|
|
|
George Washington on Leadership
FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN PEACE, FIRST IN LEADERSHIP Richard Brookhiser’s revolutionary biography, Founding Father, took George Washington off the dollar bill and made him live. Now, with his trademark wit and precision, Brookhiser expertly examines the details of Washington’s life that fullscale biographies sweep over, to instruct us in true leadership. George Washington on Leadership is a textbook look at Washington’s three spectacularly successful careers as an executive: general, president, and tycoon. Brookhiser explains how Washington maximized his strengths and overcame his flaws, and inspires us to do likewise. It shows how one man’s struggles and successes 200 years ago can be a model for leaders today. Washington oversaw two startups-the army and the presidency. He chaired the most important meeting in American history-the Constitutional Convention. Washington rose from being a third son who was a major in the militia, to one of the most famous men in the world. At every stage in his career, he had to deal with changing circumstances, from tobacco prices to geopolitics, and with wildly different classes of men, from frontiersmen to aristocrats. Washington’s example is so crucial because of the many firsts he is responsible for. .
Price: $14.09
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers
Why do Americans care so much about the Founding Fathers? After all, the French don't ask themselves, "What would Napoleon do?" But Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Adams built our country, wrote our user's manuals--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution--and ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, they did and they still do. Richard Brookhiser has been writing, talking, and thinking about the Founders for years. Now he channels them. What would Hamilton think about free trade? What would Franklin make of the national obsession with values? What would Washington say about gays in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights to gun control, Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster--just as Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton have done before us. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence--and a good dose of wit--while drawing on his deep knowledge of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Brookhiser challenges us to think and act with the clarity that the Founders brought to the task of making a democratic country. Now, more than ever, we need these creators of America--argumentative, expansive, funny know-it-alls--to help us solve the issues that threaten to divide us. .
Price: $5.75
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Alexander Hamilton, American
The man on the $10 bill is probably the most overlooked Founding Father. This book--not a names-and-dates biography, but an appreciation and assessment in the tradition of Plutarch--should help change that. Richard Brookhiser is an outstanding writer well known for his previous books (especially the wonderful Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington) and journalism (in National Review and the New York Observer); Hamilton could not have asked for a better advocate. A signer of the Constitution and author of roughly two-thirds of the Federalist Papers, Hamilton became the first secretary of the treasury at the age of 32. In this capacity, Brookhiser argues that the scrappy Caribbean native gave birth to American capitalism by developing the country's financial system. Brookhiser also reveals the sex and violence of Hamilton's life: he survived personal scandal but was shot down by Aaron Burr in an 1804 duel. The end came too soon for Hamilton--and it also helped elevate the reputation of his nemesis, Thomas Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton: American is by turns learned, funny, and inspiring. A model of popular biography, it convinces us why we should care deeply about a remarkable man who lived two centuries ago. --John Miller.
Price: $4.79
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace
As a young man, George Washington admired and copied into a little notebook 110 rules for civil behavior that originated from a Jesuit textbook Washington took these rules very much to heart, and that handwritten list remained with him throughout his life, serving as inspiring guidance from his military days at Valley Forge and Yorktown to his two terms as president. Guidance that at first sounds archaic, it is in fact just as relevant as--indeed, possibly more necessary than--it was nearly three hundred years ago. Richard Brookhiser makes clear the pertinence of these rules for modern readers and proposes that now more than ever we will be wise to follow the modest example of such a great man. Witty and insightful, Brookhiser's commentary offers real-world instruction in the lost art of self-discipline, and his new preface provides a compelling and timely context in which to employ these guidelines today..
