Hardcover Nonfiction

by Po Bronson · Random House

"Brimming with stories of sacrifice, courage, commitment and, sometimes, failure, the book will support anyone pondering a major life choice or risk without force-feeding them pat solutions." --"Publishers Weekly "What should I do with my life? It's a question many of us have pondered with frequency. Author Po Bronson was asking himself that very question when he decided to write this book--an inspiring exploration of how people transform their lives and a template for how we can answer this question for ourselves. Bronson traveled the country in search of individuals who have struggled to find their calling, their true nature--people who made mistakes before getting it right. He encountered people of all ages and all professions--a total of fifty-five fascinating individuals trying to answer questions such as: Is a career supposed to feel like a destiny? How do I tell the difference between a curiosity and a passion? Should I make money first, to fund my dream? If I have a child, will my frustration over my work go away? Should I accept my lot, make peace with my ambition, and stop stressing out? Why do I feel guilty for thinking about this? From their efforts to answer these questions, the universal truths in this book emerge. Each story in these pages informs the next, and the result is a journey that unfolds with cumulative power. Reading this book is like listening in on an intimate conversation among people you care about and admire. Even if you know what you should do with your life, you will find wisdom and guidance in these stories of people who found meaningful answers by daring to be honest with themselves. Among them: -the Pittsburgh lawyer whodecided to become a trucker so he could savor the moment and be closer to his son. -the toner-cartridge queen of Chicago, who realized that her relationships with men kept sabotaging her career choices. -the Cuban immigrant who overcame the strong dis-approval of her parents and quit her high-paying job to pursue social-service work in Miami. -the chemistry professor who realized, quite late in life, that he would rather practice law. -the mother torn between an Olympic career and her adolescent daughter. -the seventeen-year-old boy who received a letter from the Dalai Lama and was called to a life of spiritual leadership. -the creator of "St. Elmo's Fire, who wasn't sure he could quit his successful Hollywood life for the deeper artistic life he had always wanted to pursue. -the author himself. Po Bronson has worked as a bus-boy, cook, janitor, sports-medicine intern, bus-lift assembly-line technician, aerobics instructor, litigation consultant, greeting-card designer, bond salesman, political-newsletter editor, high school teacher, and book publisher. Since then, he has written three books: Bombardiers, The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, and The Nudist on the Late Shift. But none of those experiences compared to what he learned by writing this book. "We all have passions if we choose to see them," he writes. "Most of us don't get epiphanies. We don't get clarity. Our purpose doesn't arrive neatly packaged as destiny. We only get a whisper. A blank, nonspecific urge. That's how it starts." With humor, empathy, and insight, Po Bronson probes the depths of people who learned how to hear the whisper, who overcame fear and confusion to find a largertruth about their lives. A meditation, a journey, and a triumph of story-telling, What Should I Do with My Life? is a life-changing book by a writer who brilliantly tackles the big questions.

by Michael Savage · WND/ Thomas Nelson

Savage attacks big government and liberal media bias, and shows how traditional American freedoms are being destroyed from the outside and undermined from within.

by Bob Schieffer · Putnam

Bob Schieffer started his reporting career in Texas when he was barely old enough to buy a beer, joined CBS News in 1969, and became one of the few correspondents ever to have covered all four major Washington beats: the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hill. Over the past four decades, he's seen it all-and now he's sharing the after-hours tales only his colleagues know.

by David Frum · Random House

The Right Man is the first inside account of a historic year in the Bush White House, by the presidential speechwriter credited with the phrase axis of evil. David Frum helped make international headlines when President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address linked international terrorists to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. But that was only one moment during a crucial time in American history, when a president, an administration, and a country were transformed. Frum worked with President Bush in the Oval Office, traveled with him aboard Air Force One, and studied him closely at meetings and events. He describes how Bush thinks—what this conservative president believes about religion, race, the environment, Jews, Muslims, and America’s future. Frum takes us behind the scenes of one of the most secretive administrations in recent history, with revealing portraits of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and many others. Most significant, he tells the story of the transformation of George W. Bush: how a president whose administration began in uncertainty became one of the most decisive, successful, and popular leaders of our time. Before becoming a White House speechwriter, David Frum was a highly regarded author of books and political commentary and an influential voice on the pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. His commentary has been described by William F. Buckley as “the most refreshing ideological experience in a generation.” Now, in The Right Man, we see Frum as a front-row observer and participant. Not since Peggy Noonan’s account of her time in the Reagan White House has an insider portrayed a sitting president with such precision, verve, honest admiration, and insight. The Right Man will command international attention for its thoughtful account of George W. Bush in the midst of his greatest challenge. It will be an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand who our president really is and how he is likely to lead us in the future.

by Rudolph W. Giuliani with Ken Kurson · Miramax/Hyperion

The former mayor of New York City describes the management, decision-making, and leadership skills that made him a success as a prosecutor and as mayor of New York City.

by Patricia Cornwell · Putnam

Examines the century-old series of murders that terrorized London in the 1880s, drawing on research, state-of-the-art forensic science, and insights into the criminal mind to reveal the true identity of the infamous Jack the Ripper.

