Book picks similar to
The Culture of Vengeance and the Fate of American Justice by Terry K. Aladjem
digital
law
non-fic---law-and-crime
nz
Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation
Steven M. Gillon - 2008
A fascinating look at politics American-style, The Pact offers a riveting account of two of America's most charismatic and influential leaders, detailing both their differences and their striking similarities, and highlighting the profound and lasting impact the tumultuous 1960s had on both their personal and political lives. With the cooperation of both President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich, interviews with key players who have never before spoken about their experiences, along with unprecedented access to Gingrich's private papers, Gillon not only offers a behind-the-scenes look at the budget impasse and the government shutdown in 1995--the famous face-off between Clinton and Gingrich--but he also reveals how the two moved closer together after 1996--closer than anyone knew. In particular, the book illuminates their secret efforts to abandon the liberal and conservative wings of their own parties and strike a bi-partisan deal to reform the "third rail of American politics"--Social Security and Medicare. That potentially groundbreaking effort was swept away by the highly charged reaction to the Lewinsky affair, ending an initiative that might have transformed millions of American lives. Packed with compelling new revelations about two of the most powerful and intriguing figures of our time, this book will be must reading for everyone interested in politics or current events.
Living With Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment
Craig Whitney - 2012
Columbine. Virginia Tech. Tucson. Aurora. Gun violence on a massive scale has become a plague in our society, yet politicians seem more afraid of having a serious conversation about guns than they are of the next horrific shooting. Any attempt to change the status quo, whether to strengthen gun regulations or weaken them, is sure to degenerate into a hysteria that changes nothing. Our attitudes toward guns are utterly polarized, leaving basic questions unasked: How can we reconcile the individual right to own and use firearms with the right to be safe from gun violence? Is keeping guns out of the hands of as many law-abiding Americans as possible really the best way to keep them out of the hands of criminals? And do 30,000 of us really have to die by gunfire every year as the price of a freedom protected by the Constitution? In Living with Guns, Craig R. Whitney, former foreign correspondent and editor at the New York Times, seeks out answers. He re-examines why the right to bear arms was enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and how it came to be misunderstood. He looks to colonial times, surveying the degree to which guns were a part of everyday life. Finally, blending history and reportage, Whitney explores how twentieth-century turmoil and culture war led to today's climate of activism, partisanship, and stalemate, in a nation that contains an estimated 300 million guns--and probably at least 60 million gun owners. In the end, Whitney proposes a new way forward through our gun rights stalemate, showing how we can live with guns -- and why, with so many of them around, we have no other choice.
A Bit of a Stretch
Chris Atkins - 2020
Where can a tin of tuna buy you clean clothes? Which British education system struggles with 50% illiteracy? Where do teetotal Muslims attend AA meetings? Where is it easier to get 'spice' than paracetamol? Where does self-harm barely raise an eyebrow?Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Service, a creaking and surreal world that has been left to rot for decades in the shadows of polite society. Like most people, documentary-maker Chris Atkins didn't spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years. His new home would be HMP Wandsworth, one of the oldest, largest, and most dysfunctional prisons in Europe.Horrifying, moving, and darkly funny, this is the unvarnished depiction of what he found. With a cast of characters ranging from wily drug dealers to corrupt screws to senior officials bent on endless (and fruitless) reform, this is the reality behind the locked gates. Full of incredible and hilarious stories, A Bit of a Stretch reveals the true scale of our prison crisis and why it is costing us all.
If I Live to Tell
Akeela Hayder Green - 2013
Many of them don’t survive their ordeals and those who do are often either too afraid or too ashamed to speak. If I Live to Tell is unique in that respect. It’s a real, first-person look at the world from the perspective of a woman who has endured tragedy, heartbreak, abuse and betrayal at almost every point in her life.Set on three continents, If I Live to Tell is a rare glimpse into the world and heart of the largely invisible victimized woman. Following one woman’s struggle to discover purpose and identity, If I Live to Tell shows how tragedy can become triumph and how pain can turn to purpose. This is a true story like you’ve never heard before.
