Battleground Prussia: The Assault on Germany's Eastern Front 1944–45


Prit Buttar - 2010
    The Soviet Army's intent to take revenge for the horror that the Nazis had wreaked on their people produced a conflict of implacable brutality in which millions perished.From the great battles that marked the Soviet conquest of East and West Prussia to the final surrender in the Vistula estuary, this handsome volume from Osprey recounts in chilling detail the desperate struggle of soldiers and civilians alike. These brutal campaigns are brought vividly to life by a combination of previously unseen testimony and astute strategic analysis recognizing a conflict of unprecedented horror and terrible suffering. Author Prit Buttar spins a mesmerizing tale accompanied by rare photographs and informative maps.

The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party


Philip Gould - 1998
    Blair's majority was the culmination of a long struggle to modernize the party, and the politics of his country. Philip Gould is a political strategist and polling adviser who has worked with the Labour leadership since the 1980s. In this book he describes its rise and explains how the transformation was achieved, at the same time exploring the changed political climate in Britain.

The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia


Peter Hopkirk - 1990
    Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized in Kipling's Kim. When play firstbegan the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were within 20 miles of India.This book tells the story of the Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy men or native horsetraders, they mapped secret passes, gathered intelligence, and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some neverreturned.

Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945


Richard Overy - 1997
    Overy's engrossing book provides extensive details of teh slaughter, brutality, bitterness and destruction on the massive front from the White Sea to the flank of Asia.--Chicago Tribune The Russian war effort to defeat invading Axis powers, an effort that assembled the largest military force in recorded history and that cost the lives of more than 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians, was the decisive factor for securing an Allied victory. Now with access to the wealth of film archives and interview material from Russia used to produce the ten-hour television documentary Russia's War, Richard Overy tackles the many persuasive questions surrounding this conflict. Was Stalin a military genius? Was the defense of Mother Russia a product of something greater than numbers of tanks and planes--of something deep within the Russian soul?

We have now begun our descent: How to Stop South Africa losing its way


Justice Malala - 2015
    I am furious. Because I never thought it would happen to us. Not us, the rainbow nation that defied doomsayers and suckled and nurtured a fragile democracy into life for its children. I never thought it would happen to us, this relentless decline, the flirtation with a leap over the cliff.” In a searing, honest paean to his country, renowned political journalist and commentator Justice Malala forces South Africa to come face to face with the country it has become: corrupt, crime-ridden, compromised, its institutions captured by a selfish political elite bent on enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. In this deeply personal reflection, Malala’s diagnosis is devastating: South Africa is on the brink of ruin. He does not stop there. Malala believes that we have the wherewithal to turn things around: our lauded Constitution, the wealth of talent that exists, our history of activism and a democratic trajectory can all be used to stop the rot. But he has a warning: South Africans of all walks of life need to wake up and act, or else they will soon find their country has been stolen.

Lunatic Soup


Andrew Fraser - 2008
    After being convicted and disbarred, Fraser became the confidant of one of Australia’s most notorious serial killers, Peter Dupas. What he learned made him the Homicide Squad’s secret weapon. Angry at his treatment in jail and his excessive sentence, the long–time defence lawyer enjoyed the irony of his situation: the authorities who destroyed his career now needed his cooperation. There was never any doubt that Andrew would give evidence, even though he knew that the defence would try to destroy his credibility by bringing up the past he desperately wanted to forget. Fraser paints a vivid picture of the grim, terrifying, and futile reality of maximum security prison life and of his time spent with the murderers, psychopaths, and paedophiles. Lunatic Soup relates his harrowing experiences of the justice system as a prisoner and on the stand as a witness in a murder trial.

Angel is Airborne: JFK's Final Flight from Dallas


Garrett M. Graff - 2013
    Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson boarded the plane in secrecy, with few in the world aware that President Kennedy was dead, and then after taking the presidential oath, Johnson had 132 minutes to assemble his thoughts and a government before landing at Andrews Air Force Base and presenting himself to the cameras as the new leader of the free world.While there are many individual recollections of the flight, there exist few comprehensive reconstructions of all that unfolded on the plane. Graff's account of the flight—based on dozens of accounts of those on board plus more than 500 pages of archive documents as well as a recently discovered two-hour-and-22-minute audio recording of Air Force One’s radio traffic with Andrews on the day of the assassination—reveals that even amid one of the most dramatic presidential transitions in history there arose very human moments of envy, anger, bewilderment, and courage, as those aboard endured what would be for all of them the most difficult hours of their lives.

Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People”


KT McFarland - 2020
    Now former government official and political commentator KT McFarland returns with tenacity, resolve, and the truth about the Trump Administration and those seeking to destroy it. For decades, KT McFarland has been one of the country’s most prominent conservative foreign policy experts. She was part of the Trump Revolution from the beginning. As Trump’s first Deputy National Security Advisor, she had a seat at the table for everything: Trump’s unconventional campaign and upset victory; his throw-out-the-rule-book Trump Tower Transition; the chaotic first months in the West Wing; the unusual events surrounding General Flynn’s firing; and the sprawling Mueller investigation. In Revolution, she walks the reader through the Washington Establishment’s relentless efforts to destroy Trump, populism, and nationalism in order to keep their own hands on the levers of power. The Trump Revolution, like the Reagan Revolution and all the anti-Establishment political revolutions before it, will ultimately prevail. It is this ability to reinvent ourselves, not just as individuals but as a society, that lies at the heart of American Exceptionalism. When McFarland left the Trump Administration and Washington, she disappeared from public view and refused to discuss her experiences. Now, for the first time, McFarland tells a story that reads more like a political thriller than a tour through this unique moment in history. Written with unusual candor, with insights into Trump and his inner circle, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un, McFarland’s book is destined to become a classic. If you only read one book about the Age of Trump, make it Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People.”

Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It


Wendell Potter - 2016
    Special interest groups increasingly control every level of government. The necessity of raising huge sums of campaign cash has completely changed the character of politics and policy making, determining what elected representatives stand for and how they spend their time. The marriage of great wealth and intense political influence has rendered our country unable to address our most pressing problems, from runaway government spending to climate change to the wealth gap. It also defines our daily lives: from the cars we drive to the air we breathe to the debt we owe.In this powerful work of reportage, Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman, two vigilant watchdogs, expose legalized corruption and link it to the kitchen-table issues citizens face every day. Inciting our outrage, the authors then inspire us by introducing us to the army of reformers laying the groundwork for change, ready to be called into action. The battle plan for reform presented is practical, realistic, and concrete. No one-except some lobbyists and major political donors-likes business as usual, and this book intends to help forge a new army of reformers who are compelled by a patriotic duty to fight for a better democracy.An impassioned, infuriating, yet ultimately hopeful call to arms, Nation on the Take lays bare the reach of moneyed interests and charts a way forward, toward the recovery of America's original promise.

Supreme Whispers: Conversations with Judges of the Supreme Court of India 1980-89


Abhinav Chandrachud - 2018
    Based on 114 intriguing interviews with nineteen former chief justices of India and more than sixty-six former judges of the Supreme Court of India, Abhinav Chandrachud opens a window to the life and times of the former judges of India's highest court of law and in the process offers a history that largely remained in oblivion for a long time.

For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus


Frederick Brown - 2010
    . . Intellectually nuanced, exquisitely written”—The New Republic) now gives us an ambitious, far-reaching book—a perfect joining of subject and writer: a portrait of fin-de-siècle France. He writes about the forces that led up to the twilight years of the nineteenth century when France, defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, was forced to cede the border states of Alsace and Lorraine, and of the resulting civil war, waged without restraint, that toppled Napoléon III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic. The author describes how postwar France, a nation splintered in the face of humiliation by the foreigner—Prussia—dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state (“Clericalism, there is the enemy!”), and reactionaries, who saw their ideal nation—militant, Catholic, royalist—embodied by Joan of Arc, with their message, that France had suffered its defeat in 1871 for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of “science” and “technological advancement” versus “supernatural intervention.” Brown shows us how Paris’s most iconic monuments that rose up during those years bear witness to the passionate decades-long quarrel. At one end of Paris was Gustave Eiffel’s tower, built in iron and more than a thousand feet tall, the beacon of a forward-looking nation; at Paris’ other end, at the highest point in the city, the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, atonement for the country’s sins and moral laxity whose punishment was France’s defeat in the war . . . Brown makes clear that the Dreyfus Affair—the cannonade of the 1890s—can only be understood in light of these converging forces. “The Affair” shaped the character of public debate and informed private life. At stake was the fate of a Republic born during the Franco-Prussian War and reared against bitter opposition. The losses that abounded during this time—the financial loss suffered by thousands in the crash of the Union Génerale, a bank founded in 1875 to promote Catholic interests with Catholic capital outside the Rothschilds’ sphere of influence, along with the failure of the Panama Canal Company—spurred the partisan press, which blamed both disasters on Jewry.The author writes how the roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900. Instead they became the festering point that led to France’s surrender to Hitler’s armies in 1940, when the Third Republic fell and the Vichy government replaced it, with Marshal Pétain heralded as the latest incarnation of Joan of Arc, France’s savior . . .From the Hardcover edition.

Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation


Serhii Plokhy - 2017
    While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation.In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 2,000 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy.An authoritative and masterful account of Russian imperialism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent nation-building quest.

Michelle Obama - Quotes to Live By (Little Book)


Alex Lemon - 2019
    As a student, she excelled; as a lawyer, she rose through the ranks; as a mother, she inspired and nurtured two girls; and as the First Lady of the United States, she used her platform to disseminate her strongly-held beliefs. Intelligence, generosity, strength, bravery, confidence, and hard work are all key attributes associated with Michelle Obama, and this book serves to cement her place as one of the strongest voices on the global stage today."When you are struggling and you start thinking about giving up, I want you to remember something ... and that is the power of hope. The belief that something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it."Final speech as First Lady of the United States, January 2017.

Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria


Sam Dagher - 2019
    Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -- an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. By drawing on his own reporting experience in Damascus and exclusive interviews with Tlass, Dagher takes readers within palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region.Dagher shows how one of the world's most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another.

Rules for Radicals Defeated: A Practical Guide for Defeating Obama / Alinsky Tactics


Jeff Hedgpeth - 2012
    This book provides a practical guidebook for those seeking to understand and defeat the Alinsky tactics used by the Obama Administration, Occupy Wall Street, and other far-Left organizations.