Here are 100 books that True Believer fans have personally recommended if you like
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Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
I found this book so helpful in explaining why it wasn’t “the economy stupid” but values that moved voters. His work was helpful in illuminating my own extensive work on how values move voters.
Frank is especially good at describing the role of the evangelical movement in putting cultural issues, including abortion, front and center in our politics. I found that he was onto something important and that has helped my understanding of today’s politics. A very readable, down-to-earth book.
Reveals how conservatism became the preferred national political ideology, exploring the origins of this philosophy in the upper classes and tracing its recent popularity within the middle class.
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
I knew Richard Wirthlin very well back in the 1980s. I loved the stories about his encounters with Ronald Reagan and how illuminating they were in describing the characters of both men.
The lessons Reagan imparted to Wirthlin explain why Reagan was so successful in politics and his ability to understand his audience. No one knew Reagan better or understood him as well than Richard Wirthlin.
The outpouring of grief and heartfelt tributes following Ronald Reagan’s death demonstrated the love and admiration people still have for our nation’s 40th president. Now, in this affectionate memoir, Reagan’s chief political strategist and friend for 36 years offers a fascinating close-up portrait of the Great Communicator. Taking us inside the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and beyond, Dick Wirthlin shares illuminating anecdotes, off-the-record remarks, and private moments that reveal the true Ronald Reagan. Through it all, Wirthlin points out the unique qualities and talents that made Reagan such a strong leader-and such a great communicator. For anyone who has…
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
Everett Carll Ladd was a mentor of mine. This book describes the politics of the 1970s and early 1980s.
I devoured it because he not only brought a unique understanding of electoral politics to the discipline of political science but wrote in such a way that he made it understandable and readable to a general audience. It is a powerful study of how the political parties had weakened, one that still resonates today.
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
I loved the story Burns tells in this book of how John F. Kennedy began a trend of bucking the party establishment that told him to “wait his turn.” Kennedy’s ambition led him to overcome the establishment and win the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.
Burns shows how subsequent presidents, to varying degrees, built upon the same trends. I found this book helpful as it contained powerful insights into Donald Trump.
Since mid-century, America has witnessed an ominous decline in presidential leadership, culminating in the failing presidency of George W. Bush today. How did this happen? In Running Alone, the distinguished political scientist and leadership expert James MacGregor Burns finds the origin of the problem in John F. Kennedy's presidential style-and its influence on his successors in the Oval Office. Kennedy rejected collective leadership in favor of a highly personalized executive branch, run by a small group of hand-picked advisors. His successors followed his lead; each in his own way ran and governed alone, exploiting the party base while often ignoring…
As a retired police officer, I believe that my insight into police procedures helps move my novels along. By creating a strong female protagonist, FBI Agent Jeannie Loomis, my readers get the best of both worlds. A somewhat flawed female main character who is still a dedicated law enforcement officer who believes, similarly to Lucas Davenport of the Prey Novel series, and Jack Reacher of the Reacher novels, that the ends, justify the means.
Great follow-up novel in Sanford’s Prey Series concerning a serial female killer. Sanford leaves the reader from a previous prey novel, where the female serial killer escapes. This leaves his readers with a desire to learn more….a continuing storyline…and he more than satisfies that with her return in Mortal Prey.
Years ago, Lucas Davenport almost died at the hands of Clara Rinker, a pleasant, soft-spoken, low-key Southerner, and the best hitwoman in the business. Now retired and living in Mexico, she nearly dies herself when a sniper kills her boyfriend, the son of a local druglord, and while the boy's father vows vengeance, Rinker knows something he doesn't: The boy wasn't the target-she was-and now she is going to have to disappear to find the killer herself. The FBI and DEA draft Davenport to help track her down, and with his fiancie deep in wedding preparations, he's really just as…
My print-journalist father covered the crime beat. He often took me with him to the police station and I got hooked on crime. My background is eclectic, a professional trumpet player with a BA in Mathematics and a Masters in Fine Arts. While teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston, I discovered my dark side and began writing crime thrillers. Most are inspired by actual events or news reports about stalkers, domestic homicides, or serial killers. In 2001, I moved to New Orleans. My crime thriller series features NOPD Homicide Detective Frank Renzi. I'm fortunate to be able to consult three former NOPD homicide detectives who advise me on police procedures and investigations.
Even while pursuing the nastiest criminals Detective Lucas Davenport and his sardonic sense of humor make me laugh. A deranged man wants to punish the female psychiatrist who once put him in a mental hospital. When he kidnaps the woman and her two young daughters, Lucas focuses on who stands to benefit. The combative resentful husband she's divorcing, her business partner, and her elderly father's trophy wife who will inherit his fortune if his daughter dies.
The kidnapper inflicts harsh punishment on the psychiatrist and plays mind games with Lucas. He telephones Lucas, taunts him and threatens to kill his captives. Lucas has no idea where they are, but he can play mind games too. An emotional roller-coaster ride until the last page of this gritty suspense thriller.