Bloody Sunday: Truths, Lies and the Saville Inquiry
Douglas Murray - 2011
Instead, he found hundreds. In this book he tells these storiesat a painful and perhaps incomplete reconciliation.Douglas Murray is a best-selling author and award-winning political journalist based in London, England.
The Guildmaster Thief
Jake Kerr - 2015
Yet that fateful decision changes everything and launches an epic story that includes sarcastic rogues, heroes with hidden pasts, shady assassins, cruel guildmasters, and a litany of other interesting characters. Behind it all is the fascinating world of Ness, which is slowly seen to be teetering on the edge of invasion and civil war. Full of political intrigue, a secret past, and layers that are revealed bit by tantalizing bit, The Guildmaster Thief is a tour de force of worldbuilding, storytelling, and colorful characters.The first book in an epic fantasy series by Nebula-nominated author Jake Kerr, The Guildmaster Thief is the story of Ralan, a street rat who rises to become the guildmaster of Ness' underworld.
Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom
Ron Paul - 2011
The term "Liberty" is so commonly used in our country that it has become a mere cliche. But do we know what it means? What it promises? How it factors into our daily lives? And most importantly, can we recognize tyranny when it is sold to us disguised as a form of liberty? Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America. This is a comprehensive guide to Dr. Paul's position on fifty of the most important issues of our times, from Abortion to Zionism. Accessible, easy to digest, and fearless in its discussion of controversial topics, Liberty Defined sheds new light on a word that is losing its shape.
Scouting on Two Continents
Frederick Russell Burnham - 1926
Born on a Dakota Sioux reservation he was taught the ways of the Native Americans from as soon as he could walk. At the tender age of fourteen, having had little formal education, he was supporting himself and learning from some of the last cowboys and frontiersmen of the Old West. These lessons would pay dividend in his later life, first as a tracker for the United States Army in the Apache Wars and later as a scout for the British Army in the Matebele Wars in Southern Africa. Frederick Burnham Russell was a remarkable figure who revolutionized the art of scouting in both the British and United States armies. Indeed his influence would lead his friend, Robert Baden-Powell, to begin the international Scouting Movement. In Scouting on Two Continents Burnham records the details of his brilliant life in fascinating detail and provides insight into the life of an unique adventurer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Burnham in real life is more interesting than any of my heroes of romance.” Rider Haggard “Burnham is a most delightful companion ... amusing, interesting, and most instructive. Having seen service against the Red Indians he brings quite a new experience to bear on the Scouting work here. And while he talks away there’s not a thing escapes his quick roving eye, whether it is on the horizon or at his feet.” Robert Baden-Powell Frederick Burnham Russell has been described as the “Father of Scouting.” He fought in the Pleasant Valley War, Apache Wars, the First and Second Matabele Wars as well as the Second Boer War. His book Scouting on Two Continents was first published in 1926. He passed away in 1947.
The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down
Geoff Shepard - 2015
Aggressive prosecutors friendly with the judge. A disgraced president. A nation that had already made up its mind. The Watergate trials were a legal mess—and now, with the discovery of new documents that reveal shocking misconduct by prosecutors and judges alike, former Nixon staffer Geoff Shepard has a convincing case that the wrongdoing of these history-making trials was actually a bigger scandal than the Watergate scandal itself.
The Power and the Glory
David A. Yallop - 1984
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, he was a leader to millions of Catholics at a time of tremendous change. Promising a renewed church, he was the first media Pope and travelled around the world to preach his message. It is said that he was central in the fall of Soviet Eastern Europe, in particular his own homeland of Poland. Now, one year after his death, there are already calls for his sainthood. But is this the whole truth? David Yallop explores the myths and half truths of John Paul II's long reign and asks some difficult questions ranging from the role of the Vatican in the momentous events in 1989, and the continued mismanagement of Vatican finance which allowed Calvi and others to continue to use the Vatican banks for money laundering to the failure to address the child sexual abuse crisis and the rise of the Opus Dei. Including explosive revelations from the CIA, the KGB, and the Vatican itself, it is a bold and unflinching look at a man who soon stands to become a saint.
