Axelbank Reports History and Today

From the publisher: 

"The first full biography of the controversial and complex First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler—an unjustly scandalized New Yorker, the second wife to President John Tyler, and a savvy and consequential political figure in the age of the Civil War.

Myths, rumors, and gossip have long circulated around First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler. Commonly believed to be politically insignificant, most of our fascination with Tyler surrounds her reputation as a highly desired superficial flirt. This salacious mythos was based on her status in a politically influential New York family and the popular rumor that she posed for a sexually suggestive advertisement for a dry goods store in Manhattan.

Now, in the first full biography of Julia Tyler, Christopher J. Leahy and Sharon Williams Leahy correct such longstanding misconceptions about President John Tyler’s second wife and establish her reputation as an influential political force. Presidentess shows a presidential spouse who was more consequential than people realize and made a lasting contribution to the evolving role of first lady.

Leahy and Leahy present a compelling portrait of a determined woman who came to embrace her new Southern identity after marrying John Tyler, serving as a faithful defender of his views and values—including his decision to renounce the Union and join the Confederate government. In the aftermath of the Civil War, she orchestrated a public relations campaign to restore and protect her legacy as well as that of her late husband, the “traitor president.” In her later years, she successfully lobbied Congress for a pension and reclaimed her status as a former first lady.

Presidentess casts a new light on Julia Gardiner Tyler’s life and legacy, including new revelations about the scandalous “Rose of Long Island” advertisement, an exploration of the dark side of New York City’s print culture, and Tyler’s essential role as an unwitting character in the presidential election of 1844. Presidentess gives a fully developed portrait of Julia Tyler, illuminating this controversial first lady and this pivotal turning point in American history."

Information on their book can be found at: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700642670/

Their website can be found at https://www.historyintwovoices.com/

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From the publisher: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the little-known story of the pioneering Black women artists and activists who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington.

“Chatelain lets us see the complexities of these women’s lives, feel their pain, and marvel at their ability to cut through the thicket of racism and sexism.”—Carol Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage

“Chatelain brilliantly reframes one of the most enduring images in American memory through the women erased from its frame.”—Alexis Coe, New York Timesbestselling author of You Never Forget Your First

There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.”

In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these singular women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker; civil rights activist Rosa Parks gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program, and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work.

How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before.

Information on the book can be found at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721032/how-bright-the-path-grows-by-marcia-chatelain/

Her website is https://www.marciachatelain.com/

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From the publisher: 

"The gripping, definitive history of the Hindenburg disaster, the rise of the Nazis, and the road to World War II as never before told.

On the evening of May 6, 1937, the majestic German Zeppelin Hindenburg arrived before cheering crowds in Lakehurst, New Jersey, when suddenly, a titanic inferno lit up the sky. Thirty-four seconds later, the greatest aircraft ever to take flight was gone, destroyed in a ferocious blaze and seared into historical memory forever. 

The Hindenburg disaster is one of the 20th Century’s most iconic yet elusive events—a moment everyone knows but few can place. Acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz unites ground-breaking research with thrilling narrative that situates this famous disaster squarely on the collision course between the decade’s two prevailing currents. The Hindenburg began as a symbol of hope and progress, a gleaming technological marvel in the nascent age of aviation. But soon the airship of dreams became a propaganda tool powering the rising Nazi regime. In this sweeping drama, Katz illustrates the story of the Hindenburg through the captivating passengers and crew caught up in the grip of fate: an adventurous heiress, a renowned Vaudeville star, a Chicago industrialist with German-Jewish roots, an esteemed Zeppelin captain, and a young cabin boy on his first voyage to America. Meanwhile, on the ground, two intrepid journalists’ reporting on the Hindenburg fundamentally changed breaking news, paving the way for modern media as we know it.

In this rigorously researched, ticking-clock narrative, Shadow Before the Flame offers a portrait of an era—when illusions of peace fueled by the hubris of invention hovered in suspended time—as the clouds of an inevitable war loomed on the horizon. Above all, it is a story of humanity and of lives forever changed by a moment that served as a harbinger for the global conflagration yet to come. "

Her website is at: https://www.catherinegracekatz.com/shadow-before-the-flame

Information on her book can be found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/753113/shadow-before-the-flame-by-catherine-grace-katz/

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From the publisher:

"2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Within days, the United States began to declare its war on terror: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” President George W. Bush proclaimed. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, a series of misguided wars, and the damaged perception of American power. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from large-scale foreign attack.

