Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 18640 items
The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice
By Vanessa M. Gezari. 2013
A “sharp-eyed look at the complexities of war” (Parade), that explores the inner workings of the Human Terrain System, a…
Pentagon program that sends civilian social scientists into war zones to help soldiers understand local culture.On the day Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, a small group of American civilians took their optimism and experience to a village west of Kandahar, Afghanistan. They were part of the Pentagon’s controversial attempt to bring social science to the battlefield, driven by the notion that you can’t win a war if you don’t understand the enemy and his culture. The field team in Afghanistan that day included an intrepid Texas blonde, a former bodyguard for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and an ex-military intelligence sergeant who had come to Afghanistan to make peace with his troubled past. But not all goes as planned. In this tale of moral suspense, journalist Vanessa Gezari follows these three idealists from the hope that brought them to Afghanistan through the events of the fateful day when one is gravely wounded, an Afghan is dead, and a proponent of cross-cultural engagement is charged with his murder. Through it all, these brave Americans ended up showing the world just how determined they were to get things right, how hard it was to really understand a place like Afghanistan where storytelling has been a major tool of survival, and why all future wars will involve this strange mix of fighting and listening.Vanessa Gezari is the only journalist to have gained access to the lives of people inside this troubled Army program, including the brilliant, ambitious figures who conceived it. This true story of war and sacrifice will upend your ideas about what really went wrong in Afghanistan.The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World
By Michael Karpin. 2007
THE BOMB IN THE BASEMENT tells the fascinating story of how Israel became the Middle East's only nuclear power and…
-- unlike Iraq and Iran -- succeeded in keeping its atomic program secret. Veteran Israeli journalist Michael Karpin explains how Israel, by far the smallest of the nuclear powers, succeeded in its ambitious effort. David Ben-Gurion saw the need for an atomic capability to offset the numerical superiority of Arab armies at war with Israel. The Israeli program relied heavily on French assistance in its early years, until President Charles de Gaulle reduced his country's cooperation. Once it was discovered, Israel's nuclear program cast a shadow over relations between Israel and the United States. The Kennedy administration opposed it, and President Lyndon Johnson approved it only tacitly. Significant change took place when President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger adopted a new strategy. An Israel that possessed nuclear capability was a more valuable asset to the West than an Israel without such an option. President Nixon ceased to press Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and dropped U.S. surveillance of the Israeli reactor at Dimona. In exchange, Israel committed itself to maintain official ambiguity about its nuclear program. That policy remains in place nearly forty years later. Without American approval and the financial assistance and lobbying of Jews in North America, Israel could not have achieved its nuclear capability. This is a fascinating story of scientists, politicians, spies, and major international personalities who all played a part in an extraordinary undertaking that continues to shape the politics of the world's most volatile region. Today it remains to be seen whether Israel will permit Iran to build a nuclear bomb and threaten Israel's security.A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA
By Joshua Kurlantzick. 2017
The untold story of how America&’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection…
of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy.January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA&’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever.With &“revelatory reporting&” and &“lucid prose&” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew.Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA&’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today&’s war on terrorism.The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
By Gwen Adshead, Eileen Horne. 1991
In this &“unmissable book&” (The Guardian), an internationally renowned forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist demonstrates the remarkable human capacity for radical…
empathy, change, and redemption.What drives someone to commit an act of terrible violence? Drawing from her thirty years of experience in providing therapy to people in prisons and secure hospitals who have committed serious offenses, Dr. Gwen Adshead provides fresh and surprising insights into violence and the mind. Through a collaboration with coauthor Eileen Horne, Dr. Adshead brings her extraordinary career to life in a series of unflinching portraits.Alongside doctor and patient, we discover what human cruelty, ranging from serial homicide to stalking, arson or sexual offending, means to perpetrators, experiencing firsthand how minds can change when the people some might label as &“evil&” are able to take responsibility for their life stories and get to know their own minds. With outcomes ranging from hope to despair, from denial to recovery, these men and women are revealed in all their complexity and shared humanity. In this era of mass incarceration, deep cuts in mental health care and extreme social schisms, this book offers a persuasive argument for compassion over condemnation.Moving, thought-provoking, and brilliantly told, The Devil You Know is a rare and timely book with the power to transform our ideas about cruelty and violence, and to radically expand the limits of empathy. &“A welcome contribution to the literature of crime and rehabilitation&” (Kirkus Reviews).A Panoramic View of Chinese Culture
By Wu Dingming. 2014
A Panoramic View of Chinese Culture is an accessible introduction to the beautiful, vibrant world of Chinese customs, history, and…
civilization. Written for English speakers, with simplified Chinese translations of key words, the text invites students of China and the Chinese language to engage with the text in new and interesting ways. Covering everything from history, philosophy, and religion, to sports, cuisine, and medicine, A Panoramic View of Chinese Culture covers a vast array of topics with elegance and ease.Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang
