Snowe offers a candid appraisal of our broken political system and what can, and must, be done to fix it. A clarion call to action, she also pulls back the curtain on the highlights—and lowlights—of her career, her evolution as a legislator, and her remarkable life.Sen. Snowe’s story is filled with trials and setbacks but also perseverance and success, which molded her into the dedicated lawmaker and advocate she is today. Born in Augusta, Maine, to a Greek immigrant father and first generation American mother—both of whom were restaurant workers--Sen. Snowe was orphaned at the age of nine. She attended a school in New York run by the Greek Orthodox Church for children in need where she had her first taste of independence, often navigating trains solo between the school, New York City, and her aunt and uncle’s home in Maine. She graduated from the University of Maine where she studied political science. After her husband, a state legislator, was killed in an automobile accident when she was twenty-six, she ran for his seat, and thus began her remarkable political career serving in both the Maine House and Senate and in the U.S. House and U.S Senate, where she acquired a reputation for being hard-working and committed to seeking bipartisan solutions to even the most politically volatile issues. Sen. Snowe has been at the center of some of the most important political moments of our time. In FIGHTING FOR COMMON GROUND she offers an insider’s perspective on health care reform, the debt ceiling crisis, the Bush tax cuts, 9/11, women’s rights, the Clinton impeachment, and the financial crisis of 2008, among other hot button issues. She also offers a number of real solutions to America’s political gridlock, including steps that should be undertaken to change Senate rules and congressional procedures, and those that should be taken to enact campaign finance and political reform (see attached). Today she leads a political action committee, Olympia’s List, to further the goal of a truly bipartisan, productive Congress. Sen. Snowe has seen the worst that Congress has to offer, but she hasn’t lost hope that it can rise to once again be the greatest deliberative body in the world. By holding Congress and the White House accountable, by tackling real campaign finance reform, by building grassroots movements to reward consensus-building, and by actively engaging young people in the legislative system, she believes that the American people can once again put their faith in the government officials they elect.

    Vikram Sampath, in this remarkable book, brings forth little known details of this fascinating woman who was known for her melodious voice, her multi-lingual skills, poetic sensibility, irresistible personality and her extravagant lifestyle. From her early days in Azamgarh and Banaras to the glory years in Calcutta when Gauhar ruled the world of Indian music, to her sad fall from grace and end in Mysore, the book takes the reader through the roller-coaster ride of this feisty musician. In the process, the author presents a view of the socio-historical context of Indian music and theatre during that period.

    Using case histories, personal experiences and his own inviting writing and teaching style, Preet Bharara shows the thought process we need to best achieve truth and justice in our daily lives and within our society.Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature.     The book is divided into four sections: Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment and Punishment. He shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system, but he also shows how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives.     Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career--the successes as well as the failures--to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action (and in some cases, not taking action, which can be just as essential when trying to achieve a just result).      Much of what Bharara discusses is inspiring--it gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can truly lead us on a path toward truth and justice. Some of what he writes about will be controversial and cause much discussion. Ultimately, it is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system--and in our society.

    R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel steered the new nation in a direction that ensured it wasn t destroyed by sectarianism, casteism and authoritarianism. Because their wisdom found widespread acceptance, every time it seemed that the country would succumb to religious hatred, fissiparous tendencies or caste violence, disaster was averted as its leaders and its people stayed more or less true to the values on which the republic was founded. In recent times, however, attempts have been made to discredit these great Indians and devalue their contribution to the modern Indian state. In this thought-provoking book, award-winning biographer and historian Rajmohan Gandhi sets the record straight on the founding fathers as well as their great opponent, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Along the way, he answers questions of perennial interest Who was really responsible for Partition? Were Gandhi and Ambedkar enemies? Did the Mahatma weaken the country s Hindus? Was he anti-Muslim? Should India have been a Hindu Rashtra? Could the Kashmir issue have been dealt with differently? Would Bose and Patel have led the independent nation better than Gandhi and Nehru? Erudite, forthright and brilliantly argued, Understanding the Founding Fathers will help us know ourselves and our nation, and how we came to be this way.

