New Release Books by Jeffrey Frank

Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how so ordinary a man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic weapon; the beginning of the Cold War; creation of the NATO alliance; the founding of the United Nations; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens, and was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans. Yet while he supported stronger civil rights laws, he never quite relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of emotion, as when, in the aftermath of World War II, moved by the plight of refugees, he pushed to recognize the new state of Israel. The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible, and deeply human, portrait of an ordinary man suddenly forced to shoulder extraordinary responsibilities, who never lost a schoolboy’s romantic love for his country, and its Constitution.

An account of the unconventional relationship between Eisenhower and Nixon explores their contrasting beliefs and temperaments as well as the collaborative efforts that shaped the nation''s political ideology, foreign policy, and domestic goals.

On the eve of the 2000 election, the charmed life of Washington hostess Trudy Hopedale is quietly falling apart. Her daytime talk show is about to be hijacked by a younger, prettier assistant, and then there is the horrifying novel that her husband has written in secret, which contains some rather troubling implications for a former Foreign Service colleague. And what is her mother-in-law telling everyone? Trudy''s dear friend Donald Frizzé has benefited greatly from their friendship. A widely recognized expert on the U.S. vice presidency and a frequent guest on Trudy''s program, Donald''s latest scholarly pursuit is a highly anticipated biography of Garrett Augustus Hobart, McKinley''s VP. Exactly who anticipates this book is hard to say, and soon Donald finds himself dodging the awkward questions of plagiarism and his sexuality, frequently during the same conversation. Amid tides of intrigue and shifting allegiances, this little town''s extraordinary inhabitants swim helplessly, and alarmingly, toward their remarkable fates. With a bewitching sense of nostalgia, Jeffrey Frank has written an exquisitely funny, tender, and deeply perceptive novel that vividly invokes the simpler world of only yesterday.

It a cocktail party, George H. W. Bush encourages Brandon Sladder, the prominent Washington columnist, to write his memoirs. Sladder has, after all, known just about everyone of importance. He has talked on intimate terms with world leaders, been a witness to enormous change, and expressed weighty opinions on important matters of state. He believes that his own life story could add much more than a footnote to our age. But what is meant to be a look back at his life and our times turns out to be far more revealing. The Columnist is Sladder''s attempt to burnish his image for posterity. What emerges is something else: the misadventures of an irresistibly loathsome man -- self-important, social climbing, dangerously oblivious. He seems to be remarkably destructive to those who know him best -- employers, rivals, lovers, and family. In Brandon Sladder, Jeffrey Frank has created one of the most memorable rogues in contemporary fiction. By turns hilarious and dismaying, The Columnist is a dead-on, elegantly written portrait of the media and politics of the second half of the twentieth century.

One of a series of environmental education (EE) units "for workshop leaders who want to help educators explore the urban environment with their students." The unit investigates "educational resources that convey urban EE to both city teachers unfamiliar with the topic, and educators outside the city who want to reach the urban audience."

Sharp elbows, professional mischief, and ribald double-talk abound in this novel about the mad scrambles and the inglorious ends that enthrall our nation''s capital.It is Washington in the autumn of 1987, a tranquil time in America. As the Reagan era ends -- and prospects appear bright for a Dukakis administration -- the lawyers, publicists, strategists, and lobbyists of the city are making plans for the year ahead. Among them is a cast of players whose fortunes prove to be intertwined in unexpected and not always pleasant ways.Charlie Dingleman, a former congressman, finds himself pursued by an increasingly unsavory rumor, while Judith Grust, an associate at Charlie''s law firm and the source of this rumor, has a few dark secrets of her own. Hank Morriday, who feels trapped inside a think tank, keeps trying to finish a book on social policy in which he''s lost interest, and Candy Romulade, a public relations executive paralyzed by her meager client list, is losing heart. Then there is Reynolds Mund, a veteran local anchorman, who has formed some very peculiar theories about the news business.On the eve of a new administration, their hilariously savage ambitions and reversals of fortune test the idea that there''s no such thing as bad publicity. The result is a pitch-perfect, often poignant, novel in the classic Swiftian mold.

This study advances two interrelated hypotheses. First, it attempts to demonstrate that "redescription" underscored the ironic and satiric elements of much of Poe''s and Melville''s experimental work, and secondly, it argues for the idea of "embedded irony," an irony born from the incongruity between the way a character interprets a text or embedded narrative, and the way a character eventually changes based on that interpretation. I suggest that a type of situational irony (an incongruity between result and expectation) manifests itself when characters in these fictional works attempt to replicate or counter (in their own fictional worlds) a plot or characterization from another narrative. This study relies upon concepts of irony developed by scholars such as Richard Rorty, Wayne Booth, Douglas Muecke, and Claire Colebrook, as well as insights into narrative theory from authors such as Gérard Genette and Gregory Currie. Arguments regarding the evolving nature of language in the nineteenth century in the work of Emerson and Thoreau, and discussions about symbolic writing and cryptography by J.T. Irwin and Shawn Rosenheim also provide conceptual foundations. Focusing primarily on Melville''s Moby-Dick and Pierre , as well as Poe''s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and selected short stories, this study aims to expand the conceptual scope of irony while highlighting the comedic aspects of some of the more influential works of the nineteenth century. The study concludes with a discussion of how elements of embedded irony in the work of Poe and Melville may also inform studies of twentieth century postmodern literature.