Free Republic

"I think Obama's in a league with TR," observes historian and presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He created his political reputation through the written word." To be sure, no one has ever accused Sarah Palin, a defeated vice presidential candidate, of creating her reputation thusly. One has to wonder, then, why her book, Going Rogue, would merit a fact-check by no fewer than eleven Associated Press reporters when neither the AP nor any other mainstream outlet has spent a moment vetting the books of the "author in chief," as President Barack Obama was anointed in a November GQ article, "Barack Obama's...

Rehnquist’s Portrait Allie Winegar Duzett, November 12, 2009 William Rehnquist was by all accounts a fascinating man. His work in the judiciary was unparalleled: he served on the Supreme Court as a justice for over three decades, and led the court as Chief Justice for nineteen years. He was a justice voting on the controversial Roe v. Wade case (Rehnquist wrote the dissent), the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, and for the dispute over 2000 presidential election. As a justice for the Supreme Court, Rehnquist lived his life under public scrutiny—but only a very few got to know the man...

Launching An American Knight in Washington Written by John Horvat    Thursday, October 29, 2009 On October 27, the TFP Washington Bureau was filled with friends and supporters to hear a presentation on the book, An American Knight The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC just authored by TFP member Norman Fulkerson. The author presented the book to a full and lively auditorium of some 50 people and later personally signed copies. As a special guest, Duke Paul of Oldenburg from the German TFP, gave the opening remarks commenting on the meaning of chivalry today. Also attending was...

Norman Fulkerson, who has been voicing his conservative opinions on the Messenger-Inquirer editorial page for 11 years, has written a book about another conservative, Col. John W. Ripley USMC.... There was much to admire about Ripley, Fulkerson said, during a recent phone interview. Ripley's military career has been documented in other writings, Fulkerson said, but what he was most interested in was telling the other side of the war hero who in 1972 during the Easter Offensive in Dong Ha, Vietnam, blew up a bridge that "virtually halted the largest North Vietnamese offensive of the entire war." "An American Knight,...

As retailers count their robust preorders for Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” a small publisher out West says his decision to issue “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down” by Kaylene Johnson, was one of his best. The book, an unauthorized look at Palin’s life that begins with her early years in Alaska and ends with her winning the governorship, was published originally in May 2008, by Epicenter Press, based in Kenmore, Wash. Kent Sturgis, president, says that the biography sold 13,000 hardcovers and 80,000 paperback copies. Demand was so great that...

THERE are many graceful touches in Mao's Last Dancer, Bruce Beresford's stirring, uplifting adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Li Cunxin, the Chinese ballet star who defected to the West in 1981 while on a fellowship with the Houston Ballet. Snip There's little grace, though, in Beresford's highly efficient if workman-like direction. With so much ground to cover and so many characters to keep track of, Beresford diligently churns through Cunxin's story in a frill-free, matter-of-fact manner. This certainly gives the film great drive, if little rhythm or any real sense of style.

In a soon-to-be-released book based on taped interviews, Bill Clinton discusses his presidency, while dishing on Al Gore, Maureen Dowd, and GOPersOn Monday, USA Today ran a front-page article on the soon-to-be-released book chronicling a series of secret interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch held with President Bill Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency. The piece focused on a bizarre episode in which Russian President Boris Yeltsin during a visit to Washington in 1995 ended up in his underwear and drunk on Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to hail a cab. As for the Lewinsky affair, Clinton told Branch, he "just cracked" under...

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on Wednesday enthused over a new biography of Friedrich Engels, cooing that Marxism is “back in vogue” and adding that the founding communist comes across as a “jovial man of outsize appetites” in Tristram Hunt’s new biography “Marx’s General.” Garner opened the review by insisting that decrying capitalism is now hip again: “Thanks to globalism’s discontents and the financial crisis that has spread across the planet, Karl Marx and his analysis of capitalism’s dark, wormy side are back in vogue.”

“Kings,” Louis XIV once observed, “should enjoy giving pleasure” and when it came to the fairer sex, he obeyed this precept zealously and often. “They’re all good enough for him, provided they’re women,” his sister-in-law remarked, “peasants, gardeners’ daughters, chambermaids, ladies of quality”; women of every stripe benefited from the Sun King’s sexual largesse. Neither the bonds of matrimony (to the sad, neglected Marie-Thérèse of Spain) nor the intrigues of his “official” mistresses (one of whom, Athénaïs de Montespan, wasn’t above spreading the rumor that a particular rival had scabs all over her body) could deter him from sharing the...

