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The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place
By David Sheff. 2020
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boyexplores the transformation of Jarvis Jay Masters who has become one…
of America&’s most inspiring Buddhist practitioners while locked in a cell on death row. Jarvis Jay Masters&’s early life was a horror story whose outline we know too well. Born in Long Beach, California, his house was filled with crack, alcohol, physical abuse, and men who paid his mother for sex. He and his siblings were split up and sent to foster care when he was five, and he progressed quickly to juvenile detention, car theft, armed robbery, and ultimately San Quentin. While in prison, he was set up for the murder of a guard—a conviction which landed him on death row, where he&’s been since 1990.At the time of his murder trial, he was held in solitary confinement, torn by rage and anxiety, felled by headaches, seizures, and panic attacks. A criminal investigator repeatedly offered to teach him breathing exercises which he repeatedly refused. Until desperation moved him to ask her how to do &“that meditation shit.&” With uncanny clarity, David Sheff describes Masters&’s gradual but profound transformation from a man dedicated to hurting others to one who has prevented violence on the prison yard, counseled high school kids by mail, and helped prisoners—and even guards—find meaning in their lives.Along the way, Masters becomes drawn to the principles that Buddhism espouses—compassion, sacrifice, and living in the moment—and he gains the admiration of Buddhists worldwide, including many of the faith&’s most renowned practitioners. And while he is still in San Quentin and still on death row, he is a renowned Buddhist thinker who shows us how to ease our everyday suffering, relish the light that surrounds us, and endure the tragedies that befall us all.Once a Cop: The Street, the Law, Two Worlds, One Man
By Corey Pegues. 2016
New York City Book Awards Hornblower Award Winner African American Literary Award Winner for Best Biography/Memoir As a youth, Corey…
Pegues was a criminal. As an adult, he became a high-ranking police officer.In this fascinating look at life on both sides of the law, Corey Pegues opens up about why he joined the New York Police Department after years as a drug dealer. Pegues speaks honestly about the poor choices he made while coming of age in New York City during the height of the crack epidemic. He&’s equally candid about why he turned his life around, and takes you inside the NYPD, where he becomes a decorated officer despite bureaucratic pitfalls and discriminatory practices. Written with the voice and panache of someone who knows the streets, Once a Cop is a credible and informative look at the forces that lead some into a life of crime and what it means to make good on a second chance.Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel
By Dan Slater. 2016
The tale of two American teenagers recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and the Mexican American detective who realizes…
the War on Drugs is unstoppable. &“A hell of a story…undeniably gripping.&” (The New York Times)In this astonishing story, journalist Dan Slater recounts the unforgettable odyssey of Gabriel Cardona. At first glance, Gabriel is the poster-boy American teenager: athletic, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the ghettos of Laredo, Texas—his border town—are full of smugglers and gangsters and patrolled by one of the largest law-enforcement complexes in the world. It isn’t long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of juvenile crime, which leads him across the river to Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartel: Los Zetas. Friends from his childhood join him and eventually they catch the eye of the cartel’s leadership. As the cartel wars spill over the border, Gabriel and his crew are sent to the States to work. But in Texas, the teen hit men encounter a Mexican-born homicide detective determined to keep cartel violence out of his adopted country. Detective Robert Garcia’s pursuit of the boys puts him face-to-face with the urgent consequences and new security threats of a drug war he sees as unwinnable.In Wolf Boys, Slater takes readers on a harrowing, often brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. Ultimately though, Wolf Boys is the intimate story of the lobos: teens turned into pawns for the cartels. A nonfiction thriller, it reads with the emotional clarity of a great novel, yet offers its revelations through extraordinary reporting.Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family
By Joaquin Jack Garcia, Michael Levin. 2009
"Petey Chops wasn't kicking up. And if he didn't start soon, he was going to get whacked." So begins Making…
