The Statesman as Thinker addresses the role of the thoughtful statesman in sustaining free and lawful political communities. It aims to restore fundamental distinctions--between the noble statesman, the run-of-the mill politician, and the despot who subverts freedom and civilization--that have largely been lost in contemporary political thought and discourse. Reducing politics to the mere "struggle for power," to a barely concealed cynicism and nihilism, tells us little about the true nature of political life. This book provides thoughtful and elegant portraits of, and reflections on, a series of statesmen who struggled to preserve civilized freedom during times of crisis: Solon overcoming insidious class conflict in ancient Athens; Cicero using all the powers of rhetoric and statesmanship to preserve republican liberty in Rome against Caesar's encroaching despotism; Burke defending ordered liberty against Jacobin tyranny and ideological fanaticism in revolutionary France; Lincoln preserving the American republic and putting an end to the evil of chattel slavery; Churchill eloquently defending liberty and law and opposing Nazi and Communist despotism with all his might; de Gaulle defending the honor of France during World War II; Havel fighting Communist totalitarianism through artful and courageous dissidence before 1989, and then leading the Czech Republic with dignity and grace until his retirement in 2005. There are also collateral treatments of Washington, Pyotr Stolypin (the last great leader of Russia before the revolutions of 1917), Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Nelson Mandela. This book explores the writing and rhetoric of statesman who were also political thinkers of the first order--particularly Cicero, Burke, Lincoln, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Havel. It attempts to make sense of the mixture of magnanimity (greatness of soul, as Aristotle called it) and moderation or self-restraint that defines the statesman as thinker at his or her best. That admirable mixture of greatness, courage, and moderation owes much to classical and Christian wisdom and to the noble desire to protect the inheritance of civilization against rapacious and destructive despotic regimes and ideologies.

From a hardscrabble childhood in the Great Depression on the dusty plains of rural Nebraska, Clayton Yeutter (1930-2017) rose to work for four U.S. presidents, serving in the cabinets of two of them. His challenge, posed by one of President Ronald Reagan's aides, was this: go and change the world. As U.S. trade representative he did just that, opening the global trading arena with bold efforts that led to NAFTA, the creation of the World Trade Organization, and extraordinary growth in cross-border business. Today's global trading regime began with Yeutter. A distinguished lawyer with a doctorate in economics, Yeutter also had deep business experience leading the giant futures trading organization the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, now called the CME Group. But he never forgot his family's farm roots, and those roots led him to another top job as President George H. W. Bush's secretary of agriculture. Yeutter's intellectual firepower, paired with an engaging personality and a midwesterner's beaming smile, made friends and found common ground with leaders and trade officials worldwide. Although a loyal GOP leader who served as counselor to a president and head of the Republican National Committee, Yeutter was a moderate who had admirers on both sides of the aisle. This is his life story.

