Levy — an acclaimed French philosopher and bestselling author in Europe — in 2002 launched a one-year journey to understand Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl and the circumstances that led to his murder in Pakistan; the briskly paced result traces a thread from Pearl's killers through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and, possibly, to Al-Quaida. In building his case, Levy takes none of the news stories on face value. At great personal risk, he follows the same steps that Pearl walked to the very farm house where the journalist was killed. He seems to question everything and provides bearing witness as the truth-telling reportage required in a nation like Pakistan that "has lost even the very idea of what a free press could be."But Levy does not let his interrogative mind crush the emotional weight of his subject. He questions himself frequently, undermines his own assumptions, and continually returns to the man, Pearl: "a man who was ordinary and exemplary, normal and admirable." Ultimately, the book is a powerful work of compassion as much as a valuable bit of detective work. It is about a good man who died too soon as well as the terrible alliances that could perform such an act against him. Levy does not want Pearl's lessons to be lost to the world. He, like Pearl, seeks a "gentle Islam" that will resist the ring of blood and hate in what Levy calls "the beginning of the grand struggle of the century." — Patrick O'Kelley

    The book details 30 prophetic "mystery" clues identifying a rich, powerful and influential end times nation that will betray Israel and is therefore destroyed in one day/hour/moment. Radical Jihadists' plans to conquer the world for Allah by bringing "Death to America" are analyzed, comparing Muslim prophecies to Biblical last days verses. Prophecies warning God's people to flee from this "mystery" nation are studied in depth. WHEN should one flee? WHERE should God's people flee? THE END OF AMERICA lists nations that will be safe in the latter days, as Jihadists exert political and religious control across the globe. Also studied are the major world events that God's people should watch for, as Jesus advised. If you know in your spirit that America is in trouble, that national trends are just not right and that we are headed for a devastating future, this book may provide the answers from Biblical prophecy to confirm those leadings.

    Secret Service, that elite corps of agents who pledge to take a bullet to protect the president and his family. After conducting exclusive interviews with more than one hundred current and former Secret Service agents, bestselling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler reveals their secrets for the first time.Secret Service agents, acting as human surveillance cameras, observe everything that goes on behind the scenes in the president’s inner circle. Kessler reveals what they have seen, providing startling, previously untold stories about the presidents, from John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as about their families, Cabinet officers, and White House aides. Kessler portrays the dangers that agents face and how they carry out their missions–from how they are trained to how they spot and assess potential threats. With fly-on-the-wall perspective, he captures the drama and tension that characterize agents’ lives.In this headline-grabbing book, Kessler discloses assassination attempts that have never before been revealed. He shares inside accounts of past assaults that have put the Secret Service to the test, including a heroic gun battle that took down the would-be assassins of Harry S. Truman, the devastating day that John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and the swift actions that saved Ronald Reagan after he was shot.While Secret Service agents are brave and dedicated, Kessler exposes how Secret Service management in recent years has betrayed its mission by cutting corners, risking the assassination of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and their families. Given the lax standards, “It’s a miracle we have not had a successful assassination,” a current agent says.Since an assassination jeopardizes democracy itself, few agencies are as important as the Secret Service–nor is any other subject as tantalizing as the inner sanctum of the White House. Only tight-lipped Secret Service agents know the real story, and Ronald Kessler is the only journalist to have won their trust.

    detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry “forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art. Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari Take my blood. Take my death shroud and The remnants of my body. Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely. Send them to the world, To the judges and To the people of conscience, Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded. And let them bear the guilty burden before the world, Of this innocent soul. Let them bear the burden before their children and before history, Of this wasted, sinless soul, Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace." Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

    Thus, Pacepa and Rychlak also document how the U.S. "mainstream media's" enduring sympathy for all things liberal-left has made it vulnerable to--indeed, the prime carrier of--civilization-transforming campaigns of lying, defamation and historical revisionism that turn reality on its head.

    I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization.Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination.Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.

    It's only five in the afternoon, but a sandtorm has plunged everything into a hellish twilight of murky, red dust. On rooftops, in alleyways lurk militiamen with machine guns, AK rifles and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. Artillery bombardment has shattered the town's sewers and rubble is piled up in lagoons of human excrement. It stinks. Welcome to Iraq... Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ed combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip hop, Internet porn, Marilyn Manson, video games and The Real World, a band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfrey. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary, and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional, and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality, and camaraderie of a new American war.