Joseph Kennedy and the Jews By Edward Renehan, Jr. (Mr. Renehan's most recent book is The Kennedys at War, 1937-1945, published in April 2002 by Doubleday.) Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism. "I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them...

A politically neutral friend has asked for recommendations for the best biography of Ronald Reagan. I'm considering "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister" by John O'Sullivan, but that's probably too narrowly focused. Suggestions would be most appreciated.

One Day at a Time star Mackenzie Phillips was molested by her father John Phillips, the founding lead singer of The Mamas & the Papas! That's the explosive secret the 49-year-old former child actress will reveal in a scathing memoir due to hit bookstores next March, says a publishing insider. While the publisher, Simon Spotlight, has not publicly confirmed Mackenzie's molestation admission, it released a statement saying the troubled actress would reveal a "shocking, lifelong secret." Her addictions led to the downward spiral of her career, arrests and many stints in rehab, as well as two near-fatal overdoses. "In addition...

Guts and grace BOOKS: WORLD’s Lynn Vincent teams up with Sarah Palin on a book that promises to set the record straight about the Alaska governor’s personal and political life | Mickey McLean After last week’s announcement that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would pen a memoir to set the record straight about her personal and political life, HarperCollins revealed Thursday that WORLD Magazine Features Editor Lynn Vincent has been signed on as Palin’s collaborator. The book, not yet titled, will be co-published by HarperCollins imprint Harper and HarperCollins-owned Zondervan and is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010. During...

The Unforgettable Great Communicator by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 12, 2009 The conservative pundits seeking to accumulate intellectual bona fides by aping the intelligentsia’s call to “forget Ronald Reagan” only succeed in proving themselves to be as vacuous as the allegedly educated elite. For example, one cultured pearl of current wisdom is that conservatives have to move beyond “variations of no.” Well, for openers, you have to move towards it before moving beyond it. A federal budget that rose by about $1 trillion when Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress does not indicate that the GOP...

In 'Sarah Palin: Poised to Become America's First Female President', Recaldo Ochoa explores the life and times of a politician he believes was wronged by the media. He reintroduces Americans to an exceptional American woman, Governor Sarah Palin, who has the character, the qualification, the attributes--intelligence, judgment, leadership ability, and experience--and the unprecedented historical opportunity to become the first female president of the greatest nation on earth.

Cast Two Giant Shadows Heather Latham, February 18, 2009 “Define or be defined; he who wins that debate wins the argument,” said L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of Media Research Center and nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., at a Heritage Foundation event. He holds that Ronald Reagan understood this, and nobody could touch him because of it. Nicknames like “the Teflon president” were given to him because no bad press would stick to him. He says, “He understood that there is perception and there is reality, and the perception of reality is all that matters, not the...

Ol’ Blue Eyes Deconstructed by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 29, 2009 Although on the surface, studies of the singer Frank Sinatra seem to be emblematic of the frivolity of university offerings these days, there may actually be some value to this endeavor. After all, most students are not accustomed to listening to vocalists who can keep a beat, hit musical notes with their voices rather than their fists and maintain a melody without an echo chamber. Unfortunately, as with most pedagogical enterprises, the opportunities for inaccuracy abound, and scholars have been seizing on them. “The post-World War II, early cold-war...

Jonathan Bate's eloquent evocation of the man from WarwickshireAt last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson’s description of Shakespeare as “Soul of the Age”, and shunning “the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography’s besetting vice”, Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare’s cultural DNA. Structuring this loosely around the theme of the Seven Ages of Man from Jaques’s speech in As You Like It, Bate sweeps majestically backwards and forwards in time, moving between history and criticism, appropriating whatever best brings together Shakespeare’s life,...

If you read Obama's biography, you will be convinced he is groomed to be in the farthest left. A true American should fight hard to stop him becoming President

WASHINGTON--The title of a new biography of Michelle Obama is simply "Michelle" by Washington Post Magazine writer Liza Mundy, and an excerpt running in the Sunday edition tells of her discontent as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley, Austin, a "challenge to manage." Barack Obama met Michelle at the firm Michelle joined after Harvard Law School. She was part of the marketing group one of the "fun" practices at the firm--dealing with entertainment, after all, but there still was routine second year associate work Michelle Obama was not crazy about. excerpt...... "But Michelle could also frustrate her...