By Zhao Ziyang. 2010
Premier Zhao Ziyang reveals the secret workings of China's government behind the Tiananmen massacre—and why he was deposed for trying…
to stop it.Prisoner of the State is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to China and who was dethroned at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 for trying to stop the massacre. Zhao spent the last years of his life under house arrest. An occasional detail about his life would slip out, but scholars and citizens lamented that Zhao never had his final say. But Zhao did produce a memoir, secretly recording on audio tapes the real story of what happened during modern China&’s most critical moments. He provides intimate details about the Tiananmen crackdown, describes the ploys and double crosses used by China&’s leaders, and exhorts China to adopt democracy in order to achieve long-term stability. His riveting, behind-the-scenes recollections form the basis of Prisoner of the State. The China that Zhao portrays is not some long-lost dynasty. It is today&’s China, where its leaders accept economic freedom but resist political change. Zhao might have steered China&’s political system toward openness and tolerance had he survived. Although Zhao now speaks from the grave, his voice still has the moral power to make China sit up and listen.On the Alternative Punishment to the Death Penalty in China
By Gui Huang. 2024
This book presents a study of alternative penalties to the death penalty in China, aiming to promote theoretical exploration of…
death penalty reform in China as well as long-term penal reform. Currently, China is endeavouring to control the use of the death penalty and is gradually moving towards its abolition. The factors influencing the choice of the punishment option to replace the death penalty are complex and varied and include the traditional punishment culture, penalty concepts, the political system, the punishment system, public opinion and human rights, etc. Given the differences between China and developed Western democratic states, when we examine these influencing factors, we cannot ignore the culture of the punishment and the special political and legislation system in China. In this light, this work examined and analysed the factors that influence the choice of punishment option to replace the death penalty in this special political system with its clearly Chinese characteristics. Criminal policy and public opinion are two significant and typical factors involving obvious political considerations in China. The former normally reflects and carries out the will of the Government as expressed to the national management; the latter responds to the majority of citizens’ view on the current legal system and it is, to a great extent, the basis for national leadership’s running of the country. Even though life imprisonment without release (hereinafter, LWOR) has been stipulated by the Ninth Amendment for the crime of corruption, it should not be the preferable option as the alternative sanction to the death penalty because it is a kind of cruel torture and violates the constitutional principle of human rights protection. On the contrary, life imprisonment with possibility of release (hereinafter, LWPR) would be an option, but the termination mechanisms for inmates should be set out in accordance with the principle of proportional justice; aggravatedlife imprisonment can be chosen to replace the death penalty in China. In addition, there needs to be improvements made to the relevant criminal systems. By examining China's death penalty reform and long-term imprisonment reform, this book not only explains the methodology of the reform theoretically, but also pays attention to the issues of legislation and judicial practice. This book is of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of criminal justice, penal reform issues, and crime control in China.Too Young to Kill
By M. William Phelps. 2011
The New York Times bestselling author of Love Her to Death shares the true-crime story of a small-town Midwestern teenager…
murdered by her own friends.Sixteen-year-old Adrianne Reynolds couldn't unravel the twisted tangles of jealousy and domination complicating her new life in East Moline, Illinois. What began as a fresh start after a troubled home life in Texas ended with Adrianne's body charred, stuffed into garbage bags, and scattered. It seemed the work of hardened criminals, but the truth was far more astonishing: her own “best friends” choked Adrianne to death and cut her up. Now, master crime writer M. William Phelps recounts this horrific saga of teen lust and violence in every gripping detail.Praise for Too Young to Kill“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.” —Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Tell No LiesIncludes sixteen pages of revealing photosTokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan
By Robert Bellah. 1957
Robert N. Bellah's classic study, Tokugawa Religion does for Japan what Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of…
Capitalism did for the West. One of the foremost authorities on Japanese history and culture, Bellah explains how religion in the Tokugawa period (160-1868) established the foundation for Japan's modern industrial economy and dispels two misconceptions about Japanese modernization: that it began with Admiral Perry's arrival in 1868, and that it rapidly developed because of the superb Japanese ability for imitation. In this revealing work, Bellah shows how the native doctrines of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto encouraged forms of logic and understanding necessary for economic development. Japan's current status as an economic superpower and industrial model for many in the West makes this groundbreaking volume even more important today than when it was first published in 1957. With a new introduction by the author.Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia's Next Superpower
By Inc. McKinsey & Company. 2013
Reimagining India brings together leading thinkers from around the world to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by one of…