by Bob Woodward · Simon & Schuster

With his unmatched investigative skill, Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes story of how President George W. Bush and his top national security advisers, after the initial shock of the September 11 attacks, led the nation to war. Extensive quotations from the secret deliberations of the National Security Council -- and firsthand revelations of the private thoughts, concerns and fears of the president and his war cabinet -- make Bush at War an unprecedented chronicle of a modern presidency in time of grave crisis. Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources and four hours of exclusive interviews with the president, Bush at War reveals Bush's sweeping, almost grandiose, vision for remaking the world. "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player," the president said. Woodward's virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room reveals a stunning group portrait of an untested president and his advisers, three of whom might themselves have made it to the presidency. Vice President Dick Cheney, taciturn but hard-line, always pressing for more urgency in Afghanistan and toward Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the cautious diplomat and loyal soldier, tasked with building an international coalition in an administration prone to unilateralism. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the brainy agitator and media star who led the military through Afghanistan and, he hopes, through Iraq. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the ever-present troubleshooter who surprisingly emerges as perhaps the president's most important adviser. Bush at War includes a vivid portrait of CIA director George Tenet, ready and eager for covert action against terrorists in Afghanistan and worldwide. It follows a CIA paramilitary team leader on a covert mission inside Afghanistan to pay off assets and buy friends with millions in U.S. currency carried in giant suitcases. In Bush at War, Bob Woodward once again delivers a reporting tour de force.

by Michael Moore · ReganBooks/ HarperCollins

Rember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus pollution was disappearing peace was breaking out in the middle East and Northern Ireland and the Bridge to the Twenty-First century was strung with Internet cable and paved with 401 (k) gold? Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore the award winning povocateur behind Roger & Me and the best seller Downsize This! now returns to size up the new century and that big, ugly special interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Among the targets of Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and mediocrity are the Bush family Junta, Bll Clinton the Idiot Nation and Corporate American.

by Gavin Menzies · Morrow

The incredible true story of the discovery of America before Columbus was even born.Gavin Menzies's extraordinary findings rewrite history. On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen sailed from its base in China. The ships, huge junks nearly five hundred feet long and built from the finest teak, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was "to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony. Their journey would last more than two years and circle the globe. When they returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships, now considered frivolous, were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. Also concealed were how the Chinese colonized America before the Europeans and transplanted to America, Australia, New Zealand and South America the principal economic crops that have fed and clothed the world. Now, in a landmark historical journey, Gavin Menzies, who spent fifteen years tracing the astonishing voyages of the Chinese fleet, shares the remarkable account of his discoveries and the incontrovertible evidence to support them. His compelling narrative pulls together ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators to prove that the Chinese had also discovered Antarctica, reached Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook and solved the problem of longitude three hundred years ahead of the Europeans. 1421 describes the artifacts and inscribed stones left behind by the emperor's fleet, the evidence of wrecked junks along its route -- discovered in locations ranging from the middle of the Mississippi River to tributaries of the Amazon -- and the ornate votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, in honor of Shao Lin, goddess of the sea. 1421: The Year China Discovered America is the story of a remarkable journey of discovery that rewrites our understanding of history. Our knowledge of world exploration as it has been commonly accepted for centuries must now be reconceived due to this classic work of historical detection.

by Susan McDougal with Pat Harris · Carroll & Graf

The author, who was imprisoned because she refused to testify in Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation, speaks out, offering a portrayal of the Clinton administration, Starr's investigation, and her years spent in prison.

by George Anders · Portfolio/Penguin

In this bestselling work of investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner George Anders presents a behind-the-scenes account of a struggle that rocked Wall Street and stunned the computer industry. When Carly Fiorina took command of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, she was venturing further than any woman previously had into traditional mens territory. Leading the opposition against her daring plan to rescue the $40 billion-dollar company from declinewhich included the $20 billion acquisition of archrival Compaqwas Walter Hewlett, son of HPs late co-founder and defender of The HP Way. Not since Wall Street operatives battled over the fate of RJR Nabisco had a takeover drama so captivated the media and the public. Drawing on unparalleled access to HP insiders and written with a novelists flair, "Perfect Enough" is a spellbinding chronicle of hope, ambition, betrayal, and family pride

by Michael Beschloss · Simon & Schuster

Based on recently released documents, one of the nation's most celebrated historians reveals one of the little-known secrets of World War II--FDR's and Truman's sometimes shocking plans for a postwar Germany.

by Arianna Huffington · Crown

“Wonderfully incendiary and right-headed . . .Huffington is mad as hell, and rightly so.” –Esquire The scathing and insightful New York Times bestseller, now updated to include the current economic crisis Pigs at the Trough is Arianna Huffington’s eerily prescient exposé of the financial meltdown–and the flagrant greed that triggered it. Once again, Huffington takes on the nexus of corporate highfliers, lobbyists, and Washington insiders who have created and zealously protected a culture of corruption in America. Hearkening back to the days of Enron and WorldCom, she draws a line connecting those accounting frauds to the much larger and more sophisticated corruption that drove the latest financial crisis. The list of new culprits is long, and in this updated version of Pigs at the Trough, Huffington calls them out–including AIG, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch–and asks the probing questions of how things went so wrong and how we can rebuild our free market capitalist system on a sounder moral foundation. Wickedly amusing yet powerfully indicting, Pigs at the Trough will once again stir up heated discussion among Americans outraged by the bailout of corporate swine. “With a passion for the truth and an eye for detail, Arianna Huffington reports on the hijacking of democracy. Read it and weep–then head for the barricades.”–Bill Moyers “Huffington indicts with precision, verve, and sparkling wit.” –Barbara Ehrenreich “Arianna Huffington makes an appealing and compelling argument for the repeal of human nature–that part of it that indulges savage, unconscionable, and despicable greed.” –Walter Cronkite

by Ross King · Walker

by Bruce Feiler · Morrow

In his new book, Bruce Feiler, the acclaimed author of Walking the Bible, travels to the Middle East to find the truth and the meaning behind the shadowy biblical figure of Abraham. He also explores how the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have appropriated Abraham as part of their tradition - and how the old man of the Bible could once again become a unifying force for those bitterly divided faiths. - Who was Abraham? - Why is he of fundamental importance to Jews, Christians and Muslims? - Can the message of his story help reconcile the warring faiths?