Jack Falcone, the extraordinary true story of an undercover FBI agent's years-long investigation of the Gambinos, which resulted in a string of arrests that crippled the organized crime family. But long before Joaquin "Jack" Garcia found himself wearing a wire with some of the Mafia's top capos, he was one of the FBI's unlikeliest recruits. A Cuban-born American, Jack graduated from Quantico standing six-foot-four and weighing 300 pounds -- not your typical G-man. Jack's stature soon proved an asset as the FBI looked to place agents undercover with drug smugglers, counterfeiters, and even killers. Jack became one of the few FBI agents dedicated solely to undercover work. Using a series of carefully created aliases, Jack insinuated himself in the criminal world, from the Badlands of Philadelphia, where he was a gregarious money launderer, to the streets of Miami, where an undercover Garcia moved stolen and illicit goods and brought down dirty cops. Jack jumped at the opportunity to infiltrate the shadowy world of La Cosa Nostra, but how would the Cuban-American convince wiseguys that he was one of their own, a Sicilian capable of "earning his button" -- getting made in the Mafia? For the first time, the FBI created a special "mob school" for Jack, teaching him how to eat, talk, and think like a wiseguy. And it wasn't long before the freshly minted Jack Falcone found himself under the wing of one of the Gambinos' old school capos, Greg DePalma. DePalma, who cared for an ailing John Gotti in prison, introduced Falcone to his world of shakedowns, beatings, and envelopes of cash, never suspecting that one of his trusted crew members was a federal agent. A page-turning account of the struggle between law enforcement and organized crime that will rank with such classic stories as Donnie Brasco, Serpico, and Wiseguy, Making Jack Falcone is an unforgettable trip into America's underworld through the eyes of a highly decorated FBI veteran.A Great Game: The Forgotten Leafs & the Rise of Professional Hockey
By Stephen J. Harper. 1912
Drawing on extensive archival records and illustrations, histories of the sport, and newspaper files, Canada’s Prime Minister delves into the…
fascinating early years of ice hockey.In the tumultuous beginnings of hockey, the fights were as much off the ice as on it. This engaging new book is about the hockey heroes and hard-boiled businessmen who built the game, and the rise and fall of legendary teams pursuing the Stanley Cup. With a historian’s perspective and fan’s passion, Stephen Harper presents a riveting and often-surprising portrait, capturing everything from the physical contests on the rinks to the battles behind the scenes.Stephen Harper shows that many things have stayed the same. Rough play, fervent hometown loyalties, owner-player contract disputes, dubious news coverage, and big money were issues from the get-go. Most important in these early years was the question: Was hockey to be a game of obsessed amateurs playing for the love of the sport, or was it a game for paid professionals who would give fans what they wanted? Who should be responsible for the sport—including its bouts of violence—both on and off the ice.A century ago, rinks could melt, and by halftime the blades screwed to the players’ shoes could be sinking in mud. It was during this time that the unsuccessful Toronto Professionals of 1908 and the victorious Toronto Blue Shirts of 1914 battled for the city’s very first Stanley Cup. Against the fanatical opposition of amateur hockey leaders, these “forgotten Leafs” would lay the groundwork for the world’s most profitable hockey franchise.In paying tribute to these hockey pioneers and the contagious loyalty of their fans, Harper resurrects the history of hockey’s first decades. Lavishly illustrated with photographs of the game’s greatest arenas and earliest star players, this entertaining and original book will captivate you from start to finish.Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
By Bradley J. Edwards, Brittany Henderson. 2020
&“A thrilling page-turner about the pursuit of justice&” (New York Post), this is the definitive story of the case against…
Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the corrupt system that supported them, told in thrilling detail by the lawyer who has represented their victims for more than a decade.In June 2008, Florida-based victims&’ rights attorney Bradley J. Edwards was thirty-two years old and had just started his own law firm when a young woman named Courtney Wild came to see him. She told a shocking story of having been sexually coerced at the age of fourteen by a wealthy man in Palm Beach named Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards, who had never heard of Epstein, had no idea that this moment would change the course of his life.Over the next ten years, Edwards devoted himself to bringing Epstein to justice, and came close to losing everything in the process. Edwards tracked down and represented more than twenty of Epstein&’s victims, shined a light on his shadowy network of accomplices, including Ghislaine Maxwell, and uncovered the scope of his sexually exploitative organization, which reached into the highest levels of American society.In this &“revelatory exploration of the long fight to bring a monstrous man to justice&” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Edwards gives his riveting, blow-by-blow account of battling Epstein on behalf of his clients, and provides stunning details never shared before. Epstein and his cadre of high-priced lawyers were able to manipulate the FBI and the Justice Department, but despite making threats and attempting schemes straight out of a spy movie, Epstein couldn&’t stop Edwards, his small team of committed lawyers, and, most of all, the victims, who were dead-set on seeing their abuser finally put behind bars.Racehoss: Big Emma's Boy
By Albert Race Sample. 2018
&“A timeless classic&” (San Antonio Express-News), reissued with a new foreword, afterword, and ten percent more material about a black…