    On the night of November 26, Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists attacked targets throughout the city, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, one of the world’s most exclusive luxury hotels. For sixty-eight hours, hundreds were held hostage as shots rang out and an enormous fire raged. When the smoke cleared, thirty-one people were dead and many more had been injured. Only the courageous actions of staff and guests—including Mallika Jagad, Bob Nichols, and Taj general manager Binny Kang—prevented a much higher death toll.With a deep understanding of the region and its politics and a narrative flair reminiscent of Midnight in Peking, journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy vividly unfold the tragic events in a real-life thriller filled with suspense, tragedy, history, and heroism.

    Horowitz lays out how we have ended up in the worst national crisis since the Civil War. He details: • The Left’s embrace of Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism—the underpinnings of their totalitarian ideology • The decades-long infiltration of our education system by ideologies hostile to America, our institutions, and our freedom • Why the Obama administration marked a point of no return in the division of America into two irreconcilable political factions • The Democrats’ unprincipled campaign to destroy a duly elected U.S. president • Their political exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic • Their complicity in the riots of the summer of 2020, which left twenty-five dead, injured two thousand police officers, caused billions of dollars in property damage, and revealed the fragility of our civic order.

    This is his second time in Mayong, in rural Assam, since 1998, when he had come for a few days to attend his father's best friend's funeral. As the wedding preparations gather pace, Pablo is amused as well as disturbed by squabbling aunts, dying grandmothers, cousins planning to elope for love and hysterical gossips. And on this heady theatre of tradition and modernity hovers the sinister shadow of insurgency and the army's brutal measures to quell militancy. In the days leading up to the wedding, which ends in an unspeakable tragedy, Pablo finds first love, discovers family intrigues and goes through an extraordinary rite of passage. Written with clinical precision, this gripping first novel announces the arrival of one of the most original voices from India's North-East.

    The year is 2005. A highly infectious, unidentified Ebola-like virus is sweeping through the slums and villages of northern Angola. Within months, more than 200 people have died, medical services have collapsed and aid workers are on the brink of exhaustion. At 23, Peter Apps was just starting out as a foreign correspondent when Reuters sent him into the heart of the outbreak to get the story. In “Before Ebola: Dispatches from a Deadly Outbreak” Apps recalls in vivid, unflinching detail the horrors of life in a hot zone, the compassion of those trying to contain it, and how a terrified young journalist came of age in a time of almost unbearable crisis. Peter Apps is a global defense correspondent for Reuters news, currently dividing his time between London and Washington, D.C. In September 2006, Apps broke his neck in a minibus crash while covering the Sri Lankan civil war, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down. Cover design by Kristen Radtke.

    Since that terrible day the myths and legends which surround his life have continued to grow. Only one man knows the real truth. That man is Don Taylor, Bob Marley's manager, friend and confidant. Now, in this astonishing and brilliantly written book, Don Taylor tells: How he and Bob were shot down and left for dead by gangsters wielding Uzi submachine guns. Of Bob's love affairs with scores of women, including a beautiful princess and former Miss World Cindy Breakspeare. The secret of the millions of pounds Bob placed around the world. How Bob foiled a plot to kidnap Mick Jagger. How Rita Marley was able to sign Bob's signature on checks for huge sums of money. How Bob secretly carried guns or knives and threatened to kill those who crossed him. The bizarre and curious circumstances which led to Bob Marley's death. All these stories, and hundreds more, are told with deep affection and a simple, direct honesty which makes this book indispensible for anyone who is interested in this towering figure of world music.