Based on hundreds of interviews, All the Presidents’ Wars focuses on critical decisions of four successive presidents―Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump―and their global consequences. One of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden and have unparalleled access to the US intelligence community, Peter Bergen covers the history that might have been avoided: the many terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups around the world; the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, largely responsible for the Iraqi civil war in the mid-2000s; the birth of ISIS; the resurrection of Afghanistan’s Taliban; and Trump’s war with Iran. From the failure to capture and the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden to the disastrous rise of sectarian violence in the Middle East, Bergen traces the profound ramifications of this epoch in American life.

All the Presidents’ Wars also explores the innovations and unintended consequences of each presidency’s military and political decisions, including debates over military intervention and withdrawal; the tactics of special operations units, armed drones, and armies of counterterrorism partners; and whether the idea of war ever properly captured the defining conflict of recent American foreign policy. All the Presidents’ Wars is essential reading to understand America’s devastating war on terror and to avoid the mistakes of the past."

Peter Bergen's website can be found at https://www.peterbergen.com/

Information on his book can be found at https://wwnorton.com/books/all-the-presidents-wars

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From the publisher: 

"When world-renowned scholar Thomas S. Mullaney “lost” both his parents, he began thinking of how information—all the stuff that makes us, that we make, and that we leave behind—ultimately disappears. The information that makes up our lives, from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and sentimental artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes, both defines us, and inevitably decays, no matter the medium. Everything that we put “in formation” eventually collapses into randomness. Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent’s death. Yet from all these elusive, even evanescent, data points, history is written and a future is made.

How We Disappear is a wide-ranging examination of the micro and macro, toggling between storytelling from Mullaney’s own life and his reflection on the science of entropy and the nature and history of information. Lyrical and poignant, the book offers inspiring and eye-opening insight on the miracle of existence, and on what it means to forge meaning from a chaotic universe."

Thomas Mullaney's website can be found at https://www.tsmullaney.com/

He is on social media at https://x.com/tsmullaney

Information on his book can be found at https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324020783

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From the publisher:

"In the nineteenth century, Manhattan’s streets were so choked with pedestrians, horses, vehicles, and vendors that a trip from City Hall to Central Park could take hours. Alfred Beach had the perfect solution: build a giant pneumatic tube underneath Broadway from the Battery to Harlem. Air pressure would shoot passengers up and down the island in clean, quiet carriages. But Beach was up against the operators of the horse-drawn streetcars and the politicians in their pay, most conspicuously William M. Tweed, the notorious “Boss” of Tammany Hall.

New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit tells a classic story of good versus evil, pitting the mild-mannered Beach, a visionary inventor and entrepreneur, against the oafish tyrant Tweed, the exemplar of corruption in the Gilded Age. It also tells the story of one of the most astonishing feats of engineering in American history, the surreptitious creation of the nation’s first operational subway.

New York seemed destined to become the second city in the world with a comprehensive subway system, after London. Unfortunately, political lethargy and greed would conspire to deny the city a subway for another thirty years.
Yet Alfred Beach still proved conclusively the feasibility of underground railways in Manhattan, and paved the way for modern mass transportation systems."

Matthew Algeo's website is https://www.malgeo.net/

Information on his book can be found at https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781642833652/new-yorks-secret-subway

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From the publisher: 

"For nearly a century, two families an ocean apart have captured the world’s collective imagination: the British Windsors and the American Kennedys. Much ink has been spilled on their individual trysts, tragedies, and triumphs over the years, but no one has examined their powerful and intertwined legacies. Until now.

