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The education of an idealist: A memoir
By Samantha Power. 2019
A NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER ONE OF AUDIBLE'S BEST AUDIOBOOKS OF 2019 A NEW…
YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2019 ONE OF TIME'S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2019 AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2019 "Her highly personal and reflective memoir . . . is a must-read for anyone who cares about our role in a changing world."—President Barack Obama An intimate, powerful, and galvanizing memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner, human rights advocate, and former UN Ambassador Samantha Power. In her memoir, Power offers an urgent response to the question "What can one person do?" and a call for a clearer eye, a kinder heart, and a more open and civil hand in our politics and daily lives. The Education of an Idealist traces Power's distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official. In 2005, her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of newly elected senator Barack Obama, who invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. After Obama was elected president, Power went from being an activist outsider to a government insider, navigating the halls of power while trying to put her ideals into practice. She served for four years as Obama's human rights adviser, and in 2013, he named her US Ambassador to the United Nations, the youngest American to assume the role. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy. Humorous and deeply honest, The Education of an Idealist lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life and shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with the challenge of raising two young children. Along the way, she illuminates the intricacies of politics and geopolitics, reminding us how the United States can lead in the world, and why we each have the opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity. Power's memoir is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism and of one person's fierce determination to make a difference. "This is a wonderful book. [...] The interweaving of Power's personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly and with unblinking honesty."—THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times Book Review "Honest, personal, revealing... about the development of a young woman's inner strength and self-knowledge."—COLM TÓIBÍN, author of Brooklyn and Nora Webster "Truly engrossing."—RACHEL MADDOWBlood runs coal: The yablonski murders and the battle for the united mine workers of america
By Mark A Bradley. 2020
In the early hours of New Year's Eve 1969, in the small soft coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime…
trade union insider Joseph "Jock" Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Seven months earlier, Yablonski had announced his campaign to oust the corrupt president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Tony Boyle. Yablonski wanted to return the union to the coal miners it was supposed to represent. Boyle was enraged about his opponent's bid to take over-and would go to any lengths to maintain power. The most infamous crimes in the history of American labor unions, the Yablonski murders triggered one of the most intensive and successful manhunts in FBI history-and also led to the first successful rank-and-file takeover of a major labor union in modern US history, one that inspired workers in other labor unions to rise up and challenge their own entrenched, out-of-touch leaders. Blood Runs Coal comes at a time of resurgent labor movements in the United States and the current administration's attempts to bolster the fossil fuel industry. Brilliantly researched and compellingly written, it sheds light on the far-reaching effects of industrial and socioeconomic change that unfold across America to this dayVeritas: A harvard professor, a con man and the gospel of jesus's wife
By Ariel Sabar. 2020
From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Ariel Sabar, the gripping true story of a sensational religious forgery and the…
scandal that engulfed Harvard. In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife." The tattered manuscript made international headlines. If early Christians believed Jesus was married, it would upend the 2,000-year history of the world's predominant faith, threatening not just the celibate, all-male priesthood but sacred teachings on marriage, sex and women's leadership. Biblical scholars were in an uproar, but King had impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on female figures in the lost Christian texts from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife"—as she provocatively titled her discovery—was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices. As debates over the manuscript's authenticity raged, award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar set out to investigate a baffling mystery: where did this tiny scrap of papyrus come from? His search for answers is an international detective story—leading from the factory districts of Berlin to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before winding up in rural Florida, where he discovered an internet pornographer with a prophetess wife, a fascination with the Pharaohs and a tortured relationship with the Catholic Church. VERITAS is a tale of fierce intellectual rivalries at the highest levels of academia, a piercing psychological portrait of a disillusioned college dropout whose life had reached a breaking point, and a tragedy about a brilliant scholar handed an ancient papyrus that appealed to her greatest hopes for Christianity—but forced a reckoning with fundamental questions about the nature of truth and the line between faith and reasonTrumpocalypse: Restoring american democracy