Last week Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble once again reported they were sold out of "Sarah- How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down" written by Kaylene Johnson and first released months ago. But with the rights picked up by a second publisher and a new edition with a print run of 300,000, book stocks were replenished on September 20th and once again ready to be shipped. Today, "Sarah- How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down" continued its climb up the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching the ...

Upcoming Schedule Sunday, September 21, at 7:30 AM About the Program: Sarah Palin biographer Kaylene Johnson talked with Book TV about Sarah Palin's life and political career. Ms. Johnson's book, "Sarah," covers Sarah Palin's life from her early years growing up in Alaska to her election as governor of the state. About the Author: Kaylene Johnson lives on a farm outside Wasilla, Alaska. She has written for Alaska magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

CAROL STREAM, Ill., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- In barely two weeks, Sarah Palin has become the candidate everyone's talking about. Ever since Senator John McCain electrified the nation by tapping this relatively unknown Alaska governor as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election, the media, political pundits, and ordinary citizens have been intrigued by this history-making candidate. Author Kaylene Johnson tells Palin's story in an original, definitive biography which has become this season's most sought-after book. ADVERTISEMENT Released in April 2008 by Epicenter Press, a regional publisher of nonfiction works about Alaska and its people, the book will now...

The Christian book publisher Zondervan is coming out with a biography of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Grand Rapids-area company says the book about Alaska's 44-year-old governor goes on sale Oct. 10 and is called "Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader." Zondervan chief executive Moe Girkins says in a news release that "regardless of your political persuasion, it is clear that Sarah Palin has quickly electrified the 2008 election." The Grand Rapids Press says author Joe Hilley is a lawyer and writer of Christian novels. Zondervan is based in Kent County's Cascade Township.

This was something that others would learn during her rapid rise in state politics – and which America’s most powerful politicians are now discovering as they feel the unstoppable force of Hurricane Palin. She has a gift for connecting with people, but she also possesses a steely resolve and competes with fierce tenacity. The biggest mistake her adversaries make is underestimating her.

What do you think about Senator John McCain's choice? Most of us news producers were surfing the internet Friday afternoon looking for any and all information on Sarah Palin's background. I came across her biography, "Sarah: How A Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down." The author, Kaylene Johnson is a writer and long-time Alaskan who lives on a farm outside Wasilla, Alaska. I gave her a call at 8:00 p.m. ET to set up a radio interview. We also got permission to post photos from the book as well as an excerpt: Here is an excerpt from Chapter...

#1 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Political #2 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women From forum: Amazon has sold all copies that they had. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...im/cagnlace00/ So, at the moment, there are only third-party offers. Sellers of course can ask for any price that they think someone will pay. And because the book is sold out, it dropped in the charts from the Top 10. Barnes & Noble has listed the book here http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Sar...?cds2Pid=17351 and it is out of stock there, too (and currently #8 on the bestseller list)....

A local publisher is scrambling to fill orders for about 40,000 copies of the only biography of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, which until Friday...> A local publisher is scrambling to fill orders for about 40,000 copies of the only biography of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, which until Friday morning had sold just 8,000 copies. "What a stroke of luck," said Kent Sturgis, publisher and co-owner of Epicenter Press in Kenmore. He had 3,000 copies of the hardback version left on Friday morning, when Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced Palin as his running mate. "We decided right off the bat...

Of Human Rights and Trees by: Rachel Paulk, July 30, 2008 Scattered Pictures: Reflections Of An American Muslim is a collection of scholarly essays written by Imam Zaid Shakir on a range of issues confronting Muslims today. The book opens with Shakir’s personal story detailing his spiritual journey into Islam. Born in Berkeley, California, Shakir moved from housing project to project across the country, living in California, Georgia, and Connecticut, before attending college at Central Connecticut State University as a “part of a minority equal opportunity program.” His experience in the projects led him to search for a change through...

The White House was today forced to apologise to Italy after distributing a biography of Silvio Berlusconi to journalists which alleged that he only gained high office because of his "considerable influence” on the media. The press kit, which was handed out to reporters as they boarded Air Force One on the way to the G8 summit in Japan, also described the Italian Prime Minister as “one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice”. The White House was today investigating how the four-page biography was included in the pack after...

