Beyond the Red Wall: Why Labour Lost, How the Conservatives Won and What Will Happen Next?


Deborah Mattinson - 2020
    

Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting


T.R. Pearson - 2006
    Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis's seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He'd been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl's bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis's trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast. Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you've probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis's challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don't miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea.

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians


Noam Chomsky - 1982
    Chomsky examines the origins of this relationship and its meaningful consequences for the Palestinians and other Arabs. The book mainly concentrates on the 1982 Lebanon War and the "pro-Zionist" bias of most U.S. media and intellectuals, as Chomsky puts it.

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays


Christopher Hitchens - 2004
    I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information." Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays showcases America's leading polemicist's rejection of consensus and cliché whether he's reporting from abroad in Indonesia, Kurdistan, Iraq, North Korea, or Cuba, or when his pen is targeted mercilessly at the likes of William Clinton, Mother Theresa ("a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud"), the Dalai Lama, Noam Chomsky, Mel Gibson and Michael Bloomberg. Hitchens began the nineties as a "darling of the left" but has become more of an "unaffiliated radical" whose targets include those on the "left," who he accuses of "fudging" the issue of military intervention in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, as Hitchens shows in his reportage, cultural and literary criticism, and opinion essays from the last decade, he has not jumped ship and joined the right but is faithful to the internationalist, contrarian and democratic ideals that have always informed his work.

Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk from an Energy Insider


John Hofmeister - 2010
    Now, he's a man on a mission, the founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, crisscrossing the country in a grassroots campaign to change the way we look at energy in this country. While pundits proffer false new promises of green energy independence, or flatly deny the existence of a problem, Hofmeister offers an insider's view of what's behind the energy companies' posturing, and how politicians use energy misinformation, disinformation, and lack of information to get and stay elected. He tackles the energy controversy head-on, without regard for political correctness. He also provides a new framework for solving difficult problems, identifying solutions that will lead to a future of comfortable lifestyles, affordable and clean energy, environmental protection, and sustained economic competitiveness.

National Security and Double Government


Michael J. Glennon - 2014
    security policy scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama administration? National Security and Double Government offers a disquieting answer. Michael J. Glennon challenges the myth that U.S. security policy is still forged by America's visible, Madisonian institutions - thePresident, Congress, and the courts. Their roles, he argues, have become largely illusory. Presidential control is now nominal, congressional oversight is dysfunctional, and judicial review is negligible. The book details the dramatic shift in power that has occurred from the Madisonian institutionsto a concealed Trumanite network - the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints. Reform efforts facedaunting obstacles. Remedies within this new system of double government require the hollowed-out Madisonian institutions to exercise the very power that they lack. Meanwhile, reform initiatives from without confront the same pervasive political ignorance within the polity that has given rise tothis duality. The book sounds a powerful warning about the need to resolve this dilemma-and the mortal threat posed to accountability, democracy, and personal freedom if double government persists. This paperback version features an Afterword that addresses the emerging danger posed by populistauthoritarianism rejecting the notion that the security bureaucracy can or should be relied upon to block it.

In Trump Time: A Journal of America's Plague Year


Peter Navarro - 2021
    Always moving In Trump Time as was his signature, Dr. Navarro was the first to sound the alarm within the West Wing about the pandemic. He played a pivotal role in the rapid development of both vaccines and therapeutics like Remdesivir. As Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator, Navarro was at the center of ramping up domestic production of critically needed Personal Protective Equipment and while helping President Trump insure that every American who needed a ventilator had a ventilator.A compelling, page-turner of a book that tells the story of America 2020 from inside the White House.

The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising


Patrick Cockburn - 2014
    The West’s initial successes in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan weakened their support still further.Today, as renowned Middle East commentator Patrick Cockburn sets out in this explosive new book, that’s all changed. Exploiting the missteps of the West’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as well as its misjudgments in relation to Syria and the uprisings of the Arab Spring, jihadist organizations, of which ISIS is the most important, are swiftly expanding. They now control a geographical territory greater in size than Britain or Michigan, stretching from the Sunni heartlands in the north and west of Iraq through a broad swath of north-east Syria. On the back of their capture of Mosul and much of northern Iraq in June 2014, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been declared the head of a new caliphate that demands the allegiance of all Muslims.The secular, democratic politics that were supposedly at the fore of the Arab Spring have been buried by the return of the jihadis. As the Islamic State announced by ISIS confronts its enemies, the West will once again become a target. Cockburn cites an observer in southern Turkey interviewing Syrian jihadi rebels early in 2014 and finding that “without exception they all expressed enthusiasm for the 9/11 attacks and hoped the same thing would happen in Europe as well as the US.”How could things have gone so badly wrong? Writing in these pages with customary calmness and clarity, and drawing on unrivaled experience as a reporter in the region, Cockburn analyzes the unfolding of one of the West’s greatest foreign policy debacles and the rise of the new jihadis.

The Log Cabin Lady


Anonymous - 1922
    Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother, despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the many interesting things for her to do and see in New York-- mother wanted nothing better than to stay with the baby.

The Moses Legacy: In Search of the Origins of God


Graham Phillips - 2002
    But was he a real person, and if so, when did he live?

Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America


Andrew P. Napolitano - 2009
    But American governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years, and then denied blacks equal protection of the law for another 150 years. How did this happen in America, how were the Constitution and laws of the land twisted so as to institutionalize racism, and how did it or will it end? In a refreshingly candid book, Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom In America, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes a no-holds-barred look at the role of the government in the denial of freedoms based on race.

Descent into Chaos: The United States & the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Central Asia


Ahmed Rashid - 2007
    His unique knowledge of this complex, war-torn region gives him a panoramic vision and grasp of nuance that no Western writer can emulate.

What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?


Dmitri Trenin - 2017
    Today, more than ever, this deeply-troubled region is the focus of power games between major global players vying for international influence. Absent from this scene for the past quarter century, Russia is now back with gusto. Yet its motivations, decision-making processes and strategic objectives remain hard to pin down. So just what is Russia up to in the Middle East? In this hard-hitting essay, leading analyst of Russian affairs Dmitri Trenin cuts through the hyperbole to offer a clear and nuanced analysis of Russia's involvement in the Middle East and its regional and global ramifications. Russia, he argues, cannot and will not supplant the U.S. as the leading external power in the region, but its actions are accelerating changes which will fundamentally remake the international system in the next two decades.

Sudden Fury


Leslie Walker - 1989
    One of the couple's three adopted children, he was shy and emotionally undemonstrative. His background and the circumstances leading to murder are the thrust of this searching study by Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Walker, less a true-crime re-creation than the story of a tortured being. Larry was given up by his birth mother when he was two and shunted from family to family, none of them willing to cope with his increasing insecurity and alienation. At age six, he was adopted by Bob and Kay Swartz, a model church-going Catholic couple but severe and demanding of their children, the father's temper sometimes growing into physical abuse.

Rick Steves Snapshot Madrid & Toledo


Rick Steves - 2009
    In this compact guide, Rick Steves covers the best of Madrid and Toledo, including tips on arrival, orientation, and transportation. In Madrid, visit the masterpieces of the Prado Museum, and explore the Royal Palace. Or visit Toledo's vast Cathedral or Alcázar. You'll get Rick's firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.Rick Steves Snapshot guides consist of excerpted chapters from Rick Steves European country guidebooks. Snapshot guides are a great choice for travelers visiting a specific city or region, rather than multiple European destinations. These slim guides offer all of Rick's up-to-date advice on what sights are worth your time and money. They include good-value hotel and restaurant recommendations, with no introductory information (such as overall trip planning, when to go, and travel practicalities).