American author. His first newspaper job was with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Eig is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and he remains a contributing writer there. Eig has published magazine stories in Esquire, The New Republic, Men's Health, and other publications. He is the author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig". His new book, "Get Capone", is based on newly released IRS records and thousands of pages of never-before-released Justice Department files on the investigation of Al Capone. On January 12, 2010, the Chicago Police Department reopened the 1939 murder case of Edward O'Hare to set the record straight about the role O’Hare played in Capone’s conviction based on documents uncovered by Eig and detailed in "Get Capone."

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A definitive, deeply moving narrative, Bonhoeffer is a story of moral courage in the face of the monstrous evil that was Nazism. 

After discovering the fire of true faith in a Harlem church, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany and became one of the first to speak out against Hitler. As a double-agent, he joined the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, and was hanged in Flossenberg concentration camp at age 39. Since his death, Bonhoeffer has grown to be one of the most fascinating, complex figures of the 20th century. 

Bonhoeffer presents a profoundly orthodox Christian theologian whose faith led him to boldly confront the greatest evil of the 20th century, and uncovers never-before-revealed facts, including the story of his passionate romance. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Eric Metaxas (born 1963 in New York City) is the author of Everything Else You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask) and thirty children's books. He is founder and host of Socrates in the City in New York City, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His daughter is one of the school kids. Metaxas' writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Mars Hill Review, and First Things. He has written for VeggieTales, 3-2-1 Penguins! (season 1) and Rabbit Ears Productions, earning three Grammy nominations for Best Children's Recording. His recent publication is Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, which is associated with the 2006 film Amazing Grace.

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When he stepped into history's spotlight at the National Democratic Convention, Craig Robinson recalls that nothing could have been more gratifying than introducing his sister, Michelle Obama, to millions of Americans. Within minutes, he won the hearts of the nation by sharing highlights of growing up in the modest Robinson household, where the two were raised by devoted parents who taught them the values of education, hard work, and the importance of reaching far beyond what even seemed possible.

Those lessons of character were fundamentals in shaping Craig Robinson's own remarkable journey: from his days playing street basketball on Chicago's Southside, while excelling academically, to admission at Princeton University, where he was later named Ivy League Player of the Year, twice. After playing professionally in Europe, Robinson made an about-face, entering the competitive field of finance. With his MBA from the University of Chicago, his meteoric rise landed him a partnership in a promising new venture. But another dream beckoned and Craig made the unusual decision to forego the trappings of money and status in the business world in order to become a basketball coach. He soon helped transform three struggling teams - as an assistant coach at Northwestern, then as head coach at Brown and now at Oregon State University. In his first season at OSU, he navigated what was declared to be one of the nation's best single season turnarounds.

In A Game of Character, Robinson takes readers behind the scenes to meet his most important influences in his understanding of the winning traits that are part of his playbook for success. Central to his story are his parents, Marian and Fraser, two indefatigable individuals who showed their children how to believe in themselves and live their lives with conviction through love, discipline and respect. With insights into this exemplary family, we relive memories of how Marian sacrificed a career to be a full-time mom, how Fraser got up and went to work every day while confronting the challenges of multiple sclerosis, how Craig and Michelle strengthened their bond as they journeyed out of the Southside to Princeton University and eventually, the national stage.

Heartwarming, inspiring, and even transformational, A Game of Character comes just at the right time in an era of change, reminding readers of our opportunity to work together and embrace the character of our nation, to make a difference in the lives of others and to pave the way for the next generation. 

 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

 

Craig Malcolm Robinson (born April 21, 1962) is the head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University and was previously head coach at Brown University. As a player, he was a star forward at Princeton University in the early 1980s. He was a successful bond trader during the 1990s. He is the older brother of First Lady Michelle Obama and the brother-in-law of President Barack Obama. He lives in Oregon with his wife and children. 

 

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From the outrageously filthy and oddly innocent comedienne Sarah Silverman comes a memoir—her first book—that is at once shockingly personal, surprisingly poignant, and still pee-in-your-pants funny. If you like Sarah’s television show The Sarah Silverman Program, or memoirs such as Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea and Artie Lange’s Too Fat to Fish, you’ll love The Bedwetter.

 

To read an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE. 

Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedian, writer, actress, singer and musician. Although usually credited as Sarah Silverman, she is sometimes credited by her nickname, Big S. Her satirical comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics such as racism, sexism, and religion. Silverman first gained notice as a writer and occasional performer on Saturday Night Live. She currently stars in and produces The Sarah Silverman Program, which debuted February 1, 2007, on Comedy Central. She often performs her act by playing a caricature of a Jewish-American princess, mocking bigotry and stereotypes of ethnic groups and religious denominations, by having her comic character endorsing them in an ironic fashion.

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An in-depth look at the ambitious career and sudden disgrace of the former New York governor

With a combination of talent, hard work, connections, and family wealth, Eliot Spitzer built an amazing career. By his late forties, he'd gone from Princeton to Harvard Law to dramatic success as a prosecutor and attorney general to the governorship of New York. Many thought he would become the first Jewish president of the United States. Then came the prostitution scandal that shocked and mystified the nation.