    Gelb identified seven aspects of Da Vinci's genius that contemporary readers can emulate and apply in their own lives. Now, in WORK LIKE DA VINCI, Gelb adapts these principles to the specific demands of the workplace, sharing the innovative solutions to contemporary corporate and career challenges that have kept him in constant demand as a top-tier speaker and consultant to Fortune 500 clients. In Gelb's expert perspective, Da Vinci's genius can be distilled into seven principles for the business listener: Ask the right questions (Curiosit�) Put your answers to work (Dimostrazione) Develop your business senses (Sensazione) Turn uncertainty into opportunity (Sfumato) Strike a profitable balance (Arte/Scienza) Integrate for success (Corporalit�) Make the break-through connection (Connessione) These principles will help you tackle such timeless business challenges as: leadership; innovation; teamwork; strategic planning; decision-making; managing change and uncertainty; giving powerful presentations; giving and receiving feedback; and more.

    Maxwell has written a masterpiece on an event of great historical importance. He has shattered many myths and proved that there are no black and whites but only greys in the world of politics. "

    Lucid in his vision of America's place in the world, refreshingly candid about his family life and his time in the Senate, Obama here sets out his political convictions and inspires us to trust in the dogged optimism that has long defined us and that is our best hope going forward.

    Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America’s two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime. In It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call “asymmetric polarization,” with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost. With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no “silver bullet” reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.

    Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House in 2006, he thought he’d left Washington politics behind: after working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happy in his role as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars and to aid the troops doing the fighting, he answered what he felt was the call of duty. Now, in this unsparing memoir, meticulously fair in its assessments, he takes us behind the scenes of his nearly five years as a secretary at war: the battles with Congress, the two presidents he served, the military itself, and the vast Pentagon bureaucracy; his efforts to help Bush turn the tide in Iraq; his role as a guiding, and often dissenting, voice for Obama; the ardent devotion to and love for American soldiers—his “heroes”—he developed on the job. In relating his personal journey as secretary, Gates draws us into the innermost sanctums of government and military power during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, illuminating iconic figures, vital negotiations, and critical situations in revealing, intimate detail. Offering unvarnished appraisals of Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Presidents Bush and Obama among other key players, Gates exposes the full spectrum of behind-closed-doors politicking within both the Bush and Obama administrations. He discusses the great controversies of his tenure—surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan,  how to deal with Iran and Syria, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” Guantánamo Bay, WikiLeaks—as they played out behind the television cameras. He brings to life the Situation Room during the Bin Laden raid. And, searingly, he shows how congressional debate and action or inaction on everything from equipment budgeting to troop withdrawals was often motivated, to his increasing despair and anger, more by party politics and media impact than by members’ desires to protect our soldiers and ensure their success. However embroiled he became in the trials of Washington, Gates makes clear that his heart was always in the most important theater of his tenure as secretary: the front lines. We journey with him to both war zones as he meets with active-duty troops and their commanders, awed by their courage, and also witness him greet coffin after flag-draped coffin returned to U.S. soil, heartbreakingly aware that he signed every deployment order. In frank and poignant vignettes, Gates conveys the human cost of war, and his admiration for those brave enough to undertake it when necessary. Duty tells a powerful and deeply personal story that allows us an unprecedented look at two administrations and the wars that have defined them.

    The result is a country that, while managing incredible economic growth, has also begun to fully inhabit its role on the world political stage. In this far-ranging look at the central ideas that have shaped this young nation, Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani offers a definitive and original interpretation of the country's past, present, and future. India's future rests on more than simply economic growth; it also depends on reform and innovation in all sectors of public life. Imagining India traces the efforts of the country's past and present leaders as they work to develop new frameworks that suit India's specific characteristics and challenges. Imagining India charts the ideas that are crucial to India's current infrastructure revolution and quest for universal literacy, urbanization, and unification; maps the ideological battlegrounds of caste, higher education, and labor reform; and argues that only a safety net of ideas from social security to public health to the environment can transcend political agendas and safeguard India's economic future. As a cofounder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nandan Nilekani has actively participated in the company's rise in the last fifteen years. In Imagining India, he uses the global experience and understanding he has gained at Infosys as a springboard from which to discuss the future of India and its role as a global citizen and emerging economic giant. A fascinating window into the future of India, Imagining India engages with the central ideas and challenges that face the country from within and as a part of the global economy and charts a new way forward for a nation that has proved itself to be young, impatient, and vitally awake.