A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction by Patrick J. Kennedy and Stephen Fried
"[Patrick Kennedy] has undeniably turned his fame toward a good cause — of raising understanding about the prevalence of mental illness and addiction in our society, and the need to help our brothers and sisters who cannot help themselves. There are easier ways to make money than speaking out honestly about one’s own life, and we admire the courage Mr. Kennedy has shown in discussing these difficult issues."
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
"A biography that chronicles her life with fresh details . . . What makes this story especially haunting are the might-have-beens . . . The first biographer to have access to all of Rosemary’s known letters, replete with typos and lopsided sentence structure, Larson deploys excerpts in heart-rending fashion . . . By making Rosemary the central character, [Larson] has produced a valuable account of a mental health tragedy, and an influential family’s belated efforts to make amends."
The Last of the President's Men by Bob Woodward
“Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency. . . . [the book is] pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield's tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America's most powerful men. . . . a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.”
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger
...As they did in their previous bestseller, George Washington’s Secret Six, Kilmeade and Yaeger have transformed a nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. ...
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
… In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. … Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. … 
It is a measure of Bush's shrewdness that he cooperated so extensively with Jon Meacham on Destiny and Power, allowing his biographer not just access to his diaries and family members but sitting for a series of interviews from 2006 to 2015. Meacham…amply rewards his subject's trust by producing a deeply empathetic, often moving book about the former president and what Bush calls the L-word, his legacy. How does the reader fare in this affectionate transaction between president and biographer? Surprisingly well, since Meacham's access and lack of ideological fervor allow him to paint Bush the man in unusually subtle colors…Destiny and Power reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it. If Meacham is sometimes polite to a fault, Destiny and Power does not suffer for it. His kinder, gentler approach succeeds in making George H. W. Bush a more sympathetic—and more complex—figure than if the former president had written his own doorstopper…
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