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Case of a Lifetime: A Criminal Defense Lawyer's Story
By Abbe Smith. 2008
A recent study estimates that thousands of innocent people are wrongfully imprisoned each year in the United States. Some are…
exonerated through DNA evidence, but many more languish in prison because their convictions were based on faulty eyewitness accounts and no DNA is available. Prominent criminal lawyer and law professor Abbe Smith weaves together real life cases to show what it is like to champion the rights of the accused. Smith describes the moral and ethical dilemmas of representing the guilty and the weighty burden of fighting for the innocent, including the victorious story of how she helped free a woman wrongly imprisoned for nearly three decades.For fans of Law and Order and investigative news programs like 20/20, Case of a Lifetime is a chilling look at what really determines a person's innocence.Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down
By Robert Fitzpatrick, Jon Land. 2011
In Betrayal, renowned FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick partners with USA Today bestselling author Jon Land to present the true story…
of the lawman’s pursuit of James “Whitey” Bulger, Jr., the notorious crimelord of Boston, Massachusetts’s Winter Hill Gang. The Jack Nicholson film The Departed didn’t tell half of their story. A poor kid from the slums, Robert Fitzpatrick grew up to become a stellar FBI agent and challenge the country’s deadliest gangsters. Relentless in his desire to catch, prosecute, and convict Whitey Bulger, Fitzpatrick fought the nation’s most determined cop-gangster battle since Melvin Purvis hunted, confronted, and killed John Dillinger.In his crusade to bring Bulger to justice, Fitzpatrick faced not only Whitey but also corrupt FBI agents, along with political cronies and enablers from Boston to Washington who, in one way or another, blocked his efforts at every step. Even when Fitzpatrick discovered the very organization to which he had sworn allegiance was his biggest obstacle, the agent continued to pursue Whitey and his gang . . . knowing that they were prepared to murder anyone who got in their way.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.The Death of an Heir is Philip Jett's chilling true account of the Coors family’s gilded American dream that turned…
into a nightmare when a meticulously plotted kidnapping went horribly wrong.In the 1950s and 60s, the Coors dynasty reigned over Golden, Colorado, seemingly invincible. When rumblings about labor unions threatened to destabilize the family's brewery, Adolph Coors, Jr., the septuagenarian president of the company, drew a hard line, refusing to budge. They had worked hard for what they had, and no one had a right to take it from them. What they'd soon realize was that they had more to lose than they could have imagined.On the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 1960, Adolph “Ad” Coors III, the 44-year-old CEO of the multimillion dollar Colorado beer empire, stepped into his car and headed for the brewery twelve miles away. At a bridge he stopped to help a man in a yellow Mercury sedan. On the back seat lay handcuffs and leg irons. The glove box held a ransom note ready to be mailed. His coat pocket shielded a loaded pistol.What happened next set off the largest U.S. manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping. State and local authorities, along with the FBI personally spearheaded by its director J. Edgar Hoover, burst into action attempting to locate Ad and his kidnapper. The dragnet spanned a continent. All the while, Ad’s grief-stricken wife and children waited, tormented by the unrelenting silence. The Death of an Heir reveals the true story behind the tragic murder of Colorado’s favorite son.I You We Them, Vol. 1: Walking into the World of the Desk Killer (I You We Them)
By Dan Gretton. 2019
A Washington Post notable nonfiction book of 2020"I You We Them is a uniquely gripping journey around the landscapes of…
mass murder." --Philippe Sands, author of East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against HumanityA Spectator (UK) Best Book of 2019A landmark historical investigation into crimes against humanity and the nature of evilVast and revelatory, Dan Gretton’s I You We Them is an unprecedented study of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity: the “desk killers” who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the modern era. From Albert Speer’s complicity in Nazi barbarism to Royal Dutch Shell’s role in the murders of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni Nine, Gretton probes the depths of the figure “who, by giving orders, uses paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun.”Over the past twenty years, Gretton has interviewed survivors and perpetrators, and pored over archives and thousands of pages of testimony. His insight into the psychology of the desk killer is contextualized by the journey he took to penetrate it. Woven into the narrative are his contemplative interludes—perspectives gleaned during walks in the woods, reminiscences about a lost love, and considerations of timeless moral conundrums. The result is a genre-bending work steeped as much in personal reflection as it is in literature and historical and psychological illumination.A synthesis of history, reportage, and memoir, I You We Them is the first volume of a groundbreaking journal of discovery that bears witness to and reckons with the largest and most pressing questions before humanity.The Bible's Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures Missing from Your Bible
By Joel M. Hoffman. 2014
The Bible you usually read is not the complete story. Some holy writings were left out for political or theological…
