A biography that features interviews with the late Audrey Hepburn, and her family, friends and colleagues. Hepburn as actress, mother, wife and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF are presented together with details of her life as a young girl in occupied Holland and her work for the Dutch resistance. The films in which she starred, among them "Roman Holiday", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and "Funny Girl", have become classics. Audrey's life, however, could not have been more different than that of the characters she played on screen. Her only perfect relationship seems to have been with the public - she suffered two failed marriages and five miscarriages. Battling with illness - anorexia and, later, cancer - for most of her life she still found the energy and goodwill to work for others.
Ronald Reagan called the peaceful transfer of power from one U.S. president to the next a miracle, and it is. It is also the most delicate and hazardous period in the entire political cycle. Americans learned the stakes in 2020, when President Donald Trump’s refusal to trigger the formal start of the transition process to President-Elect Joe Biden created perhaps the worst crisis for American democracy since the Civil War. Even at the best of times, an incoming administration faces a gargantuan task, as every new president must make more than four thousand political appointments in a short period of time.Yet the day-to-day process of presidential transitions remains poorly understood, even by government specialists. This is why the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition created Transition Lab, a one-year podcast series that ran through January 2021. The Peaceful Transfer of Power now puts those distinct interviews with scholars, journalists, public servants, and—most important—participants in every transition from Ford–Carter to Trump–Biden into a narrative format that illuminates the long history, complexity, and current best practices associated with this most vital of democratic institutions.Presidential transitions stand at a critical juncture here and abroad. Highly readable and deeply informative, this book offers every citizen invested in safeguarding our democracy accessible and concentrated insights that will help future transitions run better, faster, and more smoothly.The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that is building a better government and a stronger democracy.
Although a vital part of the US economy, foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States periodically raises public and congressional alarms-as witnessed during Dubai Ports World's recent bid to acquire US port operations and Chinese firm CNOOC's attempt to buy US energy firm Unocal. Drawing fire from Congress are the Exon-Florio provisions of US law, which enable the president to block a foreign acquisition that threatens national security. This important new book finds that many proposed reforms risk harming the US economy without enhancing national security. The authors propose ways to strengthen the current interagency review of deals, including an improved process for reporting to Congress.
