By order of the president

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John Hohenberg

This is the story of how Bill Clinton fashioned the incredible, the unbelievable, the 100 to 1 shot victory in the campaign of 1992 that made him the forty-second President of the United States. In the beginning, it wasn't supposed to happen that way. With the Soviet Union in collapse at the end of the Cold War, the hero of the Persian Gulf War, President George Bush, was initially regarded by friend and foe alike as unbeatable. Except for a brief charge by Pat Buchanan, no one really challenged him in the Republican primaries for renomination. While among the contenders for the Democratic nomination, there were only five - none nationally known. Clinton was in the pack. But one by one, the strongest Democrats - Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown, and Bob Kerrey - fell into obscurity. In the end, against all odds, Bill Clinton and running mate Al Gore emerged to reunite the divided party. The Clinton/Gore ticket went on to lead a growing entourage of twenty- and thirty-something campaigners. Noble ideals, high energy, and rock music made the Democratic party a powerhouse of youth and vitality. The Clinton message spoke to a generation of voters who statistically had been labeled apolitical and, along with more mature voters, moved them to embrace the possibility for change. "The Economy, Stupid" codified the single greatest concern of voters throughout the country, despite their parting views on other matters. The overconfident President Bush lambasted his youthful rival on every issue, from unfamiliarity with national government to assertions of weakness in leadership and flaws in character. And yet, even after Ross Perot split off a part of the Democratic vote as well as a section of Bush's support, the man from Hope, Arkansas, beat them both on Election Day - the third youngest after Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy to enter the White House. Employing the skills he has shown in his earlier books, a "crisp, narrative style...[and] discerning editorial mind" (The New York Times Book Review), John Hohenberg's Bill Clinton Story vividly captures not only one man's road to the White House but, more importantly, it illuminates the changing face of American politics on the eve of the twenty-first century.

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written and

A biography of Fiorello La Guardia who started his political career in the House of Representatives before gaining national fame as the mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945.

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Thomas C. Leonard

Many books have shown that journalists have political power, but none have offered a more wide-ranging account of how they got it. The Power of the Press is a pioneering look at the birth of political journalism. Before the American Revolution, Thomas Leonard notes, the press in the colonies was a timid enterprise, poorly protected by law and shy of government. Newspapers helped make the Revolution, but they were not fully aware of the way they could fit into a democracy. It was only in the nineteenth century that journalists learned to tell the stories and supply the pictures that made politics a national preoccupation. Leonard traces the rise of political reporting through some fascinating corridors of American history: the exposes of the Revolutionary era, the "unfeeling accuracy" of Congressional reporting, the role of the New York Times and Harper's Weekly in attacking New York City's infamous Tweed Ring, and the emergence of "muckraking" at the beginning of our century. The increasing power of the press in the political arena has been a double-edged sword, Leonard argues. He shows that while political reporting nurtured the broad interest in politics that made democracy possible, this journalism became a threat to political participation.

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J.M. Coetzee

At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless, shunned by his friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife. He retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding, where a brief visit becomes an extended stay as he tries to find meaning from the one remaining relationship. David attempts to relate to Lucy and to a society with new racial complexities are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that shakes all of his beliefs and threatens to destroy his daughter. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone" (The New York Times Book Review).