By David Frum. 2020
"I don't take responsibility at all." Those words of Donald Trump at a March 13, 2020, press conference are likely…
to be history's epitaph on his presidency. A huge swath of Americans have put their faith in Trump, and Trump only, because they see the rest of the country building a future that doesn't have a place for them. If they would risk their lives for Trump in a pandemic, they will certainly risk the stability of American democracy. They brought the Trumpocalypse upon the country, and a post-Trumpocalypse country will have to find a way either to reconcile them to democracy - or to protect democracy from them. In Trumpocalypse, David Frum looks at what happens when a third of the electorate refuses to abandon Donald Trump, no matter what he does. Those voters aren't looking for policy wins. They're seeking cultural revenge. It is not enough to defeat Donald Trump on election day 2020. Even if Trump peacefully departs office, the trauma he inflicted will distort American and world politics for years to come. Americans must start from where they are, build from what they have, to repair the damage Trump inflicted on the country, to amend the wrongs that, under Trump, they inflicted upon each other. Americans can do better. David Frum shows how—and inspires all readers of all points of view to believe again in the possibilities of American life. Trumpocalypse is both a warning of danger and a guide to reform that will be read and discussed for years to comeThe way of silence: Engaging the sacred in daily life
By David Steindl-Rast. 2016
"The tranquility of order is a dynamic tranquility, the stillness of a flame burning in perfect calm, of a wheel…
spinning so fast that it seems to stand still. Silence in this sense is not only a quality of the environment, but primarily an attitude, an attitude of listening. ... Let us give to one another that gift of silence, so that we can listen together and listen to one another. Only in this silence will we be able to hear that gentle breath of peace, that music to which the spheres dance, that universal harmony to which we, too, hope to dance." Austrian-born Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast is one of the most influential and beloved spiritual teachers of our time. For decades, Brother David has divided his time between periods of monastic life at the Mount Saviour Monastery in New York and extensive lecture tours on five continents. He has brought spiritual depth into the lives of countless people, whom he touches through his lectures, his workshops and his writings. Brother David was one of the first Roman Catholics to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, studying under Zen teachers and building bridges between religious traditions. His newest book, The Way of Silence, draws heavily on Buddhist teachings to cultivate the practice of "deep" listening: turning away from noise and distraction, paying attention, and embracing quiet. The Way of Silence embraces paradox: absence versus presence in silence. Dynamic tranquility. The all-oneness of aloneness. Humbly, trusting in God, you'll practice emptying your mind in order to receive wisdom, insight, and understanding. You'll learn to listen deeply, with a trusting heart—and you'll joyously discover a new, interior freedom that will make you feel more vibrant, and more fully alive. The audio edition of this book can be downloaded via Audible** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** Kompromat n.—Russian for "compromising information" This is a story of dirty secrets,…
and the most powerful people in the world. Craig Unger&’s new book, American Kompromat, tells of the spies and salacious events underpinning men&’s reputations and riches. It tells how a relatively insignificant targeting operation by the KGB&’s New York rezidentura (New York Station) more than forty years ago—an attempt to recruit an influential businessman as a new asset—triggered a sequence of intelligence protocols that morphed into the greatest intelligence bonanza in history. And it tells of a coterie of associates, reaching all the way into the office of the Attorney General, who stood to advance power, and themselves. Based on extensive, exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—Soviets who resigned from the KGB and moved to the United States, former officers in the CIA, FBI counterintelligence agents, lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms—and analysis of thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, American Kompromat shows that something much more sinister and important has been taking place than the public could ever imagine: namely, that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and transformed them into potent weapons. Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could such an audacious feat have been accomplished? American Kompromat is situated in the ongoing context of the Trump-Russia scandal and the new era of hybrid warfare, kleptocrats, and authoritarian right-wing populism it helped accelerate. To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to understand kompromat —operations that amassed compromising information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged power by appealing to what is for some the most prized possession of all: their vanityThe tao of pooh