reasons, others simply because of the physical restrictions of ancient bookmaking technology. At times, the compilers of the Bible skipped information that they assumed everyone knew. Some passages were even omitted by accident.In The Bible's Cutting Room Floor, acclaimed author and translator Dr. Joel M. Hoffman gives us the stories and other texts that didn't make it into the Bible even though they offer penetrating insight into the Bible and its teachings.The Book of Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve's time in the Garden of Eden, but not their saga after they get kicked out or the lessons they have for us about good and evil. The Bible introduces us to Abraham, but it doesn't include the troubling story of his early life, which explains how he came to reject idolatry to become the father of monotheism. And while there are only 150 Psalms in today's Bible, there used to be many more.Dr. Hoffman deftly brings these and other ancient scriptural texts to life, exploring how they offer new answers to some of the most fundamental and universal questions people ask about their lives. An impressive blend of history, linguistics, and religious scholarship, The Bible's Cutting Room Floor reveals what's missing from your Bible, who left it out, and why it is so important.Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography, a True Story of Genius and Rivalry
By Roger Watson, Helen Rappaport. 2013
An intimate look at the journeys of two men—a gentleman scientist and a visionary artist—as they struggled to capture the…
world around them, and in the process invented modern photographyDuring the 1830s, in an atmosphere of intense scientific enquiry fostered by the industrial revolution, two quite different men—one in France, one in England—developed their own dramatically different photographic processes in total ignorance of each other's work. These two lone geniuses—Henry Fox Talbot in the seclusion of his English country estate at Lacock Abbey and Louis Daguerre in the heart of post-revolutionary Paris—through diligence, disappointment and sheer hard work overcame extraordinary odds to achieve the one thing man had for centuries been trying to do—to solve the ancient puzzle of how to capture the light and in so doing make nature 'paint its own portrait'. With the creation of their two radically different processes—the Daguerreotype and the Talbotype—these two giants of early photography changed the world and how we see it. Drawing on a wide range of original, contemporary sources and featuring plates in colour, sepia and black and white, many of them rare or previously unseen, Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport charts an extraordinary tale of genius, rivalry and human resourcefulness in the quest to produce the world's first photograph.The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves
By Siri Hustvedt. 2009
In this unique neurological memoir Siri Hustvedt attempts to solve her own mysterious conditionWhile speaking at a memorial event for…
her father in 2006, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves tracks Hustvedt's search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self? During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, "a brilliant illumination for us all."Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System
By Ivars Peterson. 1993
With his critically acclaimed best-sellers The Mathematical Toursist and Islands of Truth, Ivars Peterson took readers to the frontiers of…
modern mathematics. His new book provides an up-to-date look at one of science's greatest detective stories: the search for order in the workings of the solar system.In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton provided what astronomers had long sought: a seemingly reliable way of calculating planetary orbits and positions. Newton's laws of motion and his coherent, mathematical view of the universe dominated scientific discourse for centuries. At the same time, observers recorded subtle, unexpected movements of the planets and other bodies, suggesting that the solar system is not as placid and predictable as its venerable clockwork image suggests.Today, scientists can go beyond the hand calculations, mathematical tables, and massive observational logs that limited the explorations of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others. Using supercomputers to simulate the dynamics of the solar system, modern astronomers are learning more about the motions they observe and uncovering some astonishing examples of chaotic behavior in the heavens. Nonetheless, the long-term stability of the solar system remains a perplexing, unsolved issue, with each step toward its resolution exposing additional uncertainties and deeper mysteries.To show how our view of the solar system has changed from clocklike precision to chaos and complexity, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics through the ages--from the star charts of ancient navigators to the seminal discoveries of the 17th centure; from the crucial work of Poincaré to the startling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. The result makes for entertaining and provocative reading, equal parts science, history, and intellectual adventure.This is the story of an author and his apprentice. It is the story of literary influence and tragedy. It…
is also the story of incarceration in America.Norman Mailer was writing The Executioner’s Song, his novel about condemned killer Gary Gilmore, when he struck up a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, Federal Prisoner 87098-132. Over time, Abbott convinced the famous author that he was a talented writer who deserved another chance at freedom. With letters of support from Mailer and other literary elites of the day, Abbott was released on parole in 1981. With Mailer’s help, Abbott quickly became the literary “it boy” of New York City. But in a shocking turn of events, the day before a rave review of Abbott’s book, In the Belly of the Beast, appeared in TheNew York Times, Abbott murdered a New York City waiter and fled to Mexico. Eerily, like Gary Gilmore in Mailer’s true-life novel, Abbott killed within six weeks of his release from prison. Now Jerome Loving explores the history of two of the most infamous books of the past 50 years, a fascinating story that has never before been told.The Chick and the Dead: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors
By Carla Valentine. 2017
Carla Valentine works with the dead. After studying forensics, she assisted pathologists with post-mortems for years before becoming the curator…
of the world’s most famous pathology museum. When it comes to death, she truly is an expert, and in this book she shares that expertise.Using the most common post-mortem process as the backbone of the narrative, The Chick and the Dead takes the reader through the process of an autopsy while also describing the history and changing cultures of our relationship with the dead. The book is full of vivid insight into what happens to our bodies in the end. Each chapter considers an aspect of an autopsy alongside an aspect of Carla’s own life and work and touches on some of the more controversial aspects of our feelings towards death, including the relationship between sex and death and our attitudes toward human tissue collection.Starting with the first cut, we move from external examination into the body itself, discovering more about the heart, stomach and brain, and into dismembered and reconstructed bodies, at each stage taking a colorful detour into the question of what these things can teach us about the living. Join Carla on the journey from microscope-requesting nine-year-old to pathology educator and death engager at a Victorian museum (a journey made via around 5,000 autopsies) as she tells the story of exactly what it’s like to live a life immersed in death.In This Together: My Story
By Ann Romney. 2015
When Mitt and Ann Romney met in their late teens, a great American love story began. And their life together…
would be blessed: five healthy sons, financial security, and a home filled with joy. Despite the typical ups and downs, they had a storybook life.Then, in 1998, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She couldn't believe it was real; there were no therapies or treatments to help her. Mitt told her that day that they would tackle the diagnosis as a team: They were in it together. "As long as it isn't fatal, we're fine. If you have to be in a wheelchair, I'll be right there to push it," he told her. And Ann thought, "But I'll be the one in the wheelchair." A caregiver and helper her whole life, she'd crossed a terrible invisible line. She wouldn't be able to care for her family anymore. She was the patient. Ann and Mitt would face the most frightening and humbling experience of their lives.From reflections on her early life, her marriage, and her diagnosis and recovery, the sources of her faith, and the stories of others who overcame adversity and inspired her to keep going, In This Together is a brave and deeply honest portrait of a family facing an unexpected blow, often in the most public of circumstances."A lot of people talk about a transformation that happens when life throws you a curve ball, and the big one in my life was my MS diagnosis. With all the blessings I've had, MS has been my greatest teacher: It has taught me about faith, compassion, and serving others. I've met many people along the way who've shared advice and demonstrated enormous resilience in the face of challenges; their stories gave me strength. In sharing my story, I want to give others hope as I've been given hope on this journey."The Year of Fear: Machine Gun Kelly and the Manhunt That Changed the Nation
By Joe Urschel. 2016
It's 1933 and Prohibition has given rise to the American gangster--now infamous names like Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.…
Bank robberies at gunpoint are commonplace and kidnapping for ransom is the scourge of a lawless nation. With local cops unauthorized to cross state lines in pursuit and no national police force, safety for kidnappers is just a short trip on back roads they know well from their bootlegging days. Gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly and his wife, Kathryn, are some of the most celebrated criminals of the Great Depression. With gin-running operations facing extinction and bank vaults with dwindling stores of cash, Kelly sets his sights on the easy-money racket of kidnapping. His target: rich oilman, Charles Urschel.Enter J. Edgar Hoover, a desperate Justice Department bureaucrat who badly needs a successful prosecution to impress the new administration and save his job. Hoover's agents are given the sole authority to chase kidnappers across state lines and when Kelly bungles the snatch job, Hoover senses his big opportunity. What follows is a thrilling 20,000 mile chase over the back roads of Depression-era America, crossing 16 state lines, and generating headlines across America along the way--a historical mystery/thriller for the ages.Joe Urschel's The Year of Fear is a thrilling true crime story of gangsters and lawmen and how an obscure federal bureaucrat used this now legendary kidnapping case to launch the FBI.Armed & Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman
By Gina Gallo. 2001
The critically acclaimed memoirs of one female police officer's sixteen-year odyssey, beginning with day one at the Police Academy and…
spanning assignments on Chicago's West Side, one of the most dangerous areas in the city.The notorious cops' code of silence is broken as the author recounts incidents in the West Side projects: shoot-outs, ambushes, and what it feels like to kill a man—just four days out of the Academy.The stories told are sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, often poignant, and always provide the reader with an on the scene feel for life behind the badge. Domestic violence, murdered spouses, abused children, and philandering CPD brass are just some of the topics addressed, topics that officer Gallo dealt with everyday.From her work with gangs, narcotics, the gun task force, and acting as a prostitute, Gina Gallo offers a gritty account of the darker side of the city, giving readers an objective side to the cops, crooks, and victims that comprise a the police cops world.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzmán
By Alan Feuer. 2020
The definitive account of the rise and fall of the ultimate narco, "El Chapo," from the New York Times reporter…
