The Highest Calling, David M. Rubenstein
The Highest Calling, David M. Rubenstein
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The Highest Calling
Conversations on the American Presidency

Bestseller

Author: David M. Rubenstein

Narrator: David M. Rubenstein, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Maggie Haberman, Ron Chernow, Michael Beschloss, Annette Gordon-Reed, Candice Millard, Ted Widmer, Jeffrey Frank, Kai Bird, Peter Baker, Douglas Bradburn, Amity Shlaes, Jonathan Darman, Susan Eisenhower, Fredrik Logevall, Richard Norton Smith, Timothy J. Naftali, Franklin Foer, Lindsey Chervinsky, David Marchick, Stewart McLaurin, Douglas Brinkley, James Baker III

Unabridged: 19 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2024

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the New York Times bestselling author of The American Story and How to Lead and host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein—David Rubenstein interviews living American presidents and top historians and journalists who reflect on the US presidency, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Maggie Haberman, Ron Chernow, and more.

For years, bestselling author David M. Rubenstein has distilled the contours of American democracy through conversations with noted leaders and historians. In The Highest Calling, he offers an enlightening overview of arguably the single most important position in the world: the American presidency.

Blending history and anecdote, Rubenstein chronicles the journeys of the presidents who have defined America as it exists now, what they envision for its future, and their legacy on the world stage. Drawing from his own experience in the Carter administration, he engages in dialogues with our nation’s presidents and the historians who study them. Get exclusive access to fresh perspectives, including:
-Original interviews with most of the living US presidents
-Interviews with noted presidential historians like Annette Gordon-Reed, Ron Chernow, Candice Millard, and more

Through “chatty, insightful, and enlightening” (The Wall Street Journal) analysis, Rubenstein captures our country’s most prominent leaders, the political genius and frays of the presidential role, and the wisdom that emerges from it.

About David M. Rubenstein

David M. Rubenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of How to Invest, How to Lead, The American Experiment, and The American Story. He is cofounder and cochairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private equity firms. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Gallery of Art, the Economic Club of Washington, and the University of Chicago. He is an original signer of The Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award. The host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein, Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein, and The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS, he lives in the Washington, DC, area.

About Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party and the winner of the national popular vote. She served as Secretary of State after nearly four decades in public service as an attorney, First Lady, and US Senator. She is married to former US President Bill Clinton and is a mother and grandmother. Visit HillaryClinton.com.

About Ted Widmer

Ted Widmer is Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College (CUNY). In addition to his teaching, he writes actively about American history in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and other venues. He has also taught or directed research centers at Harvard University, Brown University, and Washington College. He grew up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and attended Harvard University.

About Jeffrey Frank

Jeffrey Frank was a senior editor at The New Yorker, the deputy editor of The Washington Post’s Outlook section, and is the author of Ike and Dick. He has published four novels, among them the Washington Trilogy—The Columnist, Bad Publicity, and Trudy Hopedale—and is the coauthor, with Diana Crone Frank, of a new translation of Hans Christian Andersen stories, which won the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Prize. He is a contributor to The New Yorker, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Bookforum, and Vogue, among other publications.

About Kai Bird

Kai Bird is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006 for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer. Bird is Executive Director and Distinguished Lecturer at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History and is the recipient of numerous fellowships. His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He is an elected member of the prestigious Society of American Historians.

About Peter Baker

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser were Moscow bureau chiefs for The Washington Post from January 2001 to November 2004. They are married and live in Washington, D.C., with their son, Theodore.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cooper on January 05, 2025

A set of interesting interviews on the demeanor, background, and personality of American Presidents. Told from historians who intimately studied the individual or from the President themselves (George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, etc). I enjoyed getting to learn about each one’s unique personalities that......more

Goodreads review by Dave on November 12, 2024

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the American Presidency and how its leaders have shaped the nation. David M. Rubenstein interviews historians who have devoted much of their lives to studying the Presidents they write about, offering readers a unique, humanizing perspective on these......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on March 20, 2025

I still don’t know exactly who David Rubenstein is, but he certainly has access. His interviews are generally a series of fairly rapid fire questions, yet they allow for fantastic anecdotes from experts in their particular niche of American History. The audio is somewhat shoddy for our podcasting-tu......more

Goodreads review by Owen on February 07, 2025

This book was a great overview of the most influential presidents of the United States. With Rubenstein being such an established figure in the US historical scene, he is able to provide informed interviews with biographers and former presidents. It's a shame he wasn't able to get an interview with......more

Goodreads review by Joe on January 09, 2025

Questions and Answers from a series of interviews by Rubenstein with prominent historians and others (for example, in the case of Eisenhower, his granddaughter Susan and in the case of Clinton, Bill and Hillary themselves) about the life and times of 23 presidents, from Washington to Biden (but not......more

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