Books like The Perfect Failure by Trumbull Higgins

Scott Adams shares his funniest and most candid memoir of failures, revealing the surprising lessons that helped him rise from office worker to world‑famous cartoonist.

Lawrence Freedman’s Kennedy’s Wars examines President John F. Kennedy’s foreign‑policy leadership during the Cold War, detailing his responses to Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, and how his cabinet’s evolving liberalism shaped U.S. military and diplomatic decisions.

The brilliant disaster recounts the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion through the perspective of Jim Rasenberger's father, offering a personal lens on U.S. foreign policy, diplomatic tensions, and the clash between Kennedy and Castro.

"The shocking story of how America became one of the world's safest postwar havens for Nazis. Until recently, historians believed America gave asylum only to key Nazi scientists after World War II, along with some less famous perpetrators who managed to sneak in and who eventually were exposed by Nazi hunters. But the truth is much worse, and has been covered up for decades: the CIA and FBI brought thousands of perpetrators to America as possible assets against their new Cold War enemies. When the Justice Department finally investigated and learned the truth, the results were classified and buried. Using the dramatic story of one former perpetrator who settled in New Jersey, conned the CIA into hiring him, and begged for the agency's support when his wartime identity emerged, Eric Lichtblau tells the full, shocking story of how America became a refuge for hundreds of postwar Nazis"--

The definitive biography of the Bundy brothers, who advised presidents on peace and war during the Cold War and became key architects of America's Vietnam War strategy, despite their doubts about sending American troops to Southeast Asia.