Ocean State Libraries

A dynamic history of the muckracking press and the first decade of the Progressive era as told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912 when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that cripples the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history....

Presents evidence to suggest that there are two powerful forces at work in human history, "the logic of modern science" and "the struggle for recognition."

From the author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Assassination Vacation" comes an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, deep-rooted idealism, political and cultural relevance, and their myriad oddities. To this day, America views itself as a Puritan nation, but author Vowell investigates what that means--and what it should mean. What was this great political enterprise all about? Who were these people who are considered the...

An essential account of the Trump presidency draws on interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, diaries, and confidential documents to provide details about Trump's moves as he faced a global pandemic, economic disaster, and racial unrest.

"In this brilliant biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush. Drawing on President Bush's personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his...

"A monumental new reflection on American conservatism and the Founders' political tradition. For more than four decades, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily...

Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America's 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life while writing honestly and directly about his flaws and mistakes, as well as his accomplishments.

President Bill Clinton’s My Life is the strikingly candid portrait of a global leader who decided early in life to devote his intellectual and political gifts, and his extraordinary capacity for hard work, to serving the public.

It shows us the progress of a remarkable American, who, through his own enormous energies and efforts, made the unlikely journey from Hope, Arkansas, to the White House—a journey fueled by an impassioned...

"In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian ... Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests...

One hundred years after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson still stands as one of the most influential figures of his century, and one of the most enigmatic. From the scholar-president who ushered the country through its first great world war to the man of intense passion and turbulence, from the idealist determined to make the world "safe for democracy" to the stroke-crippled leader who incapacity was among the century's greatest secrets, this is...