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Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
By Brian Latell. 2012
In CASTRO'S SECRETS, highly acclaimed author and intelligence expert Brian Latell offers a strikingly original view of Fidel Castro in…
his role as Cuba's supreme spymaster. Based on interviews with high level defectors from Cuba's powerful intelligence and security services, long-buried secrets of Fidel's nearly 50-year reign are exposed for the first time. They include numerous assassinations and attempted ones carried out on Castro's orders, some against foreign leaders. More than a dozen ranking Cuban secret agents embraced by the CIA and FBI speak in these pages; some have never told their stories on the record before. Latell also probes dispassionately into the CIA's most deplorable plots against Cuba - including previously obscure schemes to assassinate Castro - and presents shocking new conclusions about what Fidel actually knew of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.The Wound and the Bow contains seven essays by "The greatest literary critic of the twentieth century.” -New York magazine.Combining…
biographical and critical sketches, Edmund Wilson writes brilliantly on a wide-range of authors including Dickens, Kipling, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce, Jacques Casanova, and Sophocles. "In the best tradition of literary criticism… combines exact information with shrewd and searching penetration into the personal life of the artist."-The New York TimesThem: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal
By Ben Sasse. 2018
* AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *From the New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing American Adult, an…
intimate and urgent assessment of the existential crisis facing our nation.Something is wrong. We all know it.American life expectancy is declining for a third straight year. Birth rates are dropping. Nearly half of us think the other political party isn’t just wrong; they’re evil. We’re the richest country in history, but we’ve never been more pessimistic. What’s causing the despair?In Them, bestselling author and U.S. senator Ben Sasse argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, our crisis isn’t really about politics. It’s that we’re so lonely we can’t see straight—and it bubbles out as anger. Local communities are collapsing. Across the nation, little leagues are disappearing, Rotary clubs are dwindling, and in all likelihood, we don’t know the neighbor two doors down. Work isn’t what we’d hoped: less certainty, few lifelong coworkers, shallow purpose. Stable families and enduring friendships—life’s fundamental pillars—are in statistical freefall. As traditional tribes of place evaporate, we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team. No institutions command widespread public trust, enabling foreign intelligence agencies to use technology to pick the scabs on our toxic divisions. We’re in danger of half of us believing different facts than the other half, and the digital revolution throws gas on the fire. There’s a path forward—but reversing our decline requires something radical: a rediscovery of real places and human-to-human relationships. Even as technology nudges us to become rootless, Sasse shows how only a recovery of rootedness can heal our lonely souls. America wants you to be happy, but more urgently, America needs you to love your neighbor and connect with your community. Fixing what's wrong with the country depends on it.Frank: A Life In Politics From The Great Society To Same-sex Marriage
By Barney Frank. 2015
How did a disheveled, intellectually combative gay Jew with a thick accent become one of the most effective (and funniest)…
politicians of our time?Growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, the fourteen-year-old Barney Frank made two vital discoveries about himself: he was attracted to government, and to men. He resolved to make a career out of the first attraction and to keep the second a secret. Now, fifty years later, his sexual orientation is widely accepted, while his belief in government is embattled. Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage is one man's account of the country's transformation—and the tale of a truly momentous career. Many Americans recall Frank's lacerating wit, whether it was directed at the Clinton impeachment ("What did the president touch, and when did he touch it?") or the pro-life movement (some people believe "life begins at conception and ends at birth"). But the contours of his private and public lives are less well-known. For more than four decades, he was at the center of the struggle for personal freedom and economic fairness. From the battle over AIDS funding in the 1980s to the debates over "big government" during the Clinton years to the 2008 financial crisis, the congressman from Massachusetts played a key role. In 2010, he coauthored the most far-reaching and controversial Wall Street reform bill since the era of the Great Depression, and helped bring about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In this feisty and often moving memoir, Frank candidly discusses the satisfactions, fears, and grudges that come with elected office. He recalls the emotional toll of living in the closet and how his public crusade against homophobia conflicted with his private accommodation of it. He discusses his painful quarrels with allies; his friendships with public figures, from Tip O'Neill to Sonny Bono; and how he found love with his husband, Jim Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage. He also demonstrates how he used his rhetorical skills to expose his opponents' hypocrisies and delusions. Through it all, he expertly analyzes the gifts a successful politician must bring to the job, and how even Congress can be made to work. Frank is the story of an extraordinary political life, an original argument for how to rebuild trust in government, and a guide to how political change really happens—composed by a master of the art.Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines
By Suzanne Mustacich. 2015
An inside view of China's quest to become a global wine power and Bordeaux's attempt to master the thirsty dragon…