In a dual biography covering the last ten years of the lives of friends and contemporaries, writer Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and statesman John Hay (who served as secretary of state under presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt), The Statesman and the Storyteller not only provides an intimate look into the daily lives of these men but also creates an elucidating portrait of the United States on the verge of emerging as a world power. And just as the narrative details the wisdom, and the occasional missteps, of two great men during a tumultuous time, it also penetrates the seat of power in Washington as the nation strove to make itself known internationally--and in the process committed acts antithetical to America’s professed ideals and promises. The country’s most significant move in this time was to go to war with Spain and to eventually wrest control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. In what has to be viewed as one of the most shameful periods in American political history, Filipinos who believed they had been promised independence were instead told they were incapable of self-government and then violently subdued in a war that featured torture and execution of native soldiers and civilians. The United States also used its growing military and political might to grab the entirety of the Hawaiian Islands and a large section of Panama. As secretary of state during this time, Hay, though a charitable man, was nonetheless complicit in these misdeeds. Clemens, a staunch critic of his country’s imperialistic actions, was forced by his own financial and family needs to temper his remarks. Nearing the end of their long and remarkable lives, both men found themselves struggling to maintain their personal integrity while remaining celebrated and esteemed public figures. Written with a keen eye--Mark Zwonitzer is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker--and informed by the author’s deep understanding of the patterns of history, The Statesman and the Storyteller has the compelling pace of a novel, the epic sweep of historical writing at its best, and, in capturing the essence of the lives of Hay and Twain, the humanity and nuance of masterful biography.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2017 From the great historian of the American Revolution, New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond. But late in life, something remarkable happened: these two men were nudged into reconciliation. What started as a grudging trickle of correspondence became a great flood, and a friendship was rekindled, over the course of hundreds of letters. In their final years they were the last surviving founding fathers and cherished their role in this mighty young republic as it approached the half century mark in 1826. At last, on the afternoon of July 4th, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration, Adams let out a sigh and said, At least Jefferson still lives. He died soon thereafter. In fact, a few hours earlier on that same day, far to the south in his home in Monticello, Jefferson died as well. Arguably no relationship in this country's history carries as much freight as that of John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Gordon Wood has more than done justice to these entwined lives and their meaning; he has written a magnificent new addition to America's collective story.

'Entertaining, affectionate and righteous' Guardian 'Says so much about being a woman' Cosey Fanni Tutti In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs. Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. She asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

Liberty Fund's new six-volume The Collected Works of Frederic Bastiat series, of which "The Man and the Statesman "is the first volume, may be considered the most complete edition of Bastiat's works published to date, in any country, and in any language. The main source for this translation is the seven-volume "Oeuvres completes de Frederic Bastiat," published in the 1850s and 1860s. The present volume, most of which has never before been translated into English, includes Bastiat's complete correspondence: 207 letters Bastiat wrote between 1819, when he was only 18 years old, until just a few days before his untimely death in 1850 at the age of 49. For contemporary classical liberals, Bastiat's correspondence will provide a unique window into a long-forgotten world where opposition to war and colonialism went hand-in-hand with support for free trade and deregulation. Bastiat's numerous letters to Richard Cobden, a Member of Parliament and best known today as the leader of the British Anti-Corn Law League, chronicle the profound effect the Anti-Corn League had on Bastiat. The League's success in mobilizing a popular movement in England to pressure the British government into abolishing the very protectionist "corn laws," in 1846, inspired Bastiat to emulate the League's success in France by starting his own free-trade movement. "The Man and the Statesman "also includes articles and other writings on politics and current events that showcase Bastiat's talent as a theoretician, a pamphleteer, a journalist, and a deputy (Member of Parliament) of the nascent French Second Republic. Together with the correspondence, the writings in this volume fill an important gap in our understanding of the lesser-known Bastiat, who, in just a few short years, made a profound impact on French intellectual and political life in Paris. Forthcoming titles in The Collected Works of Frederic Bastiat series include: ""The Law," "The State," and Other Political Writings, 1843-1850 Economic Sophisms and "What is Seen and What is Not Seen" Miscellaneous Works on Economics: From "Jacques-Bonhomme" to Le Journal des ""economistes Economic Harmonies The Struggle Against Protectionism: The English and French Free-Trade Movements " Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was born in the French port city of Bayonne and became one of the leading advocates of free markets and free trade in the mid-nineteenth century. A theorist of classical liberal political economy and an elected member of various French political bodies, he opposed both protectionism and the rise of socialist ideas. Jacques de Guenin is president of the Cercle Frederic Bastiat. He is a graduate of the ecole des Mines in Paris and holds a Master of Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. Jean-Claude Paul-Dejean is a historian from the University of Bordeaux and a Bastiat scholar. Dennis O'Keeffe is Professor of Social Science at the University of Buckingham, Buckingham, England, and is Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs, London. David M. Hart received a Ph.D. in history from King's College, Cambridge, and is the Director of Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty Project.