whose coverage of his trial went viralJoaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is the most legendary of Mexican narcos. As leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, he was one of the most dangerous men in the world. His fearless climb to power, his brutality, his charm, his taste for luxury, his penchant for disguise, his multiple dramatic prison escapes, his unlikely encounter with Sean Penn—all of these burnished the image of the world's most famous outlaw. He was finally captured by U.S. and Mexican law enforcement in a daring operation years in the making. Here is that entire epic story—from El Chapo's humble origins to his conviction in a Brooklyn courthouse. Longtime New York Times criminal justice reporter Alan Feuer's coverage of his trial was some of the most riveting journalism of recent years. Feuer’s mastery of the complex facts of the case, his unparalleled access to confidential sources in law enforcement, and his powerful understanding of disturbing larger themes—what this one man's life says about drugs, walls, class, money, Mexico, and the United States—will ensure that El Jefe is the one book to read about “El Chapo.”Hitman: The Untold Story of Johnny Martorano
By Howie Carr. 2011
Martin Scorsese's The Departed barely touched on his story. Now radio talk show sensation, crime reporter, and Boston Herald columnist…
Howie Carr takes us into the heart of the life of gangster Johnny Martorano in Hitman. For two decades Martorano struck fear into anyone even remotely connected to his world. His partnership with Whitey Bulger and the infamous Winter Hill Gang led to twenty mob murders—for which Johnny would serve twelve years in prison. Carr also looks at the politicians and FBI agents who aided Johnny and Whitey, and at the flamboyant city of Boston which Martorano so ruthlessly ruled. A plethora of paradoxes, Johnny Martorano was Mr. Mom by day and man-about-town by night. Surrounded by fast-living politicians, sports celebrities, and show biz entertainers, Johnny was charismatically colorful—as charming as he was frightening. After all, he was, in the end…a hitman. The paperback edition of Howie Carr's riveting true-crime story includes a new epilogue detailing Whitey Bulger's dramatic June 2011 capture..At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.The True German: The Diary of a World War II Military Judge
By Werner Otto Müller-Hill. 2011
A recently discovered diary held by a German military judge from 1944 to 1945 sheds new light on anti-Hitler sentiments…
inside the German army.Werner Otto Müller-Hill served as a military judge in the Werhmacht during World War II. From March 1944 to the summer of 1945, he kept a diary, recording his impressions of what transpired around him as Germany hurtled into destruction—what he thought about the fate of the Jewish people, the danger from the Bolshevik East once an Allied victory was imminent, his longing for his home and family and, throughout it, a relentless disdain and hatred for the man who dragged his beloved Germany into this cataclysm, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Müller-Hill calls himself a German nationalist, the true Prussian idealist who was there before Hitler and would be there after. Published in Germany and France, Müller-Hill's diary The True German has been hailed as a unique document, praised for its singular candor and uncommon insight into what the German army was like on the inside. It is an extraordinary testament to a part of Germany's people that historians are only now starting to acknowledge and fills a gap in our knowledge of WWII.Thunderstruck
By Erik Larson. 2006
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world&’s &“great hush.&”In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories…
of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, &“the kindest of men,&” nearly commits the perfect murder.With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald's Assassin
By Danny Fingeroth. 2023
Jack Ruby changed history with one bold, violent action: killing accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV two…
days after the November 22, 1963, murder of President John F. Kennedy. But who was Jack Ruby—and how did he come to be in that spot on that day? As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the murders of Kennedy and Oswald, Jack Ruby's motives are as maddeningly ambiguous today as they were the day that he pulled the trigger. The fascinating yet frustrating thing about Ruby is that there is evidence to paint him as at least two different people. Much of his life story points to him as bumbling, vain, violent, and neurotic; a product of the grinding poverty of Chicago's Jewish ghetto; a man barely able to make a living or sustain a relationship with anyone besides his dogs. By the same token, evidence exists of Jack Ruby as cagey and competent, perhaps not a mastermind, but a useful pawn of the Mob and of both the police and the FBI; someone capable of running numerous legal, illegal, and semi-legal enterprises, including smuggling arms and vehicles to both sides in the Cuban revolution; someone capable of acting as middleman in bribery schemes to have imprisoned Mob figures set free. Cultural historian Danny Fingeroth's research includes a new, in-depth interview with Rabbi Hillel Silverman, the legendary Dallas clergyman who visited Ruby regularly in prison and who was witness to Ruby's descent into madness. Fingeroth also conducted interviews with Ruby family members and associates. The book's findings will catapult you into a trip through a house of historical mirrors.At its end, perhaps Jack Ruby's assault on history will begin to make sense. And perhaps we will understand how Oswald's assassin led us to the world we live in today.My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
By Lalage Snow. 2024
A few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent…
over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
By Lalage Snow. 2024
A few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent…
over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.