it helped createThe wine merchants of Bordeaux and the rising entrepreneurs of China would seem to have little in common—old world versus new, tradition versus disruption, loyalty versus efficiency. And yet these two communities have found their destinies intertwined in the conquest of new markets, as Suzanne Mustacich shows in this provocative account of how China is reshaping the French wine business and how Bordeaux is making its mark on China.Thirsty Dragon lays bare the untold story of how an influx of Chinese money rescued France's most venerable wine region from economic collapse, and how the result was a series of misunderstandings and crises that threatened the delicate infrastructure of Bordeaux's insular wine trade. The Bordelais and the Chinese do business according to different and often incompatible sets of rules, and Mustacich uncovers the competing agendas and little-known actors who are transforming the economics and culture of Bordeaux, even as its wines are finding new markets—and ever higher prices—in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong, with Hong Kong and London traders playing a pivotal role.At once a tale of business skullduggery and fierce cultural clashes, adventure, and ambition, Thirsty Dragon offers a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges facing the world's most famous and prestigious wines.Gringo Nightmare: A Young American Framed for Murder in Nicaragua
By Eric Volz. 2010
In the spirit of Midnight Express and Not Without My Daughter comes the harrowing true story of an American held…
in a Nicaraguan prison for a murder he didn't commit.Eric Volz was in his late twenties in 2005 when he moved from California to Nicaragua. He and a friend cofounded a bilingual magazine, El Puente, and it proved more successful than they ever expected. Then Volz met Doris Jiménez, an incomparable beauty from a small Nicaraguan beach town, and they began a passionate and meaningful relationship. Though the relationship ended amicably less than a year later and Volz moved his business to the capital city of Managua, a close bond between the two endured.Nothing prepared him for the phone call he received on November 21, 2006, when he learned that Doris had been found dead---murdered---in her seaside clothing boutique. He rushed from Managua to be with her friends and family, and before he knew it, he found himself accused of her murder, arrested, and imprisoned. Decried in the press and vilified by his onetime friends, Volz suffered horrific conditions, illness, deadly inmates, an angry lynch mob, sadistic guards, and the merciless treatment of government officials. It was only through his dogged persistence, the tireless support of his friends and family, and the assistance of a former intelligence operative that Eric was released, in December 2007, after more than a year in prison.A story that made national and international headlines, this is the first and only book to tell Eric's absorbing, moving account in his own words.Visit the companion Exhibit Hall at the Gringo Nightmare website for additional photos, audio clips, video, case files, and more.The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, the World's Most Dangerous Fuel
By Martin Cohen, Andrew McKillop. 2012
Today, there are over one hundred nuclear reactors operating in our backyards, from Indian Point in New York to Diablo…
Canyon in California. Proponents claim that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels, and due to rising energy consumption and the looming threat of global warming, they are pushing for an even greater investment. Here, energy economist Andrew McKillop and social scientist Martin Cohen argue that the nuclear power dream being sold to us is pure fantasy. Debunking the multilayered myth that nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and safe, they demonstrate how landscapes are ravaged in search of the elusive yellowcake to fuel the reactors, and how energy companies and politicians rarely discuss the true costs of nuclear power plants - from the subsidies that build the infrastructure to the unspoken guarantee that the public will pick up the cleanup cost in the event of a meltdown, which can easily top $100 billion dollars.Tea Party Patriots: The Second American Revolution
By Mark Meckler, Jenny Beth Martin. 2012
The definitive history of one of the most radical, revolutionary movements the country has ever seen, from those who started…
it allIn 2009, an unemployed mother of two and a politically inexperienced northern California attorney met on a conference call that would end up starting one of the largest grassroots political organizations in American history, the Tea Party Patriots. Fueled by the fires of passion and patriotism, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin have become the faces of the most powerful political movement in the country, empowering their more than twenty million members by using both high-tech advances and the time-tested American tradition of rallying in public. Promoting the basic principles of the Tea Party Movement—free market, limited government, and fiscal responsiblity—the Tea Party Patriots have become the largest tea party organization in the world. With unparalleled access to the inner workings of the movement, Meckler and Martin hope to explain how the Tea Party came to be, what it is and is not, and perhaps most important, provide the first comprehensive, forward-looking document outlining a plan to restore America to its prior greatness. Never before has there been such an audience for this material. Americans of all political stripes have been waiting for a thorough and informative account of this movement. Straight from the co-founders themselves, Tea Party Patriots promises to be the definitive source for a political revolution.Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts
By David E. McCraw. 2019
David E. McCraw recounts his experiences as the top newsroom lawyer for the New York Times during the most turbulent…
