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eBook HighlightsFebruary 2018
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Celebrate Presidents Day With Some Crazy Stories About Our Presidents!
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Party Like a President : True Tales of Inebriation, Lechery, and Mischief from the Oval Office
by Brian Abrams
There's the office: President of the United States. And then there's the man in the office--prone to temptation and looking to unwind after a long day running the country. Celebrating the decidedly less distinguished side of the nation's leaders, humor writer Brian Abrams offers a compelling, hilarious, and true American history on the rocks--a Washington-to-Obama, vice-by-vice chronicle of how the presidents like to party. From explicit love letters to slurred speeches to nude swims at Bing Crosby's house, reputations are ruined and secrets bared. George Washington brokered the end of the American Revolution over glasses of Madeira. Ulysses S. Grant rarely drew a sober breath when he was leading the North to victory. And it wasn't all liquor. Some presidents preferred their drugs--Nixon was a pill-popper. And others chased women instead--both the professorial Woodrow Wilson (who signed his love letters Tiger ) and the good ol' boy Bill Clinton, though neither could hold a candle to Kennedy, who also received the infamous Dr. Feelgood's vitamin injections of pure amphetamine. Illustrated throughout with infographics (James Garfield's attempts at circumnavigating the temperance movement), comic strips (George Bush Sr.'s infamous televised vomiting incident), caricatures, and fake archival documents, the book has the smart, funny feel of Mad magazine meets The Colbert Report. Plus, it includes recipes for 44 cocktails inspired by each chapter's partier-in-chief
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The politically incorrect guide to the presidents : From Washington to Taft
by Larry Schweikart
What makes a president great? Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders—the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts—who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government—and shrank our liberties. As the twentieth-century presidency has grown far beyond the bounds the Founders established for the office, the idea that our chief executive is obliged to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” has become a distant memory. Historian and celebrated Reagan biographer Steven F. Hayward reminds us that the Founders had an entirely different idea of greatness in the presidential office. The personal ambitions, populist appeals, and bribes paid to the voters with their own money that most modern presidents engage in would strike them as instances of the demagoguery they most feared—one of the great dangers to the people’s liberty that they wrote the Constitution explicitly to guard against. The Founders, in contrast to today’s historians, expected great presidents to be champions of the limited government established by the Constitution. Working from that almost forgotten standard of presidential greatness, Steven Hayward offers a fascinating off-the-beaten-track tour through the modern presidency, from the Progressive Era’s Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. Along the way he serves up fresh historical insights, recalls forgotten anecdotes, celebrates undervalued presidents who took important stands in defense of the Constitution, and points the way to a revival of truly constitutional government in America.
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Sex Lives of the Presidents : From Washington to Clinton
by Nigel Cawthorne
It didn't start with Clinton, or even Kennedy. Ever since the Father of our Country was sworn in over 200 years ago, the White House has seen its share of oversexed, adulterous, philandering presidents. From Washington's countless bed partners to Jefferson's illegitimate children, Kennedy's notorious womanizing to Clinton's unstoppable libido, find out the surprising and sometimes bizarre sexual practices of all the men in the Oval Office.
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Insane clown president : dispatches from the 2016 circus
by Matt Taibbi
"Matt Taibbi's first piece on the 2016 presidential election, published in August 2015, opens with these words: "The thing is, when you actually think about it, it's not funny. Given what's at stake, it's more like the opposite, like the first sign of the collapse of the United States as a global superpower. Twenty years from now, when we're all living like prehistory hominids and hunting rats with sticks, we'll probably look back at this moment as the beginning of the end." In twenty-four pieces from Rolling Stone--plus two original essays--Taibbi tells the full story the campaign, from its tragi-comic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion, through sharp, on-the-ground reporting, incisive analysis, and gallows humor. This isn't simply a blow-by-blow recounting of this uniquely bizarre and disturbing election season, but the wider story of the seeming collapse of American democracy. Unlike many campaign chroniclers, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story from beginning: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality between warring sides of the political spectrum; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society. The pieces cover the "clown car" of the Republican primary season, the thwarted Bernie insurgency, the deeply flawed and aimless Clinton campaign, the often pathetic media coverage, the legacy of the Obama administration, and the lives of actual voters across the country forced to bear witness to the whole dispiriting spectacle"
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9 presidents who screwed up America : and four who tried to save her
by Brion T McClanahan
Of the forty-four presidents who have led the United States, nine made mistakes that permanently scarred the nation. Which nine? Brion McClanahan, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers and The Founding Fathers' Guide to the Constitution, will surprise readers with his list, which he supports with exhaustive and entertaining evidence. 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America is a new look back at American history that unabashedly places blame for our nation's current problems on the backs of nine very flawed men.
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Gail Borden Public Library District
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Main Library - 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin, IL 60120 - 847-742-2411
Rakow Branch - 2751 W. Bowes Rd., Elgin, IL 60124 - 847-531-7271
South Elgin Branch - 127 S. McLean Blvd., South Elgin, IL 60177 - 847-931-2090
http://www.gailborden.info/
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If a title in this list is not available in the format you prefer, please request it online.
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