by Allan Carpenter (1987)
A biography of the colorful Sam Houston who served America in many ways, but whose name is now inextricably linked with Texas.
Kevin Hillstrom
"Provides an absorbing overview of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist "witch hunts" of the 1950s. Also explores the ways in which the McCarthy era shaped the trajectory of American politics and culture for decades to come. Includes a narrative overview, biographies, primary sources, chronology, glossary, bibliography, and index"--Provided by publisher.
Leonard Lurie
Senator Pothole: The Unauthorized Biography of Al D'Amato explains how and why the U.S. Senate's most controversial member has become one of the country's most important political figures, even though his name has been repeatedly associated with political scandal and his friends and personal associates so often end up in jail. Senator Pothole describes the deals and betrayals that resulted in his election to the Senate in 1980, defeating the venerable Senator Jacob Javits. The book shows how - for a price - D'Amato has set banking policy, determined whether leveraged buy-outs will be allowed, decided which part of society will bear the heaviest tax burden, and whether criminals would be put in jail or become the hidden manipulators of power. Senator Pothole reveals:. How D'Amato arranged Defense Department contracts for the Wedtech Corporation; tolerated the sale of subsidized, low income housing to his friends; and successfully headed off expulsion from the Senate in his roller-coaster (and supposedly last) re-election campaign in 1992. D'Amato's ties to organized crime; at one point D'Amato pleaded with then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani not to prosecute Godfather Paul Castellano. How D'Amato committed perjury before a grand jury and then admitted it ten years later when the statute of limitations had run out. His involvement in the savings-and-loan scandal. How D'Amato intimidated the Senate Ethics Committee members into slapping him on the wrist instead of expelling him from the Senate. How D'Amato let his brother Armand use his office to peddle influence in selling an obsolete Unisys weapons system to the Navy, which didn't want it. As a result, his brother was convicted of mail fraud in 1993. And much more. The author conducted over four hundred interviews with Senator D'Amato's family members, enemies, friends, and political associates. He also made extensive use of court records and transcripts. The result is the most explosive, eye-opening book written about probably the most corrupt member of Congress of our day.
Joe McGinniss
"In The Last Brother, Joe McGinniss brings to startling and disturbing life the childhood, the brief triumph, and the long downward slide of the last Kennedy brother ... and exposes, as never before, the chilling reality behind the glittering facade of America's First Dysfunctional Family, as well as the terrible cost of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy's dark ambitions for his children - even the last and least of them." "His book focuses in particular on the extraordinary sixties, a decade that began in glory for the family with Jack's ascension to the presidency, and ended - after the murders of Jack and Bobby, the tragedy at Chappaquidick, and their father's death - with Teddy, the last brother, standing alone in the rubble of Camelot." "While The Last Brother is both shocking and newsworthy, Teddy Kennedy emerges as a curiously tragic figure, the victim of his own family, forever "the fat, awkward little boy" who was ignored by his siblings, his father and his mother, then propelled, unwilling and unprepared, into the public limelight." "Searing, yet strangely moving and even sympathetic, The Last Brother presents a detailed, tragic portrait of a man at war with himself, doomed to live in the giant shadow of his brothers, trapped in the glorious but hollow Kennedy myth, longing - but unable - to escape."--Jacket.
Donald Day & Harry Herbert Ullom
In the decades preceding the Civil War, few figures in the United States were as influential or as controversial as Sam Houston. In Sam Houston, James L. Haley explores Houston?s momentous career and the complex man behind it. Haley?s fifteen years of research and writing have produced possibly the most complete, most personal, and most readable Sam Houston biography ever written. Drawn from personal papers never before available as well as the papers of others in Houston?s circle, this biography will delight anyone intrigued by Sam Houston, Texas history, Civil War history, or America?s tradition of rugged individualism.--Amazon.com.