era for journalism in generations.In October 2016, when Donald Trump's lawyer demanded that The New York Times retract an article focused on two women that accused Trump of touching them inappropriately, David McCraw's scathing letter of refusal went viral and he became a hero of press freedom everywhere. But as you'll see in Truth in Our Times, for the top newsroom lawyer at the paper of record, it was just another day at the office.McCraw has worked at the Times since 2002, leading the paper's fight for freedom of information, defending it against libel suits, and providing legal counsel to the reporters breaking the biggest stories of the year. In short: if you've read a controversial story in the paper since the Bush administration, it went across his desk first. From Chelsea Manning's leaks to Trump's tax returns, McCraw is at the center of the paper's decisions about what news is fit to print.In Truth in Our Times, McCraw recounts the hard legal decisions behind the most impactful stories of the last decade with candor and style. The book is simultaneously a rare peek behind the curtain of the celebrated organization, a love letter to freedom of the press, and a decisive rebuttal of Trump's fake news slur through a series of hard cases. It is an absolute must-have for any dedicated reader of The New York Times.All One Universe: A Collection Of Fiction And Nonfiction
By Poul Anderson. 1988
Poul Anderson himself has put together a retrospective collection of his recent writings, fiction and nonfiction, under the title All…
One Universe. This is the first major Poul Anderson collection in a decade. It encompasses all his strengths as a teller of tales and, in addition, provides a running commentary in the story notes and in the essays on other literary figures such as Rudyard Kipling, Johannes B. Jensen, and John W. Campbell, Jr., commentary that illuminates the fiction, gives personal insight into the mind of this fine writer, and provides a unifying personality for All One Universe. All One Universe, then, represents the new best of Poul Anderson. It is a rich, varied selection of quintessential science fiction as well as four essays, mostly from recent years, by one of the great science fiction writers of the century. His stories are filled with roaring energy, the soul of poetry, and dark imaginings. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.Dictionary of the Undoing
By John Freeman. 2019
For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the…
rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.From the author of the landmark bestseller What's the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate—and…
lucrative—conservative misruleIn his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us. Casting his eyes from the Bush administration's final months of plunder to the earliest days of the Republican revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters—the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.Stamped with Thomas Frank's audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America
By Larry Elder. 2003
The Ten Things You Can't Say in America struck a chord with eager readers across the country, exposing truths others…
have been too afraid to address. In his new book, Elder is out to slay entrenched and enmeshed special interest groups, government agencies with the capacity to meddle in Americans' lives and businesses, lawmakers who continue a pattern of outrageous overtaxation, and those who would hamstring this country with good intentions.Showdown demonstrates how the nation would be better, stronger and safer with less gvernment intervention and how individuals would not only cope but thrive without the so-called safety net. Showdown is a call to arms for a truly free society. Elder discusses:- What a Republican-led government means for progress- Where a responsible government would put its citizens' tax dollars- Why racial and sex discrimination are non-issues in the 21st century.Larry Elders straight talk and common-sense solutions spare no one and will inspire his passionate and growing audience.Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing That Changed the Course of Civil Rights
By Doug Jones, Greg Truman. 2019
The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating…
in Sen. Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments.But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously expressed it, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002, representing the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making. Jones himself went on to win election as Alabama’s first Democratic Senator since 1992 in a dramatic race against Republican challenger Roy Moore.Bending Toward Justice is a dramatic and compulsively readable account of a key moment in our long national struggle for equality, related by an author who played a major role in these events. A distinguished work of legal and personal history, the book is destined to take its place as a canonical civil rights history.Terrorism and Political Contention: New Perspectives on North Africa and the Sahel Region (Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region)
By János Besenyő, Leonid Issaev, Andrey Korotayev. 2024
Against the backdrop of terrorist activity and the emergence of new conflicts in the MENA region, this book identifies factors…
of political contestation and analyzes organizational forms and dynamics of terrorism and conflict in North Africa and the Sahel. Written by an international selection of authors from different fields, the book covers topics such as the radicalization of terrorist organizations operating in the region, the financing of terrorism, the role of migration, the radicalization of women, the influence and motives of great powers and external factors such as France in the region, and the impact of the war in Ukraine. The book appeals to scholars and students of politics and international relations as well as African and Middle Eastern studies.Migrants’: Global Pandemic and Beyond (Europe in a Global Context)
By Marco Caselli, Jörg Dürrschmidt, John Eade. 2024
This book analyses the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on three ethnic minorities in three European cities: Bangladeshi in London, Turks in Stuttgart and…
Peruvians in Milan. Considerable debate has emerged during the pandemic concerning its impact on minorities, and although considerable quantitative data has been generated by epidemiologists, qualitative studies also have great relevance, socially and culturally as well as institutionally. While in normal circumstances the position of migrant communities is associated with unequal access to scarce resources such as wealth, power and social prestige, the coronavirus pandemic shifted the focus to more specific variables: living in segmented or overcrowded conditions, working in jobs with higher risk exposure, difficulties with online schooling, and lack of access to health care and information.The book will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of sociology, anthropology, global studies, migration and urban studies.Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century