How Safe Are We?: Homeland Security Since 9/11
Janet Napolitano - 2019
Created in the wake of the greatest tragedy to occur on U.S. soil, the Department of Homeland Security was handed a sweeping mandate: make America safer. It would encompass intelligence and law enforcement agencies, oversee natural disasters, commercial aviation, border security and ICE, cybersecurity, and terrorism, among others. From 2009-2013, Janet Napolitano ran DHS and oversaw 22 federal agencies with 230,000 employees. In How Safe Are We?, Napolitano pulls no punches, reckoning with the critics who call it Frankenstein's Monster of government run amok, and taking a hard look at the challenges we'll be facing in the future. But ultimately, she argues that the huge, multifaceted department is vital to our nation's security. An agency that's part terrorism prevention, part intelligence agency, part law enforcement, public safety, disaster recovery make for an odd combination the protocol-driven, tradition-bound Washington D.C. culture. But, she says, it has made us more safe, secure, and resilient. Napolitano not only answers the titular question, but grapples with how these security efforts have changed our country and society. Where are the failures that leave us vulnerable and what has our 1 trillion dollar investment yielded over the last 15 years? And why haven't we had another massive terrorist attack in the U.S. since September 11th, 2001? In our current political climate, where Donald Trump has politicized nearly every aspect of the department, Napolitano's clarifying, bold vision is needed now more than ever.
Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire
Eric Berkowitz - 2012
However, that's not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior.Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh-and-blood cases—much flesh and even more blood—to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for "gross indecency." The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged—and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire.
Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found
Gilbert King - 2018
She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese cannot stop fretting over the case and its baffling outcome. Who was protecting whom, or what? She pursues the story for years, chasing down leads, hitting dead ends, winning unlikely allies. Bit by bit, the unspeakable truths behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence begin to surface.Beneath a Ruthless Sun tells a powerful, page-turning story rooted in the fears that rippled through the South as integration began to take hold, sparking a surge of virulent racism that savaged the vulnerable, debased the powerful, and roils our own times still.
Trumping Trudeau: How Donald Trump will change Canada even if Justin Trudeau doesn't know it yet
Ezra Levant - 2017
On everything from carbon taxes to Cuba, Canadian policy is suddenly obsolete. Will Trudeau and his advisors realign themselves with our largest trading partner and ally? Or will Trudeau do what his father did — play the role of anti-American gadfly, to the delight of the Third World but the detriment of Canadians? Ezra Levant, the best-selling author of Ethical Oil and other trouble-making books, is here to say what no-one in the liberal media will: Trudeau vs. Trump is shaping up to be Bambi vs. Godzilla.
Sciatica: Low Back Pain Relief Once and For All (Super Spine)
Sean Sumner - 2014
He work closely with primary care physicians, spine surgeons, pain management physicians, and physiatrists in developing plans for patients with pain and other disabilities related to the spine. This book is for anyone who is currently suffering from sciatica or has suffered from sciatica in the past. It is for people that want real world solutions for their sciatica, based off clinical practice. In this book I will teach you how to understand which positions and movements may cause pain, and which ones will help alleviate pain. I will also share with you what you can start doing at home today to decrease your pain, including when to use heat vs. cold, what types of exercises are right for you, and how to lift and move to protect your back for the future. Most of all, I will provide important information for you, to ensure you are educated when you meet with your doctor or physical therapist to discuss diagnosis and treatment. This will allow you to work together as a team to come to the right treatment solution for your body. Once you understand what is going on and why you are having this pain, you will be better equipped to choose the right plan and be empowered to advocate for yourself.