Peter Elkind's definitive account gets at all sides of this complex man: the well-intentioned do-gooder, the aggressive lawyer, the hardball politician, the dutiful son, the loving husband and father, and the secretive "Client 9" of the Emperor's Club escort service.

Elkind interviewed dozens of key sources ranging from Spitzer's family, friends, and closest aides, to targets of his high-profile investigations, to central players in the prostitution ring. He reveals many groundbreaking new details about Spitzer's rise, his short time as governor, and the way his enemies plotted against him.

The result is a gripping, almost Shakespearean narrative-a tragedy of one man's noble intentions and fatal flaws and the powerful forces (both internal and external) that destroyed him. 

 

To read an excerpt, click HERE. 

Peter Elkind is editor at large at Fortune magazine and an award-winning investigative reporter. He is the co-author of the national bestseller The Smartest Guys in the Room and author of The Death Shift. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and Texas Monthly and is a former editor of the Dallas Observer. 

 

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Here is the story of Jerry Weintraub: the self-made, Brooklyn-born, Bronx-raised impresario, Hollywood producer, legendary deal maker, and friend of politicians and stars. No matter where nature has placed him--the club rooms of Brooklyn, the Mafia dives of New York's Lower East Side, the wilds of Alaska, or the hills of Hollywood--he has found a way to put on a show and sell tickets at the door. "All life was a theater and I wanted to put it up on a stage," he writes. "I wanted to set the world under a marquee that read: 'Jerry Weintraub Presents.'"

In WHEN I STOP TALKING, YOU'LL KNOW I'M DEAD, we follow Weintraub from his first great success at age twenty-six with Elvis Presley, whom he took on the road with the help of Colonel Tom Parker; to the immortal days with Sinatra and Rat Pack glory; to his crowning hits as a movie producer, starting with Robert Altman and Nashville, continuing with Oh, God!, The Karate Kid movies, and Diner, among others, and summiting with Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen.

Along the way, we'll watch as Jerry moves from the poker tables of Palm Springs (the games went on for days), to the power rooms of Hollywood, to the halls of the White House, to Red Square in Moscow and the Great Palace in Beijing-all the while counseling potentates, poets, and kings, with clients and confidants like George Clooney, Bruce Willis, George H. W. Bush, Armand Hammer, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bobby Fischer . . .well, the list goes on forever.

And of course, the story is not yet over . . .as the old-timers say, "The best is yet to come."

As Weintraub says, "When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead."

With wit, wisdom, and the cool confidence that has colored his remarkable career, Jerry chronicles a quintessentially American journey, one marked by luck, love, and improvisation. The stories he tells and the lessons we learn are essential, not just for those who love movies and music, but for businessmen, entrepreneurs, artists . . . everyone. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Jerry Weintraub (born September 26, 1937, Brooklyn, New York) is an American film producer and former chairman and CEO of United Artists.  Weintraub was raised in The Bronx, New York, the son of Rose and Sam Weintraub. His father was a gem dealer. After several years at MCA, he left and formed his own personal management company. In the 1960s, he also co-founded the vocal group The Doodletown Pipers. Among the acts that Weintraub managed at this time were Joey Bishop, The Four Seasons, and singer Jane Morgan. His relationship with Morgan went from professional to personal and the two were married in 1965. They have four children together. For the past 20 years, however, Weintraub has been living with girlfriend Susie Ekins. Morgan and Weintraub never divorced and have remained friends. Before turning to films, Weintraub's largest entertainment success was as the personal manager of singer and actor John Denver whom he signed in 1970. Weintraub has also managed the careers of such musical acts as Cuba Gooding, Sr. and the Main Ingredient, The Carpenters, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, The Moody Blues and Zager & Evans. His producing credits include Nashville, Diner, The Karate Kid, and the 2001 remake of Ocean's Eleven. In addition to producing Ocean's 12 and Ocean's 13, he appeared in all of the Ocean's films. In 1986, the National Association of Theatre Owners named Jerry Weintraub the Producer of the Year. In 1991, he was named to the board of the Kennedy Center. Jerry Weintraub was one of the first independent film producers to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Weintraub is a major contributor to many charities, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Music Center, and the Children's Museum of Los Angeles. In 1988, the American Friends of the Hebrew University gave Weintraub and his wife, Jane, the Scopus Award in gratitude for their support. He now lives in Palm Desert, California.

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But it was in Vietnam where the man became a legend. He arrived in 1966 to find a dejected group of pilots and motivated them by placing himself on the flight schedule under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them. Proving he wasn’t a WWII retread, he led the wing with aggressiveness, scoring another four confirmed kills, becoming a rare triple ace. 