By Katherine S. Newman, Hella Winston. 2016
From Katherine Newman, award-winning author of No Shame in My Game, and sociologist Hella Winston, a sharp and irrefutable call…
to reenergize this nation's long-neglected system of vocational trainingAfter decades of off-shoring and downsizing that have left blue collar workers obsolete and stranded, the United States is now on the verge of an industrial renaissance. Companies like Apple, BMW, Bosch, and Volkswagen are all opening plants and committing millions of dollars to build products right here on American soil. The only problem: we don't have a skilled enough labor pool to fill these positions, which are in many cases technically demanding and require specialized skills. A decades-long series of idealistic educational policies with the expressed goal of getting every student to go to college has left a generation of potential workers out of the system. Touted as a progressive, egalitarian institution providing opportunity even to those with the greatest need, the American secondary school system has in fact deepened existing inequalities, leaving behind millions of youth, especially those who live in the de-industrialized Northeast and Midwest, without much of a future at all. We can do better, argue acclaimed sociologists Katherine Newman and Hella Winston. Taking a page from the successful experience of countries like Germany and Austria, where youth unemployment is a mere 7%, they call for a radical reevaluation of the idea of vocational training, long discredited as an instrument of tracking. The United States can prepare a new, high-performance labor force if we revamp our school system to value industry apprenticeship and rigorous technical education. By doing so, we will not only be able to meet the growing demand for skilled employees in dozens of sectors where employers decry the absence of well trained workers -- we will make the American Dream accessible to all.The Mayor of Mogadishu: A Story of Chaos and Redemption in the Ruins of Somalia
By Andrew Harding. 2016
"This is a triumph of a book: surprising, informative, and humane." —Alexander McCall Smith"Stunning." —Foreign Affairs"Pieces together Nur's astonishing biography…
and follows him when he became mayor in 2010 and tried to restore confidence and bring back investment to the battered Somali capital." —NPR“Part on-the-ground war reporting, part investigative biography, Harding’s book captures both the fragile hopes and the appalling violence of Somalia . . . .” —The New York Times**A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2017****One of Book Concierge's Best Books of 2016**In The Mayor of Mogadishu, one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, Andrew Harding, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud “Tarzan” Nur - an impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north London.But in 2010 Tarzan returned, as Mayor, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. For many in Mogadishu, and in the diaspora, Tarzan became a galvanizing symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue, today, to threaten the country’s revival.The Mayor of Mogadishu is a rare an insider’s account of Somalia’s unraveling, and an intimate portrayal of one family’s extraordinary journey.The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment
By Geoffrey Kabaservice. 2004
How liberalism and one of the most dramatic eras in American history were shaped by an influential university president and…
his powerful circle of friendsYale's Kingman Brewster was the first and only university president to appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the last of the great campus leaders to become an esteemed national figure. He was also the center of the liberal establishment—a circle of influential men who fought to keep the United States true to ideals and extend the full range of American opportunities to all citizens of every class and color. Using Brewster as his focal point, Geoffrey Kabaservice shows how he and his lifelong friends—Kennedy adviser McGeorge Bundy, Attorney General and statesman Elliot Richardson, New York mayor John Lindsay, Bishop Paul Moore, and Cyrus Vance, pillar of Washington and Wall Street—helped usher this country through the turbulence of the 1960s, creating a legacy that still survives. In a narrative that is as engaging and lively as it is meticulously researched, The Guardians judiciously and convincingly reclaims the importance of Brewster and his generation, illuminating their vital place in American history as the bridge between the old establishment and modern liberalism.The Hunting of Hillary: The Forty-Year Campaign to Destroy Hillary Clinton
By Michael D'Antonio. 2020
"I'm biased! But I think Michael D'Antonio's book, cataloging decades of right-wing misogyny and mythmaking, is a stunner." - Hillary…
ClintonThe Hunting of Hillary traces how an entire industry of hate, lies, and fear was created to persecute Hillary Clinton for decades and profit from it.In TheHunting of Hillary, Pulitzer prize winning political reporter Michael D’Antonio details the years of lies and insults heaped upon Hillary Clinton as she pursued a life devoted to politics and policy. The worst took the form of sexism and misogyny, much of it barely disguised. A pioneer for women, Clinton was burdened in ways no man ever was. Defined by a right-wing conspiracy, she couldn’t declare what was happening lest she be cast as weak and whiny. Nevertheless, she persisted and wouldn't let them define her. As The Hunting of Hillary makes clear, her achievements have been all the more remarkable for the unique opposition she encountered. The 2016 presidential election can only be understood in the context of the primal and primitive response of those who just couldn’t imagine that a woman might lead. For those who seek to understand the experience of the most accomplished woman in American politics, TheHunting of Hillary offers insight. For those who recognized what happened to her, it offers affirmation. And for those who hope to carry Clinton’s work into the future, it offers inspiration and instruction.