Henry Stimson’s life story parallels America’s rise to international power in the 20th century. Godfrey Hodgson shows how this remarkable statesman helped define and carry out his country’s new responsibilities as America became the most powerful nation on earth. After Yale and Harvard Law School in the 1880s, Stimson helped found a law firm that is still a major force on Wall Street. He served as US Attorney for New York, and ran for governor of the state on the Republican ticket. After World War I and renewed legal work, Stimson rejoined public life as special emissary to Nicaragua for Calvin Coolidge, and then as Governor General of the Philippines. He served as William Howard Taft’s Secretary of War, and as Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State. At age 72, Stimson accepted to become FDR’s Secretary of War, and he organized American victory in World War II and oversaw the birth of American military and political hegemony in the nuclear age. Stimson’s career spanned Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialist expansionism to the world of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. He dealt with the role of corporations and how to control them, civil war in Central America (Stimson negotiated the first truce between Somoza and Sandino in Nicaragua in 1927), the US position in the Philippines, the rise of Japan (which he dealt with before World War I), America’s commitment to helping Europe achieve stability, the terrors of the nuclear age (Stimson chaired the meetings that decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, and shortly before his death, wrote the earliest and most profound reassessment and repudiation of nuclear weaponry). In his many positions, Stimson mentored some of the best and brightest in American public service — Acheson, Lovett, Harriman, Bundy, and Marshall. “Henry L. Stimson was Secretary of War under Taft, Governor-General of the Philippines under Coolidge, Secretary of State under Hoover, and Secretary of War under FDR. The atom bombs were built and dropped under Stimson’s supervision and authority... The public figure as well as the private man are richly delineated in this elegant, learned biography, which offers deep insight into the process by which the U.S. emerged from the periphery of world events to the center of global power.” — Publishers Weekly “After Dean Acheson, in many ways [Stimson’s] spiritual heir, Stimson was the most impressive statesman in the American century. To understand [him] is to understand how the United States was able to establish a Pax Americana over much of the globe. This lucid and penetrating biography of ‘Colonel Stimson’... is written with deft clarity... Hodgson... has shown himself to be one of the keenest observers of American politics.” — James Chace, The New York Times “Hodgson raises troubling questions about Stimson’s understanding of what we now call the third world, discusses Stimson’s racial and ethnic prejudices... and pays particular attention to [his] central role in the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan. What most clearly distinguishes this book... is Hodgson’s continuing interest in the idea of the American establishment and his effort to define its values.” — Alan Brinkley, The New York Review of Books “Hodgson’s first-rate biography of the old statesman and warrior, who died 40 years ago, has a particular relevance to the events gripping the world today. It is as good a guide as any to understanding what George Bush is up to in the Middle East... [Hodgson’s] concluding chapter... is the best essay I have ever read in a genre that could be loosely termed ‘establishment studies.’ [He] writes with a sure hand and lively touch about the private man as well as the public one.” — Evan Thomas, Washington Post “Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Godfrey Hodgson’s biography of Henry L. Stimson breathes life into one of America’s most formidable public figures. In the process, Hodgson provides fresh information and insights into the management of the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.” — Stanley Karnow “A lucid and meticulous account that measures up to its monumental subject and will hasten Henry Stimson’s passage into legend.” — John Newhouse

In September 1939, just three weeks after the outbreak of war, Gladys Mason wrote briefly in her diary about events in Europe: 'Hitler watched German siege of Warsaw. City in flames.' And, she continued, 'Had my wedding dress fitted. Lovely.' For Gladys Mason, and for thousands of women throughout the long years of the war, fashion was not simply a distraction, but a necessity - and one they weren't going to give up easily. In the face of bombings, conscription, rationing and ludicrous bureaucracy, they maintained a sense of elegance and style with determination and often astonishing ingenuity. From the young woman who avoided the dreaded 'forces bloomers' by making knickers from military-issue silk maps, to Vogue's indomitable editor Audrey Withers, who balanced lobbying government on behalf of her readers with driving lorries for the war effort, Julie Summers weaves together stories from ordinary lives and high society to provide a unique picture of life during the Second World War. As a nation went into uniform and women took on traditional male roles, clothing and beauty began to reflect changing social attitudes. For the first time, fashion was influenced not only by Hollywood and high society but by the demands of industrial production and the pressing need to 'make-do-and-mend'. Beautifully illustrated and full of gorgeous detail, Fashion on the Ration lifts the veil on a fascinating era in British fashion.