Olds (who retired a brigadier general and died in 2007) was a unique individual whose personal story is one of the most eagerly anticipated military books of the year. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Robin Olds (July 14, 1922 – June 14, 2007) was an American fighter pilot and general officer in the U.S. Air Force. He was a "triple ace", with a combined total of 16 victories in World War II and the Vietnam War. He retired in 1973 as a brigadier general. Olds had a highly-publicized career and life, including marriage to Hollywood actress Ella Raines. As a young man he was also recognized for his athletic prowess in both high school and college, being named an All American for his play as a lineman in American football. Olds expressed his philosophy regarding fighter pilots in the quote: "There are pilots and there are pilots; with the good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it. If you are a fighter pilot, you have to be willing to take risks."

Christina Olds is the daughter of Robin Olds. She holds a Vassar College BA in English & creative writing and compiled her father’s writings to help complete this book with Ed Rasimus, a retired USAF fighter pilot who has written two books on the Vietnam air war, When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra. They both live in Colorado. 

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"If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves.  To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself.  And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that.  I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it.  I know that sounds a little pious."

In David Lipsky’s view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace’s pieces for Harper’s magazine in the ’90s were, according to Lipsky, “like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.”

Then Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour for Infinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport. They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight. They endure a terrible reader’s escort in Minneapolis. Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance. Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an “orgy of spectation”). They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace’s dogs. Amid these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things—everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and confounds him—in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him, and came to feel about him—that grateful, awake feeling—the same way he felt about Infinite Jest. Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church.

A biography in five days, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is David Foster Wallace as few experienced this great American writer. Told in his own words, here is Wallace’s own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer—of being young generally—trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and—as he tells it—what it was like to become David Foster Wallace.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.  His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. He contributes as an essayist to NPR's All Things Considered, and is the recipient of a Lambert Fellowship, a Media Award from GLAAD, and a National Magazine Award.  He's the author of the novel The Art Fair, a collection of stories, Three Thousand Dollars, and the bestselling nonfiction book Absolutely American, which was a Time magazine Best Book of the Year.

Based on three years of research and reporting as well as 850 interviews with sources, many of whom have never before spoken for publication, Oprah is the first comprehensive biography of one of the most influential, powerful, and admired public figures of our time, by the most widely read biographer of our era. Anyone who is a fan of Oprah Winfrey or who has followed her extraordinary life and career will be fascinated and newly informed by the closely observed, detailed, and well-rounded portrait of her provided by Kitty Kelley’s exhaustively researched book. Readers will come away with a greater appreciation of who Oprah really is beyond her public persona and a fuller understanding of her important place in American cultural history.

To read an excerpt from Foreword, click HERE.

Kitty Kelley (born April 4, 1942) is an American investigative journalist and author of several bestselling unauthorized biographies of celebrities and politicians. Described as a "poison pen" biographer, her profiles frequently contain unflattering personal anecdotes and details, and their accuracy is often questioned. Though many of her books have topped the best sellers list, Kelley's credibility and sources have been called into question multiple times. Her past subjects have included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family, the Bush family, and Oprah Winfrey. Although Kelley has been criticized and her books hotly debated, she has never been successfully sued for libel and has never been forced to retract a written statement.

Michael J. Fox abandoned high school to pursue an acting career, but went on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and garner the highest accolades for his acting, as well as for his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates graduates to recognize opportunities, maximize their abilities, and roll with the punches—all with his trademark optimism, warmth, and humor.

In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future, Michael draws on his own life experiences to make a case that real learning happens when "life goes skidding sideways." He writes of coming to Los Angeles from Canada at age eighteen and attempting to make his way as an actor. Fox offers up a comically skewed take on how, in his own way, he fulfilled the requirements of a college syllabus. He learned Economics as a starving artist; an unexpected turn as a neophyte activist schooled him in Political Science; and his approach to Comparative Literature involved stacking books up against their movie versions.

Replete with personal stories and hilarious anecdotes, Michael J. Fox's new book is the perfect gift for graduates.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Michael J. Fox first gained attention as Alex P. Keaton, on the hit sitcom Family Ties. Since then, his career has been a nonstop success story, with blockbuster movies like Back to the Future, The Secret of My Success, Doc Hollywood, and the popular Stuart Little films, for which he voiced the title character. Michael has won numerous awards, including five Emmys, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a People's Choice Award. He retired from his award-winning role on Spin City to establish the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which has become the leading private funder of PD research in the world. Michael is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, the actress Tracy Pollan, their four children, and their two dogs.

For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories—and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination.

As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare’s plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them? 

Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination. 

To read Prologue, click HERE.

James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and non-fiction author. Shapiro published widely on William Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture, co-directed two National Endowment for the Humanities Institutes on Shakespeare, co-edited the Columbia Anthology of British Poetry (1995), and served as the associate editor of the Columbia History of British Poetry (1994). He received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Huntington Library, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for his publications and academic activities. He got the Hoffman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship on Marlowe and in 1997 the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, bestowed him the Roland H. Bainton Prize for his book Shakespeare and the Jews . He has written for a number of periodicals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, The Financial Times, and The Daily Telegraph. In 2006 he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow as well as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Shapiro won the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the 2006 Theatre Book Prize for his work "1599: a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" . Shapiro has been on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and reviewing books for various publications.