The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan


Michael Hastings - 2011
    Now, THE OPERATORS will lead us even deeper into the war, its politics, and its major players at a time when such insight is demanded and desperately needed. Based on exclusive reporting in Afghanistan, Europe, the Middle East, and Washington, DC, this landmark work of journalism will elucidate as never before the United States' involvement in Afghanistan in vivid, unforgettable detail. Part wild travelogue, part expos, and part sobering analysis, THE OPERATORS promises an unprecedented behind-the-scenes account of the war from the only journalist uniquely poised to tell it.

Che


Spain Rodriguez - 2008
    This dramatic and extensively researched book breathes new life into his story, portraying his struggle through the medium of the underground political comic--one of the most prominent countercultural art forms since the 1960s. Spain Rodriguez's powerful artwork illuminates Che's life and the experiences that shaped him, from his motorcycle journey through Latin America, his rise to prominence as a leader in Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement, his travels in Africa, his involvement in the insurgency that led to his death in Bolivia, and his extraordinary legacy.

Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism


Joel Andreas - 1993
    Hard-hitting, carefully documented and heavily illustrated, it reveals why the United States has been involved in more wars in recent years than any other country. Read Addicted to War to find out who benefits from these military adventures, who pays—and who dies. Over 120,000 copies of the previous edition are in print. This new edition is substantially reworked and fully updated through the War in Iraq. “A witty and devastating portrait of U.S. military policy.”—Howard ZinnJoel Andreas wrote and illustrated The Incredible Rocky, the biting satire that introduced over 100,000 people to the unsavory activities of the Rockefeller family.In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

Homage to Catalonia


George Orwell - 1938
    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice


Debbie Levy - 2019
    She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became…RBG.

Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War


Giles Whittell - 2010
    He reveals the dramatic lives of men drawn into the nadir of the Cold War by duty and curiosity, and the tragicomedy of errors that eventually induced Khrushchev to send missiles to Castro. Two of his subjects — the spy and the pilot — were the original seekers of weapons of mass destruction. The third, an intellectual, fluent in German, unencumbered by dependents, and researching a Ph.D. thesis on the foreign trade system of the Soviet bloc, seemed to the Stasi precisely the sort of person the CIA should have been recruiting. He was not. In over his head in the world capital of spying, he was wrongly charged with espionage and thus came to the Agency’s notice by a more roundabout route. The three men were rescued against daunting odds by fate and by their families, and then all but forgotten. Yet they laid bare the pathological mistrust that fueled the arms race for the next 30 years.  Drawing on new interviews conducted in the United States, Europe and Russia with key players in the exchange and the events leading to it, among them Frederic Pryor himself and the man who shot down Gary Powers, Bridge of Spies captures a time when the fate of the world really did depend on coded messages on microdots and brave young men in pressure suits. The exchange that frigid day at two of the most sensitive points along the Iron Curtain represented the first step back from where the superpowers had stood since the building of the Berlin Wall the previous summer – on the brink of World War III.

Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, Part One: 1783-1953


Jean-Pierre Filiu - 2011
    A must read for anyone interested in learning, or teaching, about the region.”—Mark Levine, professor of history at UC-Irvine and author of Heavy Metal Islam   In the third volume of their graphic history of US and Middle East relations, Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B. take in the tumultuous period that began with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and ended with Obama’s decision, in 2013, not to intervene in Syria.   Spanning the First Gulf War, the rise of al-Qaeda, the military response to September 11, and the present conflict in Syria, Best of Enemies: Part Three is propelled by a clash between four presidents and their Middle Eastern antagonists: on the one hand, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama; on the other, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Bashar al-Assad. Covering 30 years of conflict and diplomacy, Best of Enemies: Part Three is a breezy and engaging guide to the events that shaped the politics of today.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage


Sydney Padua - 2015
    . . in which Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures. Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines. But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War


Matt Faulkner - 2014
    Streetcars won't stop for Koji, and his classmates accuse him of being an enemy spy. When a letter arrives from the government notifying him that he must go to a relocation center for Japanese Americans, he and his mother are forced to leave everything they know behind. Once there, Koji soon discovers that being half white in the internment camp is just as difficult as being half Japanese in San Francisco.Koji's story, based on true events, is brought to life by Matt Faulkner's cinematic illustrations, which reveal Koji struggling to find his place in a tumultuous world—one where he is a prisoner of war in his own country.

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam


Nick Turse - 2011
    Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter


Robert Venditti - 2019
    World War II. D-Day. 182 members of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division parachute into the French countryside--a full eighteen miles southeast of their intended target. Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter is an original graphic novel from DC Vertigo is the true story of a World War II battle that took place in the small village of Graignes, France for six days and the people that survived to tell the tale.In the worst mis-drop of the D-Day campaign, a group of soldiers are rattled to find themselves even deeper behind enemy lines than anyone had intended. Miraculously, the citizens of Graignes vote to feed and shelter the soldiers, knowing that the decision would bring them terrible punishment if their efforts were discovered by the Germans. That day of reckoning comes faster than anyone could expect.As a small German militia passes through, the world's war comes to their remote town in the countryside and for the the next six days, the small band of American paratroopers and French citizens must fight for their lives to hold back 2,000 enemy combatants.Six Days: The Incredible Story of D-Day's Lost Chapter is a true story of survival, loyalty, the brutality of war and a triumph of the human spirit so rarely brought to the comics form. Writers Kevin Maurer (#1 New York Times bestseller No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden) and Robert Venditti (Green Lantern)--whose uncle fought in the Battle of Graignes and is a key character in the tale--completed exhaustive archival research in preparation this unbelievable untold story from World War II.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone


Rajiv Chandrasekaran - 2006
    Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of twentysomethings hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country. In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions—a flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. His almost comic initiatives anger the locals and help fuel the insurgency. Chandrasekaran details Bernard Kerik’s ludicrous attempt to train the Iraqi police and brings to light lesser known but typical travesties: the case of the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdad’s stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons scientists from defecting to Iran; Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on Roe v. Wade; people with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremer’s ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule. This is a startling portrait of an Oz-like place where a vital aspect of our government’s folly in Iraq played out. It is a book certain to be talked about for years to come.

Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Graphic Novel: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today


Cynthia Levinson - 2020
    This imperfect document set forth America’s guiding principles, but it would also introduce some of today's most contentious political issues—from gerrymandering, to the Electoral College, to presidential impeachment.With colorful art, compelling discourse, and true stories from America's past and present, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Graphic Novel sheds light on how today's political struggles have their origins in the decisions of our Founding Fathers.Children’s book author Cynthia Levinson, constitutional law scholar Sanford Levinson, and artist Ally Shwed deftly illustrate how contemporary problems arose from this founding document—and then they offer possible solutions.

World War One: 1914-1918


Alan Cowsill - 2014
     This stunning new book brings history to life as we see the war through the eyes of the young conscripted servicemen on all sides of the conflict. Introducing the advent of tanks, airplanes, air raids, submarines and gas attacks, we take a close look at the first modern war of the 20th Century. From the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo to the Treaty of Versailles we see for ourselves what life was like in the trenches, on the home front, at sea and in the air. This is more than just a history book; it is a fully illustrated journey into another age.We follow the fortunes of a group of young conscripts and volunteers to discover what life was really like in the trenches and how they coped with returning home after the horrors of the front line.

Laika


Nick Abadzis - 2007
    This is her journey.Nick Abadzis blends fiction and fact in the intertwined stories of three compelling lives. Along with Laika, there is Korolev, once a political prisoner, now a driven engineer at the top of the Soviet space program, and Yelena, the lab technician responsible for Laika's health and life.