By Benjamin Hoff. 2015
Winnie-the-Pooh has a certain Way about him, a way of doing things that has made him the world's most beloved…
bear. In The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff shows that Pooh's Way is amazingly consistent with the principles of living envisioned by the Chinese founders of Taoism. The author's explanation of Taoism through Pooh, and Pooh through Taoism, shows that this is not simply an ancient and remote philosophy but something you can use, here and now.And what is Taoism? It's really very simple. It calls for living without preconceived ideas about how life should be lived-but it's not a preconception of how life-it's.... Well, you'd do better to listen to this book, and listen to Pooh, if you really want to find outStrongmen: Mussolini to the present
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat. 2021
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin. In Strongmen, she…
lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko's kleptocracies, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi's systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump's relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is-and by valuing one another as he is unable to do-can we stop him, now and in the futureLadies, Upstairs!: My Life in Politics and After
By Monique Bégin. 2018
More than fifty years after most Canadian women received the right to vote, very few women were elected as members…
of Parliament and none came from Quebec. Canada's 1972 federal election marked a refreshing transition. Twice as many female candidates ran for office than in the previous election, and, of the five women elected to the House of Commons that year, three Liberal Party candidates ? Monique Bégin, Albanie Morin, and Jeanne Sauvé ? shared the honour of being the first Quebec women MPs. In this riveting memoir of a trailblazing female politician, Monique Bégin tells the story of her journey into politics and beyond. Born in Italy, Bégin spent her childhood in France and Portugal before arriving in Montreal as a refugee of the Second World War. In 1967, she was swept into the world of politics when she became executive secretary of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. Inspired by Pierre Trudeau, she then ran for the House of Commons and served in various cabinet positions, ultimately spearheading the landmark Canada Health Act before retiring to pursue a career in academia. Offering a revealing glimpse into the pervading sexism of Canadian public life, Ladies, Upstairs! details the experiences of a feisty, candid outsider who, through sheer fortitude, intelligence, and hard work, became minister of health and welfare, a university dean, a sought-after member for commissions of inquiry, and an international expert on public health. The voice of a woman in a male world, a francophone among anglophones, and a skeptical politician, Ladies, Upstairs! provides a fascinating account of one of Canada's most impressive federal ministers and her discoveries through the decades.Les religions, le sexe et nous
By Aurélie Godefroy. 2012
" Saviez-vous que depuis toujours, les jeux sexuels entre époux sont vivement encouragés par le judaïsme et lislam, que les…
conseils du moine Cassien (IVe-Ve siècle) pour lutter contre la libido sont aujourdhui encore utilisés par les sexologues, ou que si la Bible prohibe par endroits lhomosexualité, elle présente pourtant un couple de héros ambigus : David et Jonathan ? À la faveur dune lecture précise des textes et des nombreuses interprétations qui en ont été faites au cours de lHistoire, Aurélie Godefroy se penche sur les liens complexes quentretiennent les quatre grandes religions (juive, chrétienne, musulmane et bouddhiste) avec la sexualité. Que disent exactement les écrits sacrés des choses du sexe ? En quels termes se prononcent lAncien Testament, les Évangiles, le Coran et les sûtras du bouddhisme sur cette délicate thématique ? Lauteur synthétise, compare, analyse, interrogeant des experts de chaque culte sans rien omettre des questions les plus embarrassantes. Désir, homosexualité, virginité, polygamie : Les Religions, le sexe et nous aborde tous les sujets controversés en brisant les tabous. " -- 4e de couvLa guérison du monde
By Frédéric Lenoir. 2012
" L'homme est-il seulement un homo economicus ? Notre monde est malade, mais la crise économique actuelle, qui polarise toutes…
les attentions, n'est qu'un symptôme de déséquilibres beaucoup plus profonds. La crise que nous traversons est systémique : elle touche tous les secteurs de la vie humaine. Elle est liée à des bouleversements de nos modes de vie sans doute aussi importants que le tournant du néolithique, lorsque l'être humain a cessé d'être nomade pour devenir sédentaire. Il existe pourtant des voies de guérison. En m'appuyant sur des expériences concrètes, je montre l'existence d'une autre logique que celle, quantitative et mercantile, qui conduit notre monde à la catastrophe : une logique qualitative qui privilégie le respect de la Terre et des personnes au rendement ; la qualité d'être au toujours plus . Je plaide aussi pour une redécouverte éclairée des grandes valeurs universelles - la vérité, la justice, le respect, la liberté, l'amour, la beauté - afin d'éviter que l'homme moderne mû par l'ivresse de la démesure, mais aussi par la peur et la convoitise, ne signe sa propre fin ". -- 4e de couvRêver Montréal: 101 idées pour relancer la métropole