The conservative Evangelical biographer of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay has moved on to a new subject: Barack Obama. And his new book, due out this summer, may lend credibility to Senator Obama's bid to win Evangelical Christian voters away from the Republican Party. The forthcoming volume from Stephen Mansfield, whose sympathetic "The Faith of George W. Bush" spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2004, is titled "The Faith of Barack Obama." Its tone ranges from gently critical to gushing, and the author defends Obama-and even his controversial former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright-from...

Bruce Willis Biography on A&E now. One of the few "Republicans" in Hollywierd...good show.

POW, War Hero, President 

The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi By Aram Roston Nation Books $27.50, 369 pages What do the arch hawks of the Bush administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz, have in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard? Answer: they both fêted Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi banker who put “regime change” in Baghdad at the top of the US policy agenda. In this biography, American investigative reporter Aram Roston says Chalabi and his organisations took millions from the US government, even as he continued to talk to Iranian intelligence services. While it uncovers...

It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator It's not quite eight in the morning and Barack Obama is on the phone screaming at me. He liked the story I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, but not this garbage. Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an asshole at a political fund-raiser. Now here he is blasting me from hundreds of miles away for a story that just went online but hasn't yet hit local newsstands. It's the first time I...

Wrong on race again Malcolm A. Kline, March 18 Recently, an editor for Media Matters named Terry Krepel took me to task for articles I had written about the negative impact that the policies of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt had on blacks in the United States...he chided me for pointing out that FDR named a Klansman—Hugo Black—to the U. S. Supreme Court. “Nowhere does Kline offer evidence that Wilson or Roosevelt (or Black, for that matter) were any more extreme in their racial views than that of the general white population in the United States at the...

THE latest Chinese blockbuster is not about a boy wizard, although the hero of the tale looks a bit like him. Appropriately, for the Chinese Year of the Rat, it's about a politician - Lu Kewen, better known here as Kevin Rudd. Fujian Education Press is so convinced the "legendary life" of Lu Kewen will run off the shelves it has ordered its biggest ever print run. The introduction to the biography gives readers a hint of the excitement to follow: "This book will fully interpret the legendary life of Lu Kewen. How he was born in a poor family...

No American politician of the 20th century is more reviled by historians and opinion makers than Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose 1950s anti-Communist crusade is synonymous with witch-hunting and repression. Actually, no politician even comes close. Herbert Hoover? True, the Great Depression occurred on his watch, goes the current wisdom, but Hoover can’t be blamed for a global catastrophe, and his economic programs paved the way for needed reforms. Richard Nixon? True, the Watergate scandal justified his resignation, but Nixon was a master statesman, we are reminded, whose initiatives produced détente with the Russians and an open...

Queen of Cuba Dethroned by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 04, 2008 The world is too much with us late and soon, as William Wordsworth pointed out, and so, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, are communist spies. Such operatives are not, as most professors would have us believe, a figment of our imagination. “There are lots of people who have committed espionage,” says Scott W. Carmichael, author of True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba’s Master Spy. “The numbers are staggering.” Carmichael spoke at the Heritage Foundation last month. “If you opened full...

Transformers of World Policy Heyecan Veziroglu, November 27, 2007 Nicholas Wapshott’s book on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, A Political Marriage, offers first hand observations these leaders transformed the world. Drawing on never before published correspondence transcripts, private letters, and telephone calls, he argues that their relationship was much deeper than an alliance of mutual interests. Reagan additionally deserved lesser to great credit for the Fall of Communism. “Theirs was a political marriage, the bond is based upon ideology and the true meaning of the minds,” he said. Author Wapshott added, “When they met in 1975, they were both between...

Rice Thought Palestinian Leader Weak WASHINGTON, Sep. 2, 2007 AP) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thought Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a weak disappointment, and she once judged President Bush's signature Mideast peace program unworkable, according to a new biography. Months into her term as secretary of state in 2005, Rice considered Abbas "a nice man but ineffective," and she worried Abbas was unworthy of the investment in trust and money the U.S. had placed in him, the book says. At the time, Bush and Rice were publicly trying to bolster Abbas as the more palatable alternative to the late Yasser...

