The 2016 Election, which altered American political history, was not decided by the Russians or in Ukraine or by Steve Bannon. The event that broke Hillary's blue wall in the Midwest and swung Florida and North Carolina was an October Surprise, and it was wholly a product of the leadership of the FBI. This is the inside story by the reporter closest to its center. In September 2016, Hillary Clinton was the presumptive next president of the US. She had a blue wall of states leaning her way in the Midwest, and was ahead in North Carolina and Florida, with a better than even shot at taking normally Republican Arizona. The US was about to get its first woman president. Yet within two months everything was lost. An already tightening race saw one seismic correction: it came in October when the FBI launched an investigation into the Clinton staff's use of a private server for their emails. Clinton fell 3-4 percent in the polls instantly, and her campaign never had time to rebut the investigation or rebuild her momentum so close to election day. The FBI cost her the race. October Surprise is a pulsating narrative of an agency seized with righteous certainty that waded into the most important political moment in the life of the nation, and has no idea how to back out with dignity. So it doggedly stands its ground, compounding its error. In a momentous display of self-preservation, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and key Justice Department officials decide to protect their own reputations rather than save the democratic process. Once they make that determination, the race is lost for Clinton, who is helpless in front of their accusation even though she has not intended to commit, let alone actually committed, any crime. A dark true-life thriller with historic consequences set at the most crucial moment in the electoral calendar, October Surprise is a warning, a morality tale and a political and personal tragedy.

The explosive book that sparked a congressional investigation is now in paperback and updated with new testimony from key participants. Naval veteran Gary Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-81 and is the author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran. Photographs.

It is the most controversial mystery of the Reagan-Bush era: Did the Republican Party, desperate in 1980 to reclaim the White House, interfere with President Carter's frantic efforts to free the 52 American hostages held in Tehran and thwart an "October Surprise"? Was there a Republican-Iranian deal that bordered on treason? Or was this stunning allegation a bizarre trick played by a loose-knit band of arms brokers and intelligence operatives? For much of the 1980s, suspicions of Republican wrongdoing bubbled beneath the surface, only bursting into public view after the Iran-contra scandal exposed the secret policies and subterranean levels of Reagan-Bush operations. Almost ten years after the events, the Public Broadcasting System's Frontline documentary program asked award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry to examine the accusations. Parry had been the first reporter to expose Oliver North's Iran-contra operations and had broken many of that scandal's chief stories. Over the next two and a half years, Parry pursued leads in a world-wide odyssey for an elusive - and sometimes dangerous - truth. From Washington to Tehran, from Paris to Jerusalem, from London to Tunis, it was a journey into a wilderness of mirrors where few could be trusted and nothing was as it seemed. The investigation was hampered, too, by a relentless assault from the White House and its powerful allies, who feared the story could destroy the legitimacy of 12 years of Republican rule. In the end, Parry the pursuer became Parry the pursued. But beyond the political mystery, this book lays bare an era during which deception evolved into a high art form and the nation's traditional constitutional safeguardswere no match for the lies. And finally, it is up to you to judge: Was the October Surprise story a trick played on the media and the American public? Or was it treason committed at the highest levels of the U.S. political system, a historic perversion of American democracy?

"[A] masterly and often riveting account of King’s ordeal and the 1960 'October Surprise' that may have altered the course of modern American political history." —Raymond Arsenault, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) The authors of Douglass and Lincoln present fully for the first time the story of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s imprisonment in the days leading up to the 1960 presidential election and the efforts of three of John F. Kennedy’s civil rights staffers who went rogue to free him—a move that changed the face of the Democratic Party and propelled Kennedy to the White House. Less than three weeks before the 1960 presidential election, thirty-one-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a sit-in at Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. That day would lead to the first night King had ever spent in jail—and the time that King’s family most feared for his life. An earlier, minor traffic ticket served as a pretext for keeping King locked up, and later for a harrowing nighttime transfer to Reidsville, the notorious Georgia state prison where Black inmates worked on chain gangs overseen by violent white guards. While King’s imprisonment was decried as a moral scandal in some quarters and celebrated in others, for the two presidential candidates—John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon—it was the ultimate October surprise: an emerging and controversial civil rights leader was languishing behind bars, and the two campaigns raced to decide whether, and how, to respond. Stephen and Paul Kendrick’s Nine Days tells the incredible story of what happened next. In 1960, the Civil Rights Movement was growing increasingly inventive and energized while white politicians favored the corrosive tactics of silence and stalling—but an audacious team in the Kennedy campaign’s Civil Rights Section (CRS) decided to act. In an election when Black voters seemed poised to split their votes between the candidates, the CRS convinced Kennedy to agitate for King’s release, sometimes even going behind his back in their quest to secure his freedom. Over the course of nine extraordinary October days, the leaders of the CRS—pioneering Black journalist Louis Martin, future Pennsylvania senator Harris Wofford, and Sargent Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps—worked to tilt a tight election in Kennedy’s favor and bring about a revolution in party affiliation whose consequences are still integral to the practice of politics today. Based on fresh interviews, newspaper accounts, and extensive archival research, Nine Days is the first full recounting of an event that changed the course of one of the closest elections in American history. Much more than a political thriller, it is also the story of the first time King refused bail and came to terms with the dangerous course of his mission to change a nation. At once a story of electoral machinations, moral courage, and, ultimately, the triumph of a future president’s better angels, Nine Days is a gripping tale with important lessons for our own time.

A laugh-out-loud story of trying to make new friends and appreciating the ones you have from debut author-illustrator Caroline Hadilaksono Bear, Squirrel, and Raccoon have been friends a long time. A loooooooong time. So when a family of city folks comes to the neighborhood, the friends think that a surprise welcome party is just the kind of fun they've been looking for. Well, the party turns out to be quite the surprise indeed, but maybe not exactly what Bear, Squirrel, and Raccoon were imagining? Laugh-out-loud fun for friends and families of all species

In this provocative book, a distinguished Cold War historian argues that September 11, 2001, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy.

An updated and illustrated compendium of mudslinging, character assassinations, and below-board election strategies from U.S. presidential politics throughout history! Discover the “dirty tricks of the covert and the sleazy” in this giftable volume for American history buffs (New York Times Magazine). Covering 225-plus years of smear campaigns, slanderous candidates, and bad behavior in American elections, this comprehensive history is the authoritative tour of political shade-throwing from George Washington to Barack Obama. You might think today’s politicians play rough—but history reveals that dirty tricks are as American as apple pie. Let the name-calling begin! • 1836: Congressman Davy Crockett accuses candidate Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women’s clothing: “He is laced up in corsets!” • 1864: Candidate George McClellan describes his opponent, Abraham Lincoln, as “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon!” • 1960: Former president Harry Truman advises voters that “if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell!” Full of sleazy and shameless anecdotes from every presidential election in United States history, Anything for a Vote is a valuable reminder that history does repeat itself, lessons can be learned from the past (but usually aren’t), and our most famous presidents are not above reproach when it comes to the dirtiest game of all—political campaigning.