By François Cardinal. 2013
'' Corruption, pannes de métro, désuétude des infrastructures. Montréal va-t-elle aussi mal que tous ces déboires peuvent laisser croire? Non,…
mais elle pourrait aller mieux. Que peut-on faire pour relancer la métropole, l'aider à progresser et à devenir une ville reconnue pour son dynamisme, ses habitants, sa vie culturelle riche, son architecture particulière? C'est à cette question que François Cardinal et quelque quatre-vingts collaborateurs répondent dans Rêver Montréal. L'ouvrage se veut un remue-méninges, une sorte d'états généraux sur la plus grande ville du Québec. Rêver Montréal propose 101 idées concrètes et originales pour donner un second souffle à la métropole. '' -- 4e de couvVote!: women's fight for access to the ballot box
By Coral Celeste Frazer. 2020
August 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited states and the…
US government from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. This book reveals how the seventy-year-long fight for women's suffrage was hard-won by leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt, and others. It demonstrates how their success led to the civil rights and feminist movements of the mid- and late- twentieth century, as well as today's #MeToo, #YesAllWomen, and Black Lives Matter movements. In the face of voter ID laws, voter purges, gerrymandering, and other restrictions, Americans continue to fight for equality in voting rightsThere are only two ways that humans work together: they cooperate with one another, or they coerce one another. And…
once you realize this fundamental fact, it will change how you see the world.In this myth-busting book, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan display their wisdom and talent for explaining complex topics, which have attracted a devoted audience to their weekly podcast, Words & Numbers, and made them popular speakers around the country.By looking for cooperation and coercion in everyday life, they help make sense of a wide range of issues that dominate the public debate. You'll come away from this book with a clear understanding of everything from the minimum wage to taxes, from gun control to government regulations, from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs to the War on Poverty.It turns out that coercion is necessary...sometimes. Even in a democracy, we all abide by rules, including plenty that we don't agree with, in the name of getting along.But in the end, Davies and Harrigan show that cooperation, without question, is the key to human happiness and progress. The more we encourage it, the better off we all areThe price of justice: money, morals and ethical reform in the law
By Ronald L Goldfarb. 2020
Justice reform has become an increasingly present topic in the news and media, with movements like "I Can't Breathe" and…
Black Lives Matter prompting national outcry from the public over the unethical actions of law enforcement, and it remains one of the most controversial and highly debated issues for politicians and citizens today. With more than two million Americans incarcerated, it is beyond apparent that the justice system intrinsically ensures that lower-income people and minorities are shockingly underrepresented and offered little to no legal protection. In The Price of Justice, Goldfarb uses powerful testimonies, media evidence, and first-hand expertise from working in the Justice Department as a longtime public-interest lawyer to reveal how both the criminal and civil justice systems fail to serve lower and middle-class citizens and makes an undeniable case for the profound justice reform that is so desperately needed. Goldfarb asks that we examine closely a legal system that has become largely pay-to-play, benefiting the administrators and those wealthy citizens who can afford to "lawyer up," and shows little mercy for the lower-income citizens who fall victim to an endless cycle of conviction, fines, bail, lack of counsel, and capital punishment. Goldfarb exposes a system that values money over ethics and lawyers who value winning cases over finding truth and serving justice, pointing out that civil aid and public defenders are grossly understaffed and underfinanced, making it nearly impossible to meet the challenges of well-paid private lawyersMeister eckhart's book of the heart: meditations for the restless soul
By Jon M Sweeney. 2021
Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a priest, a mystic, and nearly a heretic (he died before the Church court's verdict). In…
