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This is a biography of one of the most prominent members of the U.S. House of Representatives during the twentieth century. A Democrat, Flood represented Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional District for thirty-one years. His ability to provide for his depressed district emanated mainly from his chairmanship of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HEW Flood surpassed most of his colleagues in the extremism of his anti-Communist rhetoric. Focusing frequently on Eastern Europe helped him politica...

Ronald Reagan’s political career has long been an interesting and important field of study for historians of the twentieth century. Just as interesting, however, is Reagan’s life during the 1950s and early 1960s, his period of evolution from struggling film actor to respected political figure. In our current era, when a former reality television star with no prior political experience is president of the United States, such a feat may seem unremarkable. In the 1960s, however, transitioning from...

First full biography of an international figure, recently in the news after her successful libel case against Andrew Marry, who described her as a terrorist in The Making of Modern Britain Internationally famous for starting one of the first women's refuges in the modern world, Erin Pizzey is a controversial but hugely-respected activist with enemies on the left and the right, a pioneering figure in the maelstrom of seventies politics, and a key witness of the era. Here, she tells her story i...

I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel ...For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for the Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accomp...

Mark Wayne Nelson details the efforts of one of America's most underappreciated public servants. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt invited Marriner S. Eccles, a Mormon from Utah, to join his administration.As a Republican businessman, Eccles seemed an unlikely candidate for the role of leading crusader for a fairer and more economically sound distribution of the nation's wealth. From his first position in the Treasury Department, though, he emerged as the central mover in revolutionizing the mortga...

How did the Democratic Party - of JFK, LBJ, and civil rights - fall from glory? How did Texas, home of its most promising players, become Bush territory? What do politicians on either side need to do today to get our country back on track? Ben Barnes has the answers. Barnes had a front-row seat through it all. His political savvy and bravado made him a standout in the rough-and-tumble world of Texas politics. He won a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1960, at the unheard-of age of 22, and four y...

Sunday, 8 January 1978 I have decided to keep a diary during Zelman's term of office as Governor General. I have kept diaries of three recent overseas journeys, and have been pleased that I had, because one forgets so much and the re-reading of a sentence can bring whole occasions, scenes, and otherwise forgotten things, vividly back to mind"". And so begins an extraordinary record of the life of a Governor General's wife. Lady Anna Cowen's edited diaries capture the day-to-day life—the wardr...

From a hardscrabble childhood in the Great Depression on the dusty plains of rural Nebraska, Clayton Yeutter (1930-2017) rose to work for four U.S. presidents, serving in the cabinets of two of them. His challenge, posed by one of President Ronald Reagan's aides, was this: go and change the world. As U.S. trade representative he did just that, opening the global trading arena with bold efforts that led to NAFTA, the creation of the World Trade Organization, and extraordinary growth in cross-bord...