man who spent seventeen years on a brutal Texas prison plantation and underwent a remarkable transformation.First published in 1984, Racehoss: Big Emma&’s Boy is Albert Race Sample&’s &“unforgettable&” (The Dallas Morning News) tale of resilience, revelation, and redemption. Born in 1930, the mixed-race son of a hard-drinking black prostitute and a white cotton broker, Sample was raised in the Jim Crow South by an abusive mother who refused to let her son—who could pass for white—call her Mama. He watched for the police while she worked, whether as a prostitute, bootlegger, or running the best dice game in town. He loved his mother deeply but could no longer take her abuse and ran away from home at the age of twelve. In his early twenties, Sample was arrested for burglary, robbery, and robbery by assault and was sentenced to nearly twenty years in the Texas prison system in the 1950s and 60s. His light complexion made him stand out in the all-black prison plantation known as the &“burnin&’ hell,&” where he and over four hundred prisoners picked cotton and worked the land while white shotgun-carrying guards followed on horseback. Sample earned the moniker &“Racehoss&” for his ability to hoe cotton faster than anyone else in his squad. A profound spiritual awakening in solitary confinement was a decisive moment for him, and he became determined to turn his life around. When he was finally released in 1972, he did just that. Though Sample was incarcerated in the twentieth century, his memoir reads like it came from the nineteenth. With new stories that had been edited out of the first edition, a foreword by Texas attorney and writer David R. Dow, and an afterword by Sample&’s widow, Carol, this new edition of Racehoss: Big Emma&’s Boy offers a more complete picture of this extraordinary time in America&’s recent past.The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious
By John Dodson. 2013
A hard-hitting inside account of the Fast and Furious scandal—the government-sponsored program intended to “win the drug war” by providing…
and tracking gun sales across the border to Mexico—from whistle-blower and ATF agent John Dodson.After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, John Dodson pulled bodies out of the wreckage at the Pentagon. In 2007, following the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, John Dodson walked through the classrooms, heartbroken, to cover up the bodies of the victims.Then came Arizona. The American border.Ten days before Christmas, 2010, ATF agent John Dodson awoke to the news he had dreaded every day as a member of the elite team called the Group VII Strike Force: a U.S. border patrol agent named Brian Terry had been shot dead by bandits armed with guns that had been supplied to them by ATF. Was this an inevitable consequence of the Obama administration’s Project Gunrunner, set in place one year earlier ostensibly to track Mexican drug cartels?Brian Terry’s murder would not only change John Dodson’s life forever; it would reveal a scandal so unthinkably unpatriotic that it forced President Barack Obama to claim executive privilege and caused Attorney General Eric Holder to be held in contempt of Congress.Federal Agent John Dodson, an ex-military man, took an oath to defend the world’s greatest country, and proudly considered himself a walking patriotic example of the American Dream. Brian Terry, ex-military like Dodson, was only forty years old, a family man who served his country by working for the government.Dodson was terrified when the next phone call came, one with the potential to destroy his career, his family, and his life. CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson asked Dodson to go public with what he knew about Fast and Furious. To Agent Dodson, this meant blowing the whistle. But to the family of Agent Terry, it was a chance to save lives and right a wrong. As he took a fight from the border towns of Arizona to a showdown in the halls of Congress, John Dodson clung to the hope that truth would prevail, that he would be redeemed, and that Brian Terry’s death would not be in vain.Like whistle-blowers before him, John would not be welcome back on the job. But he found strength in his conscience, in the support of the American public, and in Senators Darryl Issa and Chuck Grassley. When his first-amendment rights to publicly tell his story were threatened, the ACLU took up his case. For her report revealing John Dodson as the key whistle-blower in Fast and Furious, Sharyl Attkisson received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.Ultimately, John Dodson was cleared by the Inspector General’s office, publicly heralded as a hero, and returned to Arizona.Perhaps a lesson gleaned from John Dodson’s powerful account is well stated by former Speaker of the House of Representatives Sam Rayburn: “If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.”The Buyer: The making and breaking of an undercover detective
By Liam Thomas. 2023
An undercover detective is a buyer, and their commodity is intelligence. But what is the real price of justice?'A compelling…
and powerful account from the darker side of policing and the terrifying impact it has on those who strive to keep us safe' Nazir AfzalLiam Thomas was an officer in the Met for over a decade, many of those years spent deep at the heart of Britain's most dangerous criminal enterprises in the murky world of undercover surveillance. Before him, his father had also been a police officer, a pillar of their small community.Fighting corruption was Liam's life. But the murky world of undercover work teaches him that justice is far from black and white - and a family secret reveals that corruption is closer to home than he had ever expected. The revelations push him to the edge of his sanity - and then he discovers that his bosses are investigating him...A thrilling memoir of a life lived amongst a world of corruption, justice and loyalties, this book tells the real story of the police's line of duty.Brotherhood to Nationhood: George Manuel and the Making of the Modern Indian Movement
