James Traub

Militant Spirit

John Quincy Adams

A centenary tribute to Times Square traces how it became a center of popular culture and international world attention, from the celebrities and entertainment forms that began there, to its revitalization in the 1960s and 1970s, to the theater and marketing activities that prevail there today. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

The Devil's Playground

Analyzes the dramatically intertwined history of Kofi Annan, the United Nations, and American foreign policy from 1992 to the present in an in-depth assessment of Annan's tenure as secretary-general of the United Nations. 40,000 first printing.

Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

The Best Intentions

The Freedom Agenda traces the history of America's democratic evangelizing. James Traub, a journalist for The New York Times Magazine, describes the rise and fall of the Freedom Agenda during the Bush years, in part through interviews with key administration officials. He offers a richly detailed portrait of the administration's largely failed efforts to bolster democratic forces abroad. In the end, Traub argues that democracy matters--for human rights, for reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups, for political stability and equitable development--but the United States must exercise caution in its efforts to spread it, matching its deeds to its words, both abroad and at home.--From publisher description.

why America must spread democracy (just not the way George Bush did)

The freedom agenda

Analyzes the dramatically intertwined history of Kofi Annan, the United Nations, and American foreign policy from 1992 to the present in an in-depth assessment of Annan's tenure as secretary-general of the United Nations. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

The Past, Present and Promise of a Noble Idea

What was Liberalism?

The story of the rise and fall of Wedtech and of corrupt practices in the awarding of defense contracts.

The Outlandish Story of Wedtech

Too Good to be True

In 2004 Kofi Annan was nearly hounded from office by scandal. Following the invasion of Iraq, critics, and even some supporters, began asking whether the UN had outlived its usefulness. Do its failures arise from its own structure or from a clash with a US administration determined to go its own way? James Traub, who enjoyed unprecedented access to Annan and his aides from 2003 to 2006, delves into these questions and describes the Oil-for-Food scandal, the failed attempt to act decisively against ethnic cleansing in Sudan, and Annan's sweeping reforms. The Best Intentions is both a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of Annan's two terms as Secretary General and an important critical study of the institution that has carried the best hopes of the world since 1945.

As Times Square celebrates its centenary in April 2004, Traub tells the story of how this crossroads came to be the center of popular culture and the symbol of urban excitement all over the world.

A moral examination of one of the first Jewish senators, confidante to Jefferson Davis, and champion of the cause of slavery Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery. How could a man as gifted as Benjamin, knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices, not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself, a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not, or could not, question the practice on which his own success, and that of the South, was founded.

James Traub

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