In The Kennedys and the Windsors, acclaimed journalist Caroline Hallemann unearths the story of two iconic families whose lives, ambitions, and respective reigns have mirrored each other in surprising ways. Through rich archival research and fresh interviews from insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, Hallemann reveals how an upstart Irish Catholic family with little access into elite New England society came to host dinner parties for a King and Queen, and forge an eventual path to the White House. In the process, she draws out some startling parallels between the two families: the style icons Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (both tragically gone too soon), the frustrated “second sisters” Princess Margaret and Lee Radziwill, the scandal-plagued next generation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, and the current generation’s shared struggle to figure out what a monarchy (actual or imagined) means in the twenty-first century.

From Queen Elizabeth’s coronation to President Kennedy’s historic London visit, from JFK Jr.’s shocking death to Prince Harry’s decisive break with his family, Hallemann traces the key moments in the lives of these two dynasties through a fresh and fascinating lens, showing how they have intersected over the generations in ways that not only shaped their images and legacies, but history itself."

Caroline Hallemann's website can be found at: https://carolinehallemann.com/

Information on her book can be found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743272/the-kennedys-and-the-windsors-by-caroline-hallemann/

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From the publisher:

The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden presents a first draft of history by providing insights into how this one-term president fits within the broader historical forces shaping the United States in the twenty-first century. Acclaimed political historian Julian Zelizer brings together some of today’s leading scholars to give balanced and strikingly original assessments of the major issues of the Biden years, from education and reproductive rights to the economy, labor relations, climate policy, race, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the culture wars.

These incisive essays trace the full arc of Joe Biden’s presidency from its early successes to the setbacks that ultimately consumed it. His domestic legislative achievements were hailed by some as the most momentous of any American presidency since the Great Society while his foreign policy ably met the challenges posed by the nation’s great power rivals. Yet by late 2024, Biden’s legacy was in tatters, overshadowed by immigration, inflation, the war in Gaza, and the president’s obvious physical decline.

Written in a clear and accessible manner, The Presidency of Joseph R. Bidenmoves beyond the day-by-day journalistic coverage to provide the first comprehensive scholarly account of the Biden administration’s achievements and eventual downfall.

With contributions by Kathryn Cramer Brownell, María Cristina García, Joel K. Goldstein, Michael Kazin, Daniel C. Kurtzer, Joyce Mao, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Timothy Naftali, Ekaterina Pravilova, Noah Rosenblum, Paul Sabin, Timothy Stewart-Winter, Sean H. Vanatta, John Witt, and Mary Ziegler.

Information on Julian Zelizer's book can be found at https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691274782/the-presidency-of-joseph-r-biden?srsltid=AfmBOoqBud63FustBZYB3F6rXOApm3hX5VZKNkTD9fuyxY3Nofdy7uf0

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From the publisher: "What did America's founders say about democracy-and can we remain true to their vision for America?

Two hundred fifty years ago, passionate men attempted to create something the world had never seen before: a nation built not on kings or armies, but on ideas where the people ruled.

In The Democracy We Must Keep, historian David O. Stewart takes readers inside the nine key documents that shaped the formation of the United States-from Patrick Henry's thunderous cry for liberty to the carefully crafted design of a government chosen by the people, with limits on all officials holding power under the Constitution."

David O'Stewart's website can be found at https://davidostewart.com/

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From the publisher: 

"An in-depth exploration of history of the US Capitol building and the incredible personalities who built it, full of dramatic stories and surprising facts; a powerful testament to what the Capitol has meant to generations of Americans and how it has endured.

The Capitol is a unique biography of a place, encompassing architecture, history, politics, popular culture, and race in a fascinating exploration of our Capitol’s secret past, one rife with political intrigue, assassination attempts, thwarted bombings, and gunmen on the run. Never mind ghostly cat prints, mysteriously bloodstained steps, and charming “fairy doors” that have delighted visitors for hundreds of years. 

Spanning three centuries of American history, the book focuses on iconic and notable names and personalities from the past—from George Washington to Davy Crockett to Ronald Reagan—as well as countless colorful characters readers may not have heard of before, with a focus on restoring the narratives of enslaved people and recognizing their contributions. 

The story of the Capitol is the story of America itself, and, for the first time, that story will be told in this sweeping, aspirational biography of the building at the very heart of the American experiment."

Brian's website can be found at: https://brianjayjones.com/

Information on his book can be found at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672053/the-capitol-by-brian-jay-jones/

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