By Peter McFarlane, Doreen Manuel. 2020
Charged with fresh material and new perspectives, this updated edition of the groundbreaking biography Brotherhood to Nationhood brings George Manuel and…
his fighting tradition into the present. George Manuel (1920–1989) was the strategist and visionary behind the modern Indigenous movement in Canada. A three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he laid the groundwork for what would become the Assembly of First Nations and was the founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Authors Peter McFarlane and Doreen Manuel follow him on a riveting journey from his childhood on a Shuswap reserve through three decades of fierce and dedicated activism. In these pages, an all-new foreword by celebrated Mi'kmaq lawyer and activist Pam Palmater is joined by an afterword from Manuel’s granddaughter, land defender Kanahus Manuel. This edition features new photos and previously untold stories of the pivotal roles that the women of the Manuel family played – and continue to play – in the battle for Indigenous rights.In Reasoning Otherwise, author Ian McKay returns to the concepts and methods of “reconnaissance” first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals…
to examine the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to 1920. Reasoning Otherwise highlights how a new way of looking at the world based on theories of evolution transformed struggles around class, religion, gender, and race, and culminates in a new interpretation of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. As McKay demonstrated in Rebels, Reds, Radicals, the Canadian left is alive and flourishing, and has shaped the Canadian experience in subtle and powerful ways. Reasoning Otherwise continues this tradition of offering important new insight into the deep roots of leftism in Canada. Reasoning Otherwise is the winner of the 2009 Canadian Historical Association's Sir John A. Macdonald prize.The Fire and the Ashes: Rekindling Democratic Socialism
By Andrew Jackson. 2021
In The Fire and the Ashes, long-time union economist and policy analyst Andrew Jackson looks back on a fascinating career…
in the labour movement, the NDP, and left politics, combining keen historical analysis with a political manifesto for today. As one of the few trade union economists in Canada, Jackson brings a unique insider perspective and decades of experience to bear on his critical reflections on the history and changing fortunes of the NDP, the failures of neoliberalism, and the waning and recent renewal of the democratic socialist tradition. What plays out is a battle of ideas fought by Jackson and the wider left—one meant to rekindle both political veterans and a new generation of activists who believe that a true democracy cannot exist with great inequalities of wealth and political power, and that social ownership and public investment must be brought squarely into the mainstream.Fear, Love, and Liberation in Contemporary Québec: A Feminist Reflection
By Alexa Conradi. 2019
In response to rapid and unsettling social, economic, and climate changes, fearmongering now features as a main component of public…
life. Right-wing nationalist populism has become a hallmark of politics around the world. No less so in Quebec. Alexa Conradi has made it her life’s work to understand and to generate thoughtful debate about this worrisome trend. As the first President of Québec solidaire and the president of Canada’s largest feminist organisation, the Fédération des femmes du Québec, Conradi refused to shy away from difficult issues: the Charter of Quebec Values, religion and Islam, sovereignty, rape culture and violence against women, extractive industries and the treatment of Indigenous women, austerity policy and the growing gap between rich and poor. This determination to address uncomfortable subjects has made Conradi—an anglo-Montrealer—a sometimes controversial leader. In Fear, Love, and Liberation in Contemporary Quebec, Conradi invites us to take off our rose-coloured glasses and to examine Quebec’s treatment of women with more honesty. Through her personal reflections on Quebec politics and culture, she dispels the myth that gender equality has been achieved and paves the way for a more critical understanding of what remains to be done.Fighting Dirty: How a Small Community Took on Big Trash
By Poh-Gek Forkert. 2017
Fighting Dirty tells the story of how one small group of farmers, small-town residents, and Indigenous people fought the world’s…
largest waste disposal company to stop them from expanding a local dumpsite into a massive landfill. As one of the experts brought in to assess the impact the toxic waste would have on the community, Poh-Gek Forkert was part of the adventures and misadventures of their decades-long fight.Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada
By Franca Iacovetta. 2006
An in-depth study of European immigrants to Canada during the Cold War, Gatekeepers explores the interactions among these immigrants and…
the “gatekeepers”–mostly middle-class individuals and institutions whose definitions of citizenship significantly shaped the immigrant experience. Iacovetta’s deft discussion examines how dominant bourgeois gender and Cold War ideologies of the day shaped attitudes towards new Canadians. She shows how the newcomers themselves were significant actors who influenced Canadian culture and society, even as their own behaviour was being modified. Generously illustrated, Gatekeepers explores a side of Cold War history that has been left largely untapped. It offers a long overdue Canadian perspective on one of the defining eras of the last century.A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada
By Ester Reiter. 2016
Driven from their homes in Russia, Poland, and Romania by pogroms and poverty, many Jews who came to Canada in…
the wave of immigration after the 1905 Russian revolution were committed radicals. A Future Without Hate or Need brings to life the rich and multi-layered lives of a dissident political community, their shared experiences and community-building cultural projects, as they attempted to weave together their ethnic particularity—their identity as Jews—with their internationalist class politics.Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism
By Tim McCaskell. 2016
How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the incorporation of LGBTQ communities into…
full citizenship on the model of Canadian multiculturalism? Tim McCaskell contextualizes his work in gay, queer, and AIDS activism in Toronto from 1974 to 2014 within the shift from the Keynesian welfare state of the 1970s to the neoliberal economy of the new millennium. A shift that saw sexuality —once tightly regulated by conservative institutions—become an economic driver of late capitalism, and sexual minorities celebrated as a niche market. But even as it promoted legal equality, this shift increased disparity and social inequality. Today, the glue of sexual identity strains to hold together a community ever more fractured along lines of class, race, ethnicity, and gender; the celebration of LGBTQ inclusion pinkwashes injustice at home and abroad. Queer Progress tries to make sense of this transformation by narrating the complexities and contradictions of forty years of queer politics in Canada’s largest city.Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety
By Ian McKay, Jamie Swift. 2012
Once known for peacekeeping, Canada is becoming a militarized nation whose apostles—-the New Warriors-—are fighting to shift public opinion. New…
Warrior zealots seek to transform postwar Canada’s central myth-symbols. Peaceable kingdom. Just society. Multicultural tolerance. Reasoned public debate. Their replacements? A warrior nation. Authoritarian leadership. Permanent political polarization. The tales cast a vivid light on a story that is crucial to Canada’s future; yet they are also compelling history. Swashbuckling marauder William Stairs, the Royal Military College graduate who helped make the Congo safe for European pillage. Vimy Ridge veteran and Second World War general Tommy Burns, leader of the UN’s first big peacekeeping operation, a soldier who would come to call imperialism the monster of the age. Governor General John Buchan, a concentration camp developer and race theorist who is exalted in the Harper government’s new Citizenship Guide. And that uniquely Canadian paradox, Lester Pearson. Warrior Nation is an essential read for those concerned by the relentless effort to conscript Canadian history.Worth Fighting For: Canada’s Tradition of War Resistance from 1812 to the War on Terror
By Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, and Catherine Gidney. 2015
Historians, veterans, museums, and public education campaigns have all documented and commemorated the experience of Canadians in times of war.…
But Canada also has a long, rich, and important historical tradition of resistance to both war and militarization. This collection brings together the work of sixteen scholars on the history of war resistance. Together they explore resistance to specific wars (including the South African War, the First and Second World Wars, and Vietnam), the ideology and nature of resistance (national, ethical, political, spiritual), and organized activism against militarization (such as cadet training, the Cold War, and nuclear arms). As the federal government continues to support the commemoration and celebration of Canada’s participation in past wars, this collection offers a timely response that explores the complexity of Canada’s position in times of war and the role of social movements in challenging the militarization of Canadian society.Le 6 février 1920, un petit groupe d’employés de la fonction publique se réunit pour la première fois afin de…
former une association professionnelle. Un siècle plus tard, l’Institut professionnel de la fonction publique du Canada (IPFPC) est un agent négociateur représentant près de 60 000 travailleurs du secteur public dont les efforts pour le bien collectif améliorent la vie de chaque Canadien. Publié à l’occasion du 100e anniversaire de fondation de l’IPFPC, À l’avant-garde du progrès dresse le portrait complet de son évolution, de 1920 à aujourd’hui, et lève le voile sur un pan souvent négligé de l’histoire syndicale nord-américaine. L’auteur, Jason Russell, s’appuie sur une abondante collection de sources, dont des documents d’archives et des témoignages de dizaines de membres actuels et passés de l’IPFPC. Marquée par des réussites et semée d’embûches, l’histoire est complexe et racontée avec clarté et modération. Après des décennies de changements démographiques et générationnels, de booms et de crises économiques et de bouleversements politiques, les membres de l’IPFPC entament les cent prochaines années guidés par la même mission importante que celle qui les a inspirés jusqu’à présent : militer pour une justice sociale et économique pour le bien de tous les Canadiens et Canadiennes.