The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments


Charles Goyette - 2009
    On the heels of the most recent economic crisis, America is headed toward another: high inflation and dollar devaluation. Charles Goyette reveals the governmental errors that led to the current economic crisis and the bumpy road ahead. The signs are clear: Federal debt is compounding while growth has stalled, and America's foreign creditors are questioning the dollar's reserve currency status. Meanwhile, the "hidden" federal debt, much larger than the official debt, makes things even worse. So what can you do to safeguard your assets when the dollar heads south? This book is the essential guide for protecting yourself--and even profiting--in this time of financial turbulence. In clear detail, Goyette explains the alternative investments--from gold and silver to oil and agriculture-- that will remain strong in the face of mounting inflation. The Dollar Meltdown gives you the tools to maintain the value of your savings and captilize on the coming opportunities. Don't get left holding the bag after decades of government irresponsibility. The Dollar Meltdown shows you how to take the safety of your finances into your own hands.

The Indu Sundaresan Collection: The Twentieth Wife, Feast of Roses, and Shadow Princess


Indu Sundaresan - 2013
    Ghias Beg isn’t traveling light; he has with him a pregnant wife and three small children. When his family stops at Qandahar—which is today in modern-day Afghanistan, at that time was on the outer fringe of the Mughal Empire—his wife gives birth to a baby girl named Mehrunnisa. Thirty-four years later, this winter child will become an Emperor’s wife and the most powerful woman in that Mughal dynasty. Mehrunnisa is The Twentieth Wife of Emperor Jahangir, Akbar’s son, a woman so beloved of her husband that he grants her most of the powers of sovereignty. She signs on imperial documents called farmans and mints coins in her name and truly comes into power during the sixteen years of her marriage to Jahangir in The Feast of Roses . Mehrunnisa’s niece (her brother’s daughter and Ghias’ granddaughter) marries one of Jahangir’s sons, Prince Khurram who becomes Emperor Shah Jahan after his father’s death. When this niece dies in childbirth in June of 1631, Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal in her memory. But it is Mehrunnisa’s grand-niece (and Ghias’ great-granddaughter) Princess Jahanara who takes center stage in the third novel of the trilogy, Shadow Princess . She’s seventeen years old when her mother dies and her father, in his grief, leans upon her to the extent that she’s never allowed to marry. Throughout her life, Jahanara has to pacify warring brothers who each want the throne after their father, and engages in a rivalry with a sister, Roshanara—in supporting differing brothers politically, and in falling in love with the same noble at court, Najabat Khan. Powerful in her father’s harem, immensely rich with half her mother’s estate bestowed upon her and all of her mother’s yearly income, Jahanara still fails to turn the course of India’s history and has to find love with Najabat Khan in unconventional ways.

Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America


Gregory Rodriguez - 2007
    Rodriguez deftly delineates the effects of mestizaje throughout the centuries, traces the northern movement of this "mongrelization," explores the emergence of a new Mexican American identity in the 1930s, and analyzes the birth and death of the Chicano movement. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, he persuasively argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration in to the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation.Deeply informative--as historically sound as it is anecdotally rich, brilliantly reasoned, and highly though provoking--Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds is a major contribution to the discussion of the cultural and political future of the United States.From the Hardcover edition.

Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands


Stuart Hall - 2017
    Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Kingston, Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself uncomfortable in his own home. He lived among Kingston's stiflingly respectable brown middle class, who, in their habits and ambitions, measured themselves against the white elite. As colonial rule was challenged, things began to change in Kingston and across the world. In 1951 a Rhodes scholarship took Hall across the Atlantic to Oxford University, where he met young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean, including V. S. Naipaul and George Lamming. While at Oxford he met Raymond Williams, Charles Taylor, and other leading intellectuals, with whom he helped found the intellectual and political movement known as the New Left. With the emotional aftershock of colonialism still pulsing through him, Hall faced a new struggle: that of building a home, a life, and an identity in a postwar England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity. With great insight, compassion, and wit, Hall tells the story of his early life, taking readers on a journey through the sights, smells, and streets of 1930s Kingston while reflecting on the thorny politics of 1950s and 1960s Britain. Full of passion and wisdom, Familiar Stranger is the intellectual memoir of one of our greatest minds.

