He was a National Guardsman who somehow missed a year of service. He was a failed businessman who somehow was made rich. He was a minority investor who somehow was made managing partner of the Texas Rangers. He was a defeated politician who somehow was made governor. You can hardly blame him for expecting to inherit the White House. "Is Our Children Learning?" examines the public life and public record of George W. Bush and reveals him for who he is: a man who presents the thinnest, weakest, least impressive record in public life of any major party nominee this century; a man who at every critical juncture has been propelled upward by the forces of wealth, privilege, status, and special interests who use his family's name for their private gain. A Texan, political analyst, strategist, and partisan, Paul Begala has written a devastating assessment of the Bush brand of politics.

    For over thirty years Sherard Cowper-Coles was on the diplomatic front line in a distinguished career that took him from the corridors of power in Whitehall to a string of high-profile around the world. Entering the Foreign Office in 1977, he took up postings in Beirut, Alexandria and Cairo, Washington, Paris, and Hong Kong, his globe-trotting punctuated with spells in London, where the young diplomat had a baptism of fire writing foreign affairs speeches for Geoffrey Howe and Margaret Thatcher. In 1999, under the New Labour government and Prime Minister Tony Blair, he was made Principal Private Secretary to the irascible Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, providing the book with some of its most hilarious sequences. His career culminated in a succession of ambassadorial posts as Our Man in Israel, Saudi Arabia and finally Afghanistan. 'Ever the Diplomat' is his revealing and witty account of half a lifetime in diplomacy.

    Hollywood has so many stories to tell and, unfortunately, so many of them do not have happy endings. From Marilyn Monroe to posthumous Oscar winner Heath Ledger, this book lays bare some of the myths and gets to the heart of some of Hollywood's Unhappiest Endings.

    Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great.Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater than ever before, and I have never shared a more urgent message than I do now. Our growing debt and deteriorating morals have driven us far from the founders’ intent. We’ve made very little progress in basic education. Obamacare threatens our health, liberty, and financial future. Media elitism and political correctness are out of control. Worst of all, we seem to have lost our ability to discuss important issues calmly and respectfully regardless of party affiliation or other differences. As a doctor rather than a politician, I care about what works, not whether someone has an (R) or a (D) after his or her name. We have to come together to solve our problems. Knowing that the future of my grandchildren is in jeopardy because of reckless spending, godless government, and mean-spirited attempts to silence critics left me no choice but to write this book. I have endeavored to propose a road out of our decline, appealing to every American’s decency and common sense. If each of us sits back and expects someone else to take action, it will soon be too late. But with your help, I firmly believe that America may once again be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Sincerely, Ben Carson

    Robert Spencer explains the driving forces behind the jihadists operating now in the US: Their beliefs, their associations, and the international jihad network that is working for the same goals around the globe -- including in the Arab spring uprisings.

    Her strength as a chief of staff was a sign of his weakness as a prime minister: she gave him the option of disengaging. Credlin allowed Abbott to be who he wanted to be: the good bloke, the philosopher, the weekend fire-fighter, the surfer, the orator, the man of action. If Abbott was a natural leader, it could have worked. But he lacked the most important attribute of all: judgement.Tony Abbott and his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, ran a brilliant campaign in opposition. But their approach led to disaster in government.When Abbott became prime minister, he and Credlin ruthlessly controlled ministers, backbenchers, the public service and the media. They shut out voices that questioned Abbott’s way. Everything started to unravel.Credlin & Co. is the story of a relationship that determined the fate of a government. It shows in stunning detail the disastrous consequences of power abused, and the broken people left in its wake.Aaron Patrick is the print editor of the Australian Financial Review and author of Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Apart (2013).

    Gordon Liddy offers his unabashedly politically incorrect view on America.

    Most people of the current generation lack a sense of the historical sweep of the intellectual side of the right-wing collectivist position. Jeffrey Tucker, in this collection written between 2015 and 2017, argues that this movement represents the revival of a tradition of interwar collectivist thought that might at first seem like a hybrid but was distinctly mainstream between the two world wars. It is anti-communist but not for the reasons that were conventional during the Cold War, that is, because communism opposed freedom in the liberal tradition.Right-collectivism also opposes traditional liberalism. It opposes free trade, freedom of association, free migration, and capitalism understood as a laissez-faire free market. It rallies around nation and state as the organizing principles of the social order—and trends in the direction of favoring one-man rule—but positions itself as opposed to leftism traditionally understood.We know about certain fascist leaders from the mid-20th century, but not the ideological orientation that led to them or the ideas they left on the table to be picked up generations later. For the most part, and until recently, it seemed to have dropped from history. Meanwhile, the prospects for social democratic ideology are fading, and something else is coming to fill that vacuum. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it leading?This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap, to explain what this movement is about and why anyone who genuinely loves and longs for liberty classically understood needs to develop a nose and instinct for spotting the opposite when it comes in an unfamiliar form. We need to learn to recognize the language, the thinkers, the themes, the goals of a political ethos that is properly identified as fascist."Jeffrey Tucker in his brilliant book calls right-wing populism what it actually is, namely, fascism, or, in its German form national socialism, nazism. You need Tucker’s book. You need to worry. If you are a real liberal, you need to know where the new national socialism comes from, the better to call it out and shame it back into the shadows. Now."— Deirdre McCloskey