**Don't miss John Sandford's brand-new thriller Ocean Prey - out now**
A LUCAS DAVENPORT THIRLLER BY GLOBAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR JOHN SANDFORD
He knows how killers think. But what if this killer knows more?
It's raining when psychiatrist Andi Manette leaves the parent-teacher meeting with her two daughters. She's tired and distracted, so she doesn't notice the red van parked beside her, or the van door slide open. The last thing she does notice is the hand reaching out for her and her girls . . .
Hours later, deputy chief Lucas Davenport stands in the car park holding a blood-stained…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
After some challenges with reading the dialect, I became so intrigued by this heart-wrenching story of two teenage girls, one Trinidadian and one African-American, who come together unexpectedly in cold Minneapolis. I loved learning about their cultures, and I loved how they grew close despite their differences and supported each other through the crises of lost family and childhood cancer.
The language and pace beguiled me as a reader. The girls' viewpoints of their past and present worlds were engaging. I felt the heroism in each of them, one facing death, one trying to reunite with her family.
Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus's bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.
Port of Spain, Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she's going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's daughter. Audre's grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets…
For a long time, I’ve been intrigued by the different ways that people reason about moral issues. Add to that a mystification about why smart people do unethical things and you have the basis for our book on ethical leadership. I’ve spent the better part of my career evaluating and coaching potential leaders and realized relatively recently that I wanted to work with people who did the “right thing.” Demonstrating the moral courage to speak up in the face of opposition has become increasingly difficult—hence my list of books on moral courage. I hope you enjoy it.
Yes, I know that Kennedy didn’t really write the book but it was meaningful to me when I was younger as it speaks to moral courage in the political arena–a trait I find often lacking in today’s America.
This book reminds me that people can speak truth to power, can do the right thing, and do so at personal risk. This is a book that more of our US politicians should read or re-read as a reminder.
THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CLASSIC OF POLITICAL INTEGRITY
With a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy and introduction by Caroline Kennedy
John F. Kennedy’s enduring classic resounds with timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues—courage and patriotism—and remains a moving, powerful, and relevant testament to the indomitable American spirit
During 1954-55, Kennedy, then a junior senator from the state of Massachusetts, profiled eight American patriots, mainly United States Senators, who at crucial moments in our nation’s history, revealed a special sort of greatness: men who disregarded dreadful consequences to their public and private lives to do that one thing which seemed…
At Columbia University (where, incidentally, I became friends with Rob) I took two 19th-century American history undergraduate courses that featured dramatic lectures on Irish emigrants, the group that served as a prototype for subsequent immigrants from other nations. The books I have listed here gave me a deeper, more complicated view of the experiences of people like my Irish Catholic ancestors on both sides of my family. I find today’s harangues on social media and cable news woefully deficient in helping to understand forces like nativism, the influence of religion on public figures, and the harrowing adjustments to American life by emerging ethnic and racial groups.
As executive director of the New York chapter of the progressive National Lawyers Guild, O’Dwyer was on the front lines in fighting the Red Scare, a reactionary movement that found its most visible protagonist in Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.
I found Nye’s account of the red herrings, fear-mongering, and scapegoating that gave rise to the term “McCarthyism” dismayingly familiar in today’s political ecosystem of castigation and misinformation. (McCarthy’s youthful chief counsel on the committee dedicated to rooting out Communists and their fellow travelers from the government, Roy Cohn, would serve decades later as the henchman-like lawyer for the litigious real estate titan Donald Trump.)
In the long history of American demagogues from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. We still use 'McCarthyism' to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by association, a weapon of polarising slander. From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy destroyed many careers and even entire lives, whipping the nation into a frenzy of paranoia, accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror. When the public finally turned on him, he came crashing down, dying of alcoholism in 1957. Only now, through bestselling author Larry Tye's exclusive look at the…
Political power has intrigued me since I read Macbethand Machiavelli in high school – how to acquire it, wield it, and keep it, and how it seduces and ultimately corrupts. Political bosses fascinated me – Svengalis who built empires, often through charisma, populism, and ruthlessness. I began writing about politics as a newspaper reporter, then ran press shops for lawmakers and candidates, including a presidential campaign; co-wrote three nonfiction books with senators, including a former majority leader; then turned to writing fiction, a passion since boyhood, largely under the theme “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
I began reading Williams’s biography as research for a recent historical novel, scanning passages listed in the index. Soon enough, I was gulping whole sections and chapters; I couldn’t stop reading the thing. Williams reminded me how exuberant political narrative nonfiction can be and taught me as much about writing as about Huey Long. He showed ways to showcase characters’ traits and tells, portraits-in-miniature, in a “God is in the details” vibe. He showed how to set a story in its historical context while also using history as a mirror for contemporary times. And, through Long himself, Williams made me again admire the boundless audacity and ambition that I’d never possessed – and again made me thankful for its absence.
He was one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history, a great natural politician who looked, and often seemed to behave, like a caricature of the red-neck Southern politico - and yet he had become, at the time of his assassination, a serious rival to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency.
In this "masterpiece of American biography" (New York Times), Huey Long stands wholly revealed, analyzed, and understood.