the most important and least understood nations on earth. India’s abundance of life—vibrant, chaotic, and tumultuous—has long been its foremost asset. The nation’s rising economy and burgeoning middle class have earned India a place alongside China as one of the world’s two indispensable emerging markets. At the same time, India’s tech-savvy entrepreneurs and rapidly globalizing firms are upending key sectors of the world economy. But what is India’s true potential? And what can be done to unlock it? McKinsey & Company has pulled in wisdom from many corners—social and cultural as well as economic and political—to launch a feisty debate about the future of Asia’s “other superpower.” Reimagining India features an all-star cast of contributors, including CNN’s Fareed Zakaria; Mukesh Ambani, CEO of India’s largest private conglomerate; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria; award-winning authors Suketu Mehta (Maximum City), Edward Luce (In Spite of the Gods), and Patrick French (India: A Portrait); Nandan Nilekani, Infosys cofounder and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India; and a host of other leading executives, entrepreneurs, economists, foreign policy experts, journalists, historians, and cultural luminaries. These essays explore topics like the strengths and weaknesses of India’s political system, growth prospects for India’s economy, the competitiveness of Indian firms, India’s rising international profile, and the rapid evolution of India’s culture.Over the next decade India has the opportunity to show the rest of the developing world how open, democratic societies can achieve high growth and shared prosperity. Contributors offer creative strategies for seizing that opportunity. But they also offer a frank assessment of the risks that India’s social and political fractures will instead thwart progress, condemning hundreds of millions of people to enduring poverty. Reimagining India is a critical resource for readers seeking to understand how this vast and vital nation is changing—and how it promises to change the world around us.After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era
By Steven Brill. 2003
The story begins on September 12, 2001. It reads like a novel. But the characters in award-winning journalist Steven Brill's…
America are real. They don't have all the answers or all the virtues of fictional heroes. It is because they are so human -- so much like the rest of us -- that makes the way they rise to the challenge of September 12 such an inspiring story about how America really works. A Customs inspector somehow has to guard against a nuclear bomb that could be hidden in one of the thousands of cargo containers from all over the world sitting on his dock in New York harbor. A young woman in New Jersey, suddenly widowed with three young children, doesn't know how to get the keys to her husband's car, much less how she can challenge the head of a federal victims' fund. An entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, who makes machines that screen luggage for bombs, can't decide if this crisis is an opportunity he should seize. Attorney General John Ashcroft has no idea how to find the new, hidden enemy living among us. The young, just-hired director of the American Civil Liberties Union wonders how he can keep Ashcroft from going too far. The CEO of a giant insurer has to decide whether to risk economic panic by not paying damage claims that he might legally be able to avoid. Red Cross President Bernadine Healy has to figure out how to collect and allocate donations while dodging a hostile board of directors. Career civil servant Gale Rossides has to recruit and train the largest workforce ever hired by the government -- the new airport passenger screeners. A proprietor of a shoe repair shop -- helped by two young women, pro bono lawyers -- has to rebuild a business buried in the rubble of Ground Zero. A Detroit Border Patrol agent -- whose bosses want to fire him for speaking out about how unprotected his stretch of border is -- has to choose whether to risk his family's livelihood by sounding the alarm. Tom Ridge has to run through a bureaucratic wall to mount a true homeland security defense. Drawing on 347 on-the-record interviews and revelations from memos of government meetings, court filings, and other documents, Brill gives us a front-row seat as these and other players in this real-life drama cross paths in a series of alliances and confrontations and fight for their own interests and their version of the public interest. The result is a gritty story -- and trailblazing journalism -- that inspires us not because these Americans or their country are perfect, but because they were tough enough, anchored enough, and living in a system that encouraged and enabled them to meet the awesome challenges they faced.Histories of Health in Southeast Asia: Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century (China Medical Board Centennial Series)
By Tim Harper and Sunil S. Amrith. 2014
Health patterns in Southeast Asia have changed profoundly over the past century. In that period, epidemic and chronic diseases, environmental…
transformations, and international health institutions have created new connections within the region and the increased interdependence of Southeast Asia with China and India. In this volume leading scholars provide a new approach to the history of health in Southeast Asia. Framed by a series of synoptic pieces on the "Landscapes of Health" in Southeast Asia in 1914, 1950, and 2014 the essays interweave local, national, and regional perspectives. They range from studies of long-term processes such as changing epidemics, mortality and aging, and environmental history to detailed accounts of particular episodes: the global cholera epidemic and the hajj, the influenza epidemic of 1918, WWII, and natural disasters. The writers also examine state policy on healthcare and the influence of organizations, from NGOs such as the China Medical Board and the Rockefeller Foundation to grassroots organizations in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.This book explores Britain’s involvement in the Dhofar War of 1963-1976, focusing on the military aspects of this conflict in…
Southern Oman. It reveals how both the Conservative and Labour governments in office during this time provided military and security assistance to Oman’s rulers without parliamentary or press scrutiny. Based on archival material and witness accounts, as well as existing secondary source literature and memoirs, this study provides new insights into Britain’s clandestine embroilment in the Dhofar War, an often overlooked but historically significant intervention in the Middle East. This book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students interested in the complex and often controversial history of Britain’s involvement in Middle Eastern politics in the post-colonial period.We Got Him!: A Memoir of the Hunt and Capture of Saddam Hussein
By Steve Russell. 2011
From retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell comes a compelling firsthand account of the blow-by-blow plays of the actual…
raids that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003.When U.S. forces exterminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, the world witnessed a brilliantly fruitful example of history repeating itself; less than a decade earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a triumph of military strategy in and of itself, opened the door for the more recent and essential victory in the War on Terror. At the center of the six-month manhunt were Lt. Col. Steve Russell and his men of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. With his extensive journal notes, combat reports, and painstaking research, Russell has preserved the story as only someone who lived the experience can do. His narrative chronicles the daily successes and dead ends, and describes, blow-by-blow, the actual raids that netted Saddam, culminating in the electrifying quote heard around the globe, &“We Got Him!&”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.World Tribunal on Iraq: Making the Case Against War
By Müge Gürsoy Sökmen. 2015
The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) was a collective effort involving hundreds of people from all over the world, most…
of them never having met in person. Inspired by the Bertrand Russell Tribunal of the Vietnam War era, WTI aimed to record not only the crimes against the Iraqi people, but also crimes committed against humanity. With contributions from over fifty internationally renowned experts, World Tribunal on Iraq examines every aspect of the war, from its legality, to the history of US and British military interventions in Iraq, to the role of international institutions and corporations in the occupation, to the use of torture, and to strategies of resistance.Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age (Crime and Society)
By David S. Wall. 2024
How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal activity?…
What impact might cybercrime have on public security? In this updated edition of his authoritative and field-defining text, cybercrime expert David Wall carefully examines these and other important issues. Incorporating analysis of the latest technological advances and their criminological implications, he disentangles what is really known about cybercrime today. An ecosystem of specialists has emerged to facilitate cybercrime, reducing individual offenders’ level of risk and increasing the scale of crimes involved. This is a world where digital and networked technologies have effectively democratized crime by enabling almost anybody to carry out crimes that were previously the preserve of either traditional organized crime groups or a privileged coterie of powerful people. Against this background, the author scrutinizes the regulatory challenges that cybercrime poses for the criminal (and civil) justice processes, at both the national and the international levels. This book offers the most intellectually robust account of cybercrime currently available. It is suitable for use on courses across the social sciences, and in computer science, and will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students.Legalizing Drugs: The key to ending the war (No-Nonsense Guides #3)
By Steve Rolles. 2017
The question is no longer if we should end the war on drugs but how we do it. This No-Nonsense…
Guide counts the human and financial cost of fifty years of drug war – and proceeds to outline a better way, looking at where drug law reform is already working, how to overcome the obstacles to reform, and what a post-drug war world might look like.This edited volume offers a new critical approach to the study of Zionist history and Israeli-Palestinian relations, based on the…
encounter between history and anthropology.Informed by the anthropological method of setting large questions to intimate settings, the book examines processes of Zionist colonization, nation-building and Palestinian dispossession by focusing on encounters between members of different national, religious and ethnic groups “from below”—through paying close attention to life stories and reconstructing everyday practices and micro-histories of places and communities. Thus, it tells a complex story in which the practices of historical actors are not simply reducible to a single underlying logic of colonization, even as they participate in the production and reproduction of colonial structures. This approach effectively undermines the prevailing tendency to study national communities in isolation, projecting onto the past an essentialist and rigid separation. Rather than assuming two clearly bounded and monolithic national groups, caught from the start in perpetual conflict, this volume probes their historical production through their evolving relationships, and their varied and shifting political, social, economic and cultural manifestations. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in an array of fields, including the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations, anthropological perspectives on settler colonialism, and Zionism.Prisoners' Vote: A Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspective (ISSN)
By Martine Herzog-Evans and Jérôme Thomas. 2024
Through different legal and criminological angles and perspectives, this book addresses the controversial question of whether prisoners should have the…
right to vote, as well as the optimal modalities for such a vote.By adopting a comparative approach to explore the legal systems of very different jurisdictions, such as the former Eastern Bloc, England, Ireland, the USA and France, the book reveals a recent trend in opening up the right to vote. It also looks at the recommendations of international and European institutions which, while relatively cautious, nevertheless support such progress. Examining the issue from a criminological viewpoint, the book investigates the role that prisoners’ votes could play in the social integration of these individuals into the community through political inclusion as citizens. Offering legal, theoretical and empirical bases, it blends a variety of perspectives to help readers establish an understanding of how prisoners' voting could contribute to improving their attachment to society and its values.Concise and direct, Prisoners' Vote will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of law, criminology, sociology, criminal justice, and political science. It should also appeal to practitioners working in the criminal justice system and policy makers reflecting on whether and how, to open the right to vote to prisoners.