The Untold Vajpayee : The Life and Times of A Poet Politician by ULLEKH NP , 9780670088782

    

    While it is watched and admired around the world, it is often hated at home for bringing out the worst in our politicians. However, despite the best attempts of successive party leaders to try and move away from ‘Punch and Judy politics’, PMQs are here to stay. It sets the agenda, indicates who’s up and who's down and, most importantly, defines Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition. Ayesha Hazarika and Tom Hamilton spent every Wednesday morning for five years preparing Ed Miliband for combat ahead of PMQs, with varying degrees of success. They know what it’s like to prepare a leader for the most stressful, unforgiving moment of the political week and they have lived through the drama, tension and black humour that goes with being in the room. They have seen the highs when a leader wins at the Dispatch Box as well as – perhaps more often – the lows when they take a beating. This book lifts the lid on PMQs, reveals the tricks of the trade from leading politicians and the people who prepared them, and takes you behind the scenes of some of the biggest PMQs moments. Part history, part inside account, this book is an entertaining and honest guide to one of the most loved, feared and loathed features of British politics by two people who know just how tough it can be.

    With humor and chutzpah, attorney, commentator, and popular radio host Michael Smerconish takes on today's oversensitive culture with a collection of entertaining, outlandish anecdotes about PC gone wild-stories that are hilarious, horrifying, and unbelievably true.Why are sports leagues handing out trophies to losers? Why are little old grandmas hired to guard 200-pound prisoners? Why are newborn babies and old men with walkers singled out at the airport while likely terrorists are ushered through security with ease?This book shows through these absurdities that today's atmosphere of censorship and multiculturalism is paving the way for serious threats to our cultural identity and national security: "It's one thing for the forces of political correctness to muzzle our day-to-day lives here at home in the US, quite another when that same cancer metastasizes into the war on terror."We must eradicate the PC disease. Our sanity-and our very lives-depend on it."Michael Smerconish talks the talk: If you say unpopular things, watch out! Using vivid examples of PC rubbish, "Muzzled" will lead you into a world that would terrify Rod Serling. An entertaining and provocative book." -Bill O'Reilly"Reads like fiction, too bad it's true." -Nelson DeMille, novelist, author of "Night Fall and The General's Daughter""The PC virus is out of control . . . and it's worse than you think! In this entertaining and important book, Michael Smerconish chronicles just how mindless things have gotten in politically correct America. He tells fascinating stories that will make you laugh . . . right up until the time they make you scream. Thanks to the PC crowd, we are all living in The United States of the Absurd." -Bernard Goldberg, journalist and author of "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America," "Arrogance," and "Bias""I really squirm whenever I find myself agreeing with Smerconish. (I know the feeling is mutual.) I did a lot of squirming while reading this provocative book. All true liberals and conservatives must agree with Smerconish that the PC muzzles must be removed so that people can decide based on the marketplace of ideas." -Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard and author of "Preemption""I don't often find myself on the same side of the political barricades as Michael Smerconish. But "Muzzled" is a witty, provocative, and timely book. Even when Michael is wrong, which is often, he draws you in and keeps you reading." -Arianna Huffington, author of "Pigs at the Trough" and "Fanatics and Fools""In Muzzled, my American Blood Brother of status-quo-obliterating defiance, Michael Smerconish, once again smokes out the cockroaches of political correctness . . . "Muzzled" is a great title for a book that I am convinced every American school kid should read and be tested on. If a new generation doesn't grow some intellectual balls, our Once Great Nation will continue to repeat horrific mistakes and pay the price . . . Read it. Live it." -Ted Nugent, rock star, author, television personality, and hunter extraordinaire

    From questioning the true definitions of democracy and racism to challenging the entire Social Security system, he provides fresh insights into nagging social and political issues.

    It feeds a whole industry of commentators, pundits and politicians who take great delight in whipping us all into a frenzy, speaking for the ‘ordinary people’. But, when ugly prejudices are being fed by professionals grown fat on the fear and fury of their consumers, it is time to stop and ask whether the faceless group of immigrants really exists – or whether it just appeals to our basest fears.In this lively polemic, James O’Brien brings some common sense back into the discussion. Some people want to be frightened. They thrive on anger and division and upset. But many people don’t, and it is they who are most let down – most insulted – by the immigration debate. We don’t need to buy into this myth. There is no such thing as ‘immigrants’. There is no ‘they’. There is only ‘we’.

    Paul International Airport inadvertently helped launch R.T. Rybak’s political career (imagine a rumba line one hundred protesters long chanting, “We deserve to sleep, hey!”), but his earliest lessons in leadership occurred during his childhood. Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school with students who had much more than he did, spending evenings at his family’s store in an area where people lived with much less, he witnessed firsthand the opportunity and injustice of the city he called home. In a memoir that is at once a political coming-of-age story and a behind-the-scenes look at the running of a great city, the three-term mayor takes readers into the highs and lows and the daily drama of a life inextricably linked with Minneapolis over the past fifty years. With refreshing candor and insight, Rybak describes his path through journalism, marketing, and community activism that led to his unlikely (to him, at least) primary election—on September 11, 2001. His personal account of the challenges and crises confronting the city over twelve years, including the tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge, the rising scourge of youth violence, and the bruising fight over a ban on gay marriage (with Rybak himself conducting the first such ceremony at City Hall on August 1, 2013), is also an illuminating, often funny depiction of learning the workings of the job, frequently on the fly, while trying to keep up with his most important constituency, his family. As bracing as the “fresh air” campaign that swept him into office, Rybak’s memoir is that rare document from a politician: one more concerned with the people he served and the issues of his time than with burnishing his own credentials. As such, it reflects what leadership truly looks like.

    The truth? In Saudi Arabia, the existence of Christian churches is prohibited, along with the Bible itself; no Christian or Jew can enter Mecca or Medina lest their mere footsteps desecrate Islam’s holiest sites. In Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world, conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death. In Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and even the President’s beloved Indonesia, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other “infidels” often face acts of religious genocide by fundamentalists who invoke core Islamic texts and teachings to justify their actions.In short, as Robert Spencer shows in this work, the creed of Muhammad, far from being a religion of peace, has revealed itself in the post-9/11 world to be a religion of bigotry.

    

    This book brings together some of his nastiest and most irreverent pieces. Witty, sharp and brutally honest, this collection is certain to delight and provoke readers of all ages.

    Owens launched the Blexit movement to encourage black voters to leave the Democrat plantation.Today, the mainstream media calls her a white nationalist, even though she is the black granddaughter of a Southern sharecropper. Some conservatives, on the other hand, believe she will one day be President.In this biography, Richard West provides Candace Owens’ life story, showing how she evolved from a victim-mentality liberal to a victor-mentality conservative. She went from being “a girl who started with nothing” to a true American success.

    The book delves into the dilemmas that face modern cricket, such as ball-tampering, race and national identity.

    

    Helping to bring these forgotten figures into the light, Andrew Gimson's illuminating accounts are accompanied by sketches from Guardian sartirical cartoonist, Martin Rowson, making this the perfect gift for all lovers of history and politics.