    It is also the world’s smallest sovereign state–covering a mere square kilometer of land within Rome. But within that small area is a region rich in secrets, conspiracies, and intrigue. SECRETS OF THE VATICAN flings open the Vatican’s doors to reveal the hub of one of the world’s most powerful organizations. The book profiles the Vatican’s political status as Europe’s last absolute dominion and its unique independence: Vatican City boasts its own citizenship, flap, postage stamp, mercenary security force, diplomatic corps, and cash machines that offer the Vatican Bank’s services–in Latin. The book also reveals how this tiny country runs its business from year to year–and why Vatican City has the highest crime rate per capita of any nation in the world. The Vatican is the spiritual focus for the world’s one billion Catholics; it is also the focus of many less-than-spiritual conspiracy theories, ranging from allegations of press censorship, racketeering, and money-laundering to outright murder. SECRETS OF THE VATICAN examines the evidence behind these allegations and draws its own conclusions as to the Papacy’s continuing influence in the world.

    The truth is, though, Germans are different from us-in more ways than we may know. Greg Nees, in this new InterAct, Germany: Unraveling an Enigma, does an outstanding job of explaining those cultural differences that we most need to know in order to have effective and fulfilling interactions with the Germans. Nees explores major German cultural themes: the need for order and obedience to rules and regulations, the insistence on clarity of thought, compartmentalization, the penchant for rational thinking and the love of abstract debate, the sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders, a strong sense of duty, and German communication patterns. As a business consultant who has lived and worked many years with Germans, Greg Nees gives special attention to the German social market economy and to cultural differences in the workplace. Perhaps most valuable, in his last chapter he looks to the future as Germany seeks to create a new identity in the twenty-first century, dealing with such issues as multiculturalism, Americanization, changing lifestyles, the European Union, and globalization.

    By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following. Through these encounters--by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny--Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.

    More than thirty years after Khomeini’s return to Tehran and the subsequent rebirth of Iran as an Islamic Republic, Khomeini’s Ghost offers an intimate, richly detailed portrait of the fundamentalist leader and architect of Iran’s adversarial relationship with the West—a man whose legacy has influenced history and policy, and will continue to do so for generations to come.

    But the biggest transformations of what has been labeled as the "Arab Spring" are yet to come.An insider to both American policy and the world of the Arab public, Marc Lynch shows that the fall of particular leaders is but the least of the changes that will emerge from months of unrest. The far-ranging implications of the rise of an interconnected and newly-empowered Arab populace have only begun to be felt. Young, frustrated Arabs now know that protest can work and that change is possible. They have lost their fear--meanwhile their leaders, desperate to survive, have heard the unprecedented message that killing their own people will no longer keep them in power. Even so, as Lynch reminds us, the last wave of region-wide protest in the 1950s and 1960s resulted not in democracy, but in brutal autocracy. Will the Arab world's struggle for change succeed in building open societies? Will authoritarian regimes regain their grip, or will Islamist movements seize the initiative to impose a new kind of rule?"The Arab Uprising" follows these struggles from Tunisia and Egypt to the harsh battles of Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya and to the cautious reforms of the region's monarchies. It examines the real meaning of the rise of Islamist movements in the emerging democracies, and the longterm hopes of a generation of activists confronted with the limits of their power. It points toward a striking change in the hierarchy of influence, as the old heavyweights--Iran, Al Qaeda, even Israel--have been all but left out while oil-rich powers like Saudi Arabia and "swing states" like Turkey and Qatar find new opportunities to spread their influence. And it reveals how America must adjust to the new realities. Deeply informed by inside access to the Obama administration's decision-making process and first-hand interviews with protestors, politicians, diplomats, and journalists, "The Arab Uprising" highlights the new fault lines that are forming between forces of revolution and counter-revolution, and shows what it all means for the future of American policy. The result is an indispensible guide to the changing lay of the land in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption.Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity.The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.

    Swanson—the Edgar® Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt—brings to life two epic events of the Civil War era: the thrilling chase to apprehend Confederate president Jefferson Davis in the wake of the Lincoln assassination and the momentous  20 -day funeral that took Abraham Lincoln’s body home to Springfield. A true tale full of fascinating twists and turns, and lavishly illustrated with dozens of rare historical images—some never before seen—Bloody Crimes is a fascinating companion to Swanson’s Manhunt and  a riveting true-crime thriller that will electrify civil war buffs, general readers, and everyone in between.

    Among these questions the most important one of all sometimes gets lost: Is Islam true? With his new book author Peter Townsend invites you to accompany him on a journey through the foundational texts of the Muslim religion. In the process the truth-claims of Islam will be respectfully, honestly and impartially evaluated. Along the way the following questions will be asked: - Can the traditional Islamic historical accounts be trusted? - Is the Qur'an a 'Perfect Book, Perfectly Preserved'? - Was Muhammad indeed a 'Beautiful Pattern of Conduct'? The answers to these questions will not be sought from modern commentaries on Islam. Instead Questioning Islam goes straight to the classic sources of Islam namely the Qur'an, hadiths (traditions) and biographies of Muhammad. Questioning Islam is not an attempt to promote any other belief system or ideology. Its focus is simply on asking the hard questions about Islam that are all too often ignored or swept under the carpet. Simply put, if you have ever wondered whether the truth-claims of Islam can withstand critical scrutiny then this book is for you!