Katie Couric is a bullying diva who capitalized on her status as a widowed mom, a nasty hatchet-job of a new book claims. The most shocking tale in author Edward Klein's unauthorized biography, "Katie: The Real Story," is that Couric's marriage to Jay Monahan was on the rocks long before he died of cancer in 1998. Quoting one of his numerous unnamed sources, Klein claims the couple had grown so far apart that the "only thing that stood between Katie and divorce was her fear of negative publicity." Other unnamed sources told Klein the superstar anchor made Monahan "feel as...

Is PBS still making money off a discredited documentary that they know is filled with untruths, misquotes, and lies? It would seem so. In 2003 PBS aired a show titled "Einstein's Wife" that attempted to prove that Albert Einstein's world changing theories of physics were a result of a hidden collaboration with his first wife, Mileva Maric. This documentary claimed that Maric’s work on the theory of relativity was lied about and hidden away all these years by Einstein, his biographies and history. Imagine the implications if the work of what must be the smartest woman on earth was hidden...

Thirty years ago, fast living, drugs and heart disease buried quintessential entertainment icon, Elvis Presley. Ever since, admirers have tried in vain to recapture the heart-palpitating moments they experienced when the King of Rock and Roll was alive. Devoted fans drag him out of the grave via trashy memorabilia, movies, CDs, postage stamps, tattoos and Elvis impersonators. Just yesterday, after years of snubbing the impersonation concept, Elvis Presley's estate capitulated and held a contest to find the “Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist.” To commemorate this week’s 30th anniversary of his death, Elvis’s only child, Lisa Marie who was nine when he...

1992 I decided to write this tribute to my dog Crystal. She is now 15, going on 16. That is 112 in dog years. But instead of tallying it in dog years, I prefer to say I am 462 doggy years old.   Crystal is a Lab-Samoyed mix and 100% love. In 1992, I was deeply involved in a divorce, and in my depression, I remember saying to my son Zack …”I do not want any women or dogs in this house”. About 2 weeks later, Zack came home with a little fur ball. He dates her for a couple of...

He made history as the first African American US Navy Master Diver. Tuesday afternoon, 75-year-old Carl Brashear died at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, His story was told in the 2000 film “Men of Honor,” and he was portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding, Jr. Brashear joined the United States Navy in 1948 at the age of 17. He became the only amputee deep-sea diver to reach the status of Master Diver and was the only black man to ever become Master Diver of the United States Navy, a position he held from 1975 to 1977, according to the Navy. He retired...

 David McCullough was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was educated there and at Yale University. Author of 1776, John Adams, Truman, Brave Companions, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood, he has twice received the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award, as well as the Francis Parkman Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The following is adapted from a public lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 31, 2006, during Mr. McCullough's one-week residency at the College to teach a class on “Leadership and the History...

A new book on the late prime minister's early years casts a deep shadow over Canadians' popular image of the liberal, enlightened statesman, Robert Sibley writes. Pierre Trudeau confounds us still. A new biography of the former prime minister, whom Canadians have long been taught to regard as a great liberal politician, reveals that as a youth and young man, Mr. Trudeau was an anti-Semite, admired fascist dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini, promoted revolution and longed for an independent and Catholic Quebec that would be home only to francophones. "We discovered a Trudeau who was remarkably different from what...

Here's one sure way to incite Barbra Streisand's wrath: Write a book about her. Christopher Anderson has learned that with his recently published biography, "Barbra: The Way She Is." Streisand has retaliated not with interviews or public statements, but by way of the Internet. On her Web site, she has issued a response she titles "Does the Truth Matter These Days?" "Normally, I would not dignify vicious, mean-spirited mythology masquerading as biography," she begins. "But it seems this latest rehash of other unauthorized biographies is getting a lot of attention. "Who is the person described in this book? From what...

Here's one sure way to incite Barbra Streisand's wrath: Write a book about her. Christopher Anderson has learned that with his recently published biography, "Barbra: The Way She Is." Streisand has retaliated not with interviews or public statements, but by way of the Internet. On her Web site, she has issued a response she titles "Does the Truth Matter These Days?" "Normally, I would not dignify vicious, mean-spirited mythology masquerading as biography," she begins. "But it seems this latest rehash of other unauthorized biographies is getting a lot of attention. "Who is the person described in this book? From what...