Examines presidential power within the context of U.S. history and the ongoing relationships presidents and ex-presidents formed with one another.

" Lincoln, in theaters November 9, portrays America's 16th president when he faced two colossal challenges: winning the Civil War, and passing the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery and making permanent the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation. The politics of wartime, which required unity at all costs, conflicted with divisiveness of slavery. The president had to be at once true to his ideals and employ old-fashioned political cunning to outwit his rivals. This companion book, featuring a foreword by screenwriter Tony Kushner, invites historians and Lincoln experts to imagine Lincoln in eras other than his own, facing challenges of those times. How would Lincoln have handled the Second World War, or the politics of Civil Rights era, or the modern Republican Party? Using the character of Lincoln presented in the film - a man of high principle and low cunning - the book shows how Lincoln, a president for the ages, might indeed have taken America forward during other historic moments of drama and opportunity. "-- "This companion book to the major motion picture from Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, has leading historians answering the question: What Would Lincoln Do? Lincoln portrays America's 16th president when he faced two colossal challenges: winning the Civil War, and passing the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery and making permanent the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation. The politics of wartime, which required unity at all costs, conflicted with divisiveness of slavery. The president had to be at once true to his ideals and employ old-fashioned political cunning to outwit his rivals"--

"A unique and revealing portrait of Saddam Hussein's Iraq which was every bit as authoritarian and brutal as Stalin's Russia or Mao's China"-- "The Ba'th Party came to power in 1968 and remained for thirty-five years, until the 2003 U.S. invasion. Under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, who became president of Iraq in 1979, a powerful authoritarian regime was created based on a system of violence and an extraordinary surveillance network, as well as reward schemes and incentives for supporters of the party. The true horrors of this regime have been exposed for the first time through a massive archive of government documents captured by the United States after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is these documents that form the basis of this extraordinarily revealing book and that have been translated and analyzed by Joseph Sassoon, an Iraqi-born scholar and seasoned commentator on the Middle East. They uncover the secrets of the innermost workings of Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council, how the party was structured, how it operated via its network of informers, and how the system of rewards functioned. Saddam Hussein's authority was dominant. His decision was final, whether arbitrating the promotion of a junior official or the death of a rival or a member of his family. As this gripping portrayal of Saddam Hussein's Iraq demonstrates, the regime was every bit as authoritarian and brutal as Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China and some of the regimes in the Arab world who are witnessing upheavals, are not not dissimilar from the Ba'th regime"--