    Politicians claim they care, then pass legislation that just sends more cash to the HMOs. Wages have been stagnant for thirty years, even as corporate profits skyrocket. Politicians say they want to fix the problem and then pass bills written by lobbyists that drive wages even lower and punish those crushed by debt. Jobs are being shipped overseas, pensions are being cut, and energy is becoming unaffordable. And our government, more concerned about maintaining its corporate sponsorship than protecting its citizens, does nothing about it. In Hostile Takeover, David Sirota, a major new voice in American politics, seeks to open the eyes of ordinary Americans to the fact that corporate interests have undermined democracy, aided and abetted by their lackeys in our allegedly representative government. At a time when more and more of America’s major political leaders are being indicted or investigated for corruption, Sirota takes readers on a journey that shows how all of this nefarious behavior happened right under our noses—and how the high-profile scandals are merely one product of a political system and debate wholly owned by Big Money interests. Sirota considers major public issues that feel intractable—like spiraling health care costs, the outsourcing of jobs, the inequities of the tax code, and out-of-control energy prices—and shows how in each case workable solutions are buried under the lies of lobbyists, the influence of campaign cash, and the ubiquitous spin machine financed by Big Business.With fiery passion, pinpoint wit, and lucid analysis, Hostile Takeover reveals the true enemies of reform and their increasingly sophisticated—and hostile—tactics. It’s an essential guidebook for those of us tired of the government selling us out—and determined to take our country back. Also available as an eBookFrom the Hardcover edition.

     But we are fed up with being over-taxed and over-regulated. We are tired of being told how much salt to put on our food, what kind of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to say and where we can say them, what we are allowed to do to elect political candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what doctor we can see. What kind of nation are we becoming? I fear it's the very kind the Colonists fought against. But perhaps most of all, we are fed up because deep down we know how great America has always been, how many great things the people do in spite of their government, and how great the nation can be in the future if government will just get out of the way. Our fight is clear. We must step up and retake the reins of our government from a Washington establishment that has abused our trust. We must empower states to fight for our beliefs, elect only leaders who are on our team, set out to remind our fellow Americans why liberty is guaranteed in the Constitution, and take concrete steps to take back our country. The American people have never sat idle when liberty's trumpet sounds the call to battle -- and today that battle is for the soul of America.

    On the 18th September Scotland voted to stay in the Union. In this provocative new book, Iain Macwhirter argues that the UK will never be the same again. Disunited Kingdom explores Scotland's political and cultural landscape in the immediate build up to, and aftermath of, the referendum. Combining expert and personal insight, Macwhirter examines the future of Scotland, the UK, and the enduring passion for independence.Praise for Iain Macwhirter: "A truly important book, particularly at this moment." ~ Andrew Marr. "A terrific book [...] full of shrewd insights. I'd recommend it highly." ~ The Guardian

    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.

    

    Totten’s gripping first-person narratives from the war zones, police states, and revolutionary capitals of the Middle East and North Africa paint a vivid picture of peoples and nations at war with themselves, each other, and—sometimes—with the rest of the world. His journeys take him from Libya under the gruesome rule of Muammar Qaddafi to Egypt before, during and after the Arab Spring; from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in Syria on the eve of that country’s apocalyptic civil war to a camp on the Iran-Iraq border where armed revolutionaries threaten to topple the Islamic Republic regime in Tehran; from the contested streets of conflict-ridden Jerusalem to dusty outposts in the Sahara where a surreal conflict few have even heard of simmers long after it should have expired; and from war-torn Beirut and Baghdad to a lonely town in central Tunisia that seeded a storm of revolution and war that spread for thousands of miles in every direction. Tower of the Sun is a timeless close-up of one of the world’s most violent and turbulent regions that will resonate for decades to come. “A decade in the making, Tower of The Sun is not just an authoritative, intimate and lively reconnaissance of the tectonic upheavals shaking the earth from North Africa's Maghreb to Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s also a masterpiece of clear-eyed political analysis and literary journalism in the travel-diary style of Paul Theroux.” – Terry Glavin, author of The Sixth Extinction “Totten…practices journalism in the tradition of George Orwell: morally imaginative, partisan in the best sense of the word, and delivered in crackling, rapid-fire prose befitting the violent realities it depicts.” Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary “I can think of only a certain number of people as having risen to the intellectual and journalistic challenges of the last few years, and Michael J. Totten is one of them.” Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism “Michael J. Totten, to my mind, is one of the world’s most acute observers of Middle East politics. He is also an absolutely fearless reporter, both physically—he has explored the darkest corners of Middle East extremism—and morally.” Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners

    From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.Johnston’s many revelations include:• How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world.• How homeowners? title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly.• How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses.• How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children.• How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds.In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1 percent of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9 percent.With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.