the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated him and the late Pope John Paul II spoke of his work with fondness.However, what makes him of particular interest is the fact that he has influenced a wide range of spiritual teachers and mystics both inside and outside the Christian tradition. Erich Fromm, Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, D. T. Suzuki, and Rudolf Steiner have all credited Eckhart as being an important influence on their thought. In addition, his work has influenced the development of 20th century American Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition.Eckhart wrote at a time-much like our own-when society appeared to be coming apart at the seams. In the midst of all that chaos and uncertainty, he captured the many forms and stages of the love of God, the mystic path, and the journey of transformation-in language so startling that he was accused of heresy.Now, seven centuries later, this fresh, stunning rendering of his work translates the essence of one of Christianity's greatest poetic and spiritual voices, conveying the heart of his teachings about what it means to love God and embark on a spiritual journey characterized by mystery, paradox, and an embrace of the unknownThe dictatorship of woke capital: how political correctness captured big business
By Stephen R Soukup. 2021
For the better part of a century, the Left has been waging a slow, methodical battle for control of the…
institutions of Western Civilization. During most of that time, "business"-and American Big Business, in particular-remained the last redoubt for those who believed in free people, free markets, and the criticality of private property. Over the past two decades, however, that's changed, and the Left has taken its long march to the last remaining non-leftist institution.Over the course of the last two years or so, a small handful of politicians on the Right-Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley, to name three-have begun to sense that something is wrong with American business and have sought to identify the problem and offer solutions to rectify it. While the attention of high-profile politicians to the issue is welcome, to date the solutions they have proposed are inadequate, for a variety of reasons, including a failure to grasp the scope of the problem, failure to understand the mechanisms of corporate governance, and an over-reliance of state-imposed top-down solutions.This book provides a comprehensive overview of the problem and the players involved, both on the Left and in the nascent conservative resistance. Soukup explains what the Left is doing and how and why the Right must be prepared to fight back to save this critical aspect of American culture from becoming another more economically powerful version of the "woke" college campusLeft turn: how liberal media bias distorts the American mind
By Timothy Groseclose. 2021
Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise quantitative measures of…
the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or political quotient, of voters and politicians.Among his conclusions are these: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias, and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets?such as The Washington Times or Fox News' Special Report?do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets.Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California, or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn, listeners can easily calculate their own PQ and decide for themselves if bias existsDeceiving the sky: inside Communist China's drive for global supremacy
By Bill Gertz. 2020
The United States' approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing that began the period of reform and opening…
in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later, the hope of producing a benign People's Republic of China utterly failed. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat. In fact, these misguided policies produced the emergence of a Twenty-first Century Evil Empire even more dangerous than a Cold War version in the Soviet Union. Successive American presidential administrations were fooled by ill-advised pro-China policymakers, intelligence analysts, and business leaders who facilitated the rise not of a peaceful China but of a threatening and expansionist nuclear-armed communist dictatorship focused on a single overriding strategic objective: weakening and destroying the United States of America. Defeating the United States is the first step for China's current rulers in achieving global supremacy under a new world order based on an ideology of Communism with Chinese characteristics. Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy details the failure to understand the nature and activities of the dangers posed by China and what the United States can do in taking needed steps to counter the threatsA warming climate and a general distrust of Wall Street has opened a new cultural divide: anti-market critics from Naomi…
Klein to the Pope target capitalism itself as a root cause of climate change, while neoconservatives who diminish the climate threat are in favor of market fundamentalism. Tom Rand argues that both sides in this emerging cultural war are ill-equipped to provide solutions to the climate crisis, and each is remarkably naïve in their view of capitalism. On one hand, we cannot possibly transition off fossil fuels without the financial might and entrepreneurial talent market forces alone can unlock. On the other, without radical changes to the way markets operate, capitalism will take us right off the climate cliff. Rejecting the old Left/Right ideologies, Rand develops a more pragmatic view capable of delivering practical solutions to this critical problem. A renewed capitalism harnessed to the task is the only way we might replace fossil fuels fast enough to mitigate severe climate risk. If we leave our dogma at the door, Rand argues, we might just build an economy that survives the century