JFK: An American Coup D'Etat: The Truth Behind the Kennedy Assassination


John Hughes-Wilson - 2013
    In America men and women wept openly in the streets for their dead leader. But events soon began to unpick the original version of what happened. It turned out that theaofficial report was little more than a crude government whitewash designed to hide the real truth. Even American Presidents admitted as much. President Nixon memorably confessed in private that the Warren Report was the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public. It began to emerge that maybe Lee Harvey Oswald, the original one nut gunman, may not have acted on his own; others were involved, too. That meant no lone gunman, but a conspiracy. This book attempts to answer the big question: who really shot JFK? And, more important still, exactly why was he shot? John Hughes-Wilson argues that the murder of John Kennedy was, like the murder of Julius Caesar 2,000ayears before, nothing less than a bloody coup dOCO(r)tat by his political enemies, a conspiracy hell bent on removing a leader who was threatening the power and the money of the ruling establishment. Pointing the finger at Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the Mafia, John joins Jackie and Bobby Kennedy in their conclusion that the assassination of JFK was far more complex than a deranged attack by Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine."

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor


Sudhir Venkatesh - 2006
    We find there an entire world of unregulated, unreported, and untaxed work, a system of living off the books that is daily life in the ghetto. From women who clean houses and prepare lunches for the local hospital to small-scale entrepreneurs like the mechanic who works in an alley; from the preacher who provides mediation services to the salon owner who rents her store out for gambling parties; and from street vendors hawking socks and incense to the drug dealing and extortion of the local gang, we come to see how these activities form the backbone of the ghetto economy.What emerges are the innumerable ways that these men and women, immersed in their shadowy economic pursuits, are connected to and reliant upon one another. The underground economy, as Venkatesh’s subtle storytelling reveals, functions as an intricate web, and in the strength of its strands lie the fates of many Maquis Park residents. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto’s appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

The Condor Years: How Pinochet And His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents


John Dinges - 2004
    It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA which later backfired on the United States.Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret U.S. relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and newly updated to include recent developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling but dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries.

Hamilton's Choice


Jack Casey - 2020
    His heir is dead; his daughter has gone insane with grief. His dear wife, Eliza, now shudders at his touch.As Hamilton struggles to save his marriage and his family, his political opponent, Aaron Burr, threatens to topple the nation. The nation which Hamilton had risked everything to forge.Burr, impoverished and embittered by a humiliating loss, blames Hamilton. Burr will stop at nothing to regain his lost power and restore his fortunes. If he can destroy and defame Hamilton in the process, he will have his ultimate triumph.It is a time of honor, duels, political intrigues, and political violence.Torn between his duty to his wife and family, and his allegiance to the country, Hamilton must make his choice.You know his name, but this is the story that you haven't heard before! If you loved the score of Hamilton, the biographies of Chernow, and the novels of Stephanie Dray - you would love Hamilton's Choice!Read it Today! "Fans of American history will love this fictionalization of Alexander Hamilton’s political and family life in the years leading to his death. Great for fans of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, Joanne Freeman’s Affairs of Honor, Gore Vidal’s Burr"– Booklife Review

Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming: Texas Vs. Arkansas in Dixie's Last Stand