Price: $10.62
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Gentleman Revolutionary : Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution
Since 1996, Richard Brookhiser has devoted himself to recovering the Founding for modern Americans The creators of our democracy had both the temptations and the shortcomings of all men, combined with the talents and idealism of the truly great. Among them, no Founding Father demonstrates the combination of temptations and talents quite so vividly as the least known of the greats, Gouverneur Morris. His story is one that should be known by every American -- after all, he drafted the Constitution, and his hand lies behind many of its most important phrases. Yet he has been lost in the shadows of the Founders who became presidents and faces on our currency. As Brookhiser shows in this sparkling narrative, Morris's story is not only crucial to the Founding, it is also one of the most entertaining and instructive of all. Gouverneur Morris, more than Washington, Jefferson, or even Franklin, is the Founding Father whose story can most readily touch our hearts, and whose character is most sorely needed today. He was a witty, peg-legged ladies' man. He was an eyewitness to two revolutions (American and French) who joked with George Washington, shared a mistress with Talleyrand, and lost friends to the guillotine. In his spare time he gave New York City its street grid and New York State the Erie Canal. His keen mind and his light, sure touch helped make our Constitution the most enduring fundamental set of laws in the world. In his private life, he suited himself; pleased the ladies until, at age fifty-seven, he settled down with one lady (and pleased her); and lived the life of a gentleman, for whom grace and humanity were as important as birth. He kept his good humor through war, mobs, arson, death, and two accidents that burned the flesh from one of his arms and cut off one of his legs below the knee. Above all, he had the gift of a sunny disposition that allowed him to keep his head in any troubles. We have much to learn from him, and much pleasure to take in his company..
Price: $5.99
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
America's First Dynasty : The Adamses, 1735--1918
In the spirit of his earlier books, Alexander Hamilton: American and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Richard Brookhiser produces an elegant, concise volume drawing on previous scholarship but offering a fresh perspective on four prickly generations of Adamses. Until David McCullough's John Adams became a surprise bestseller, the United States' second president and his descendants seldom had good press. Acknowledging John's essential role in the American Revolution and his son John Quincy's principled fight against slavery, contemporaries and historians nonetheless judged both men poor presidents, characterized by haughty pride and stiff-necked dislike of compromise. Charles Francis Adams, John Quincy's son, lost an almost certain chance to run for president as a Republican in 1872 by disdainfully announcing "that he would reject any nomination that had to be negotiated for;" the most famous book by Charles's son, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), implicitly blames Henry's failure to achieve the prominence of his forefathers on the loss of meaning and coherence in the modern, fragmented world. Tracing the lives and careers of these four men, Brookhiser strikes a balance between their struggles with a daunting heritage and battles with the often unappreciative outer world, identifying "the constant companion of the Adamses" as "the idea of greatness. Am I as great as my ancestors? As great as my contemporaries? Why doesn't the world recognize my greatness?" This proves a sensible organizing principle for his graceful reappraisal of a well-known but not often well-understood family. --Wendy Smith.
Price: $8.50
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
George Washington: A National Treasure
George Washington: A National Treasure celebrates our nationÃs permanent acquisition of Gilbert StuartÃs magnificent "Landsdowne" portrait of George Washington. Commissioned for the Marquis of Lansdowne, a British supporter of American independence, the painting shows Washington in the last year of his presidency, 1796. Here is a George Washington for the ages, resolute in the face of the multiple crises of our nationÃs beginnings; grand in the tradition not of a king but of democracyÃs representative; civilian rather than military in his authority; and above all, the embodiment of a nation both stable and free. Today the painting provides a way to think about a time when AmericaÃs success was by no means certain, about a man whose traits of character became bound up with his nationÃs fate, and about the expectation for our nationÃs highest office "the presidency" at the very moment of its creation. Filled with symbols of Washington himself and of the new republic, the painting speaks to Americans today as much as it did in the late eighteenth century. Lavishly illustrated in color with details of the Lansdowne portrait itself, with other portraits of Washington--contemporary and modern--and with portraits of WashingtonÃs colleagues, the book is a treasure in and of itself. Essays reflect on how this remarkable painting explains the nature of Washington and his importance in the national psyche, discuss how Washington came to sit for the Lansdowne painting and the workÃs ownership throuout the years, and consider Gilbert StuartÃs portraits of George Washington, and their many copies. A chronology highlights WashingtonÃs life and times..
Price: $75.62
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Nature-Oriented Activities: A Leader's Guide
Educators will be well equipped to instill environmental awareness and a lifelong love of nature in their students with this comprehensive activity book and teacher's guide. Hundreds of hands-on activities promote ecological conservation, stewardship, and respect without sounding like lengthy lectures. Students will be captivated by fun and educational engagements such as arts and crafts made with natural materials, games that teach compass and map-reading skills, and lessons in outdoor activities like hiking, climbing, and canoeing. Each activity section includes sample activities, carefully selected references, and web sites to help better guide instructors through each activity.
.
Price: $102.58
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|