Almost the only indisputable fact about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was the manager of the greatest performer in popular music: Elvis Presley. His real name wasn’t Tom Parker †“ indeed, he wasn’t an American at all, but a Dutch immigrant called Andreas van Kujik. And he certainly wasn’t a proper military colonel: he purchased his title from a man in Louisiana. But while the Colonel has long been acknowledged as something of a charlatan, this book is the first to reveal the extraordinary extent of the secrets he concealed, and the consequences for the career, and ultimately the life, of the star he managed. As Alanna Nash’ prodigious research has discovered, the Colonel left Holland most probably because, at the age of twenty, he bludgeoned a woman to death. Entering the US illegally, he then enlisted in the army as ‘Tom Parker’. But, with supreme irony for someone later styling himself as Colonel, Parker’s military career ended in desertion, and discharge after a psychiatrist had certified him as a psychopath. He then became a fairground barker, working sideshows with a zeal for small-scale huckstering and the casual scam that never left him. And by the height of Elvis’s success, Parker had become a pathological gambler who, at the same time as he was taking, amazingly, a full 50% of Presley’s earnings, frittered away all his wealth in the casinos of Las Vegas. As Nash shows, therefore, the often baffling trajectory of Elvis Presley’s career makes perfect sense once the secret imperatives of the Colonel’s life are known. Parker never booked Presley for a tour of Europe because of the dark secret that ensured he himself could never return there. Even at his most famous, Elvis was still being booked to play out-of-the-way towns in North Carolina †“ because the former fairground barker (who shamelessly negotiated as such even with top record company and film executives) knew them from his days on the circus circuit. And Elvis was trapped playing years of arduous seasons in Las Vegas †“ two shows nightly, seven days a week, until boredom and despair brought on the excessive drug use that killed him †“ because for Parker he was “an open chit†? whose huge earnings prevented his manager’s losses at the gambling tables being called in. Alanna Nash knew Parker towards the end of his life, and has now uncovered the whole story, improbable, shocking, and never less than compelling, of how this larger-than-life man made, and then unmade, popular music’s first and greatest superstar.

Autographed photograph America Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 - October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican Party politician and spokesman on foreign policy. He twice served as Secretary of War 1911-1913 under Republican William Howard Taft and 1940-1945, under Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the latter role he was a leading hawk calling for war against Germany. During World War II he took charge of raising and training 13 million soldiers and airmen, supervised the spending of a third of the nation's GDP on the Army and the Air Forces, helped formulate military strategy, and took personal control of building and using the atomic bomb. He served as Governor-General of the Philippines. As Secretary of State (1929-1933) under Republican President Herbert Hoover he articulated the Stimson Doctrine which announced American opposition to Japanese expansion in Asia.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “Colonel Roosevelt is compelling reading, and [Edmund] Morris is a brilliant biographer who practices his art at the highest level. . . . A moving, beautifully rendered account.”—Fred Kaplan, The Washington Post This biography by Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, marks the completion of a trilogy sure to stand as definitive. Of all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. What other president has written forty books, hunted lions, founded a third political party, survived an assassin’s bullet, and explored an unknown river longer than the Rhine? Packed with more adventure, variety, drama, humor, and tragedy than a big novel, yet documented down to the smallest fact, this masterwork recounts the last decade of perhaps the most amazing life in American history. “Hair-raising . . . awe-inspiring . . . a worthy close to a trilogy sure to be regarded as one of the best studies not just of any president, but of any American.”—San Francisco Chronicle