Terry Frei - 2002
    In the centennial season of college football, both teams were undefeated; both featured devastating and innovative offenses; both boasted cerebral, stingy defenses; and both were coached by superior tacticians and stirring motivators, Texas's Darrell Royal and Arkansas's Frank Broyles. On that day in Fayetteville, the poll-leading Horns and second-ranked Hogs battled for the Southwest Conference title -- and President Nixon was coming to present his own national championship plaque to the winners. Even if it had been just a game, it would still have been memorable today. The bitter rivals played a game for the ages before a frenzied, hog-callin' crowd that included not only an enthralled President Nixon -- a noted football fan -- but also Texas congressman George Bush. And the game turned, improbably, on an outrageously daring fourth-down pass.But it "wasn't" just a game, because nothing was so simple in December 1969. In "Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming," Terry Frei deftly weaves the social, political, and athletic trends together for an unforgettable look at one of the landmark college sporting events of all time.The week leading up to the showdown saw black student groups at Arkansas, still marginalized and targets of virulent abuse, protesting and seeking to end the use of the song "Dixie" to celebrate Razorback touchdowns; students were determined to rush the field during the game if the band struck up the tune. As the United States remained mired in the Vietnam War, sign-wielding demonstrators (including war veterans) took up their positions outsidethe stadium -- in full view of the president. That same week, Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton penned a letter to the head of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, thanking the colonel for shielding him from induction into the military earlier in the year.Finally, this game was the last major sporting event that featured two exclusively white teams. Slowly, inevitably, integration would come to the end zones and hash marks of the South, and though no one knew it at the time, the Texas vs. Arkansas clash truly was Dixie's Last Stand.Drawing from comprehensive research and interviews with coaches, players, protesters, professors, and politicians, Frei stitches together an intimate, electric narrative about two great teams -- including one player who, it would become clear only later, was displaying monumental courage just to make it onto the field -- facing off in the waning days of the era they defined. Gripping, nimble, and clear-eyed, "Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming" is the final word on the last of how it was.

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance


Nick Estes - 2019
    Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anticolonial struggle would continue. In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.

Orientalism


Edward W. Said - 1978
    This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.

Why We Kneel, How We Rise


Michael Holding - 2021
    Rarely can a rain delay in a cricket match have led to anything like the moment when Holding spoke out in the wake of the #BlackLivesMatter protests about the racism he has suffered and has seen all around him throughout his life. But as he spoke, he sought not only to educate but to propose a way forward that inspired so many. Within minutes, he was receiving calls from famous sports stars from around the world offering to help him to spread the message further. Now, in Why We Kneel, How We Rise, Holding shares his story together with those of some of the most iconic athletes in the world. He delivers a powerful and inspiring message of hope for the future and a vision for change, and takes you through history to understand the racism of today. He adds: 'To say I was surprised at the volume of positive feedback I received from around the world after my comments on Sky Sports is an understatement. I came to realise I couldn’t just stop there; I had to take it forward – hence the book, as I believe education is the way forward.'

An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean


Andrew O'Shaughnessy - 2000
    Of these, the six colonies in the Caribbean--Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Grenada and Tobago, St. Vincent; and Dominica--were among the wealthiest. These island colonies were closely related to the mainland by social ties and tightly connected by trade. In a period when most British colonists in North America lived less than 200 miles inland and the major cities were all situated along the coast, the ocean often acted as a highway between islands and mainland rather than a barrier.The plantation system of the islands was so similar to that of the southern mainland colonies that these regions had more in common with each other, some historians argue, than either had with New England. Political developments in all the colonies moved along parallel tracks, with elected assemblies in the Caribbean, like their mainland counterparts, seeking to increase their authority at the expense of colonial executives. Yet when revolution came, the majority of the white island colonists did not side with their compatriots on the mainland.A major contribution to the history of the American Revolution, An Empire Divided traces a split in the politics of the mainland and island colonies after the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-66, when the colonists on the islands chose not to emulate the resistance of the patriots on the mainland. Once war came, it was increasingly unpopular in the British Caribbean; nonetheless, the white colonists cooperated with the British in defense of their islands. O'Shaughnessy decisively refutes the widespread belief that there was broad backing among the Caribbean colonists for the American Revolution and deftly reconstructs the history of how the island colonies followed an increasingly divergent course from the former colonies to the north.