Book picks similar to
The War Against Putin: What the Government-Media Complex Isn't Telling You About Russia by M.S. King
politics
biography
political
russia
The Radium Girls [Excerpt]
Kate Moore - 2017
During World War I, the young women who were hired to work in America's radium watch dial factories were considered the lucky ones. They were paid well, they got to work with the luminous element dubbed "liquid sunshine" that was all the rage, and they were helping the war effort by providing instruments that shone in the dark. And their bodies literally glowed because of the amount of radium they were ingesting. In her new book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, author Kate Moore gives voice to two groups of workers who became horribly ill and fought back against the companies that poisoned them. Using diaries and letters from the women, their statements in court documents, medical records and archived x-rays, as well as using ancestry documents to track down their relatives for interviews, Moore showcases the forgotten young women whose legal fight led to life-changing workplace safety regulations amid one of the biggest scandals of America's twentieth century. Preorder and find out how their story ends on May 2.
Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire
John Pilger - 2006
World–renowned journalist John Pilger looks at five nations (Palestine, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Africa) that have undergone long and painful struggles for freedom, yet are still waiting for its realization.
Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed, the All-American Boy Who Brought Rock 'n' Roll to the Soviet Union
Reggie Nadelson - 2006
Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters— musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives—who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid - 2000
The most extreme and radical of all Islamic organizations, the Taliban inspires fascination, controversy, and especially fear in both the Muslim world and the West. Correspondent Ahmed Rashid brings the shadowy world of the Taliban into sharp focus in this enormously interesting and revealing book. It is the only authoritative account of the Taliban and modern day Afghanistan available to English language readers.Based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, Rashid offers unparalleled firsthand information. He explains how the growth of Taliban power has already created severe instability in Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and five Central Asian republics. He describes the Taliban' s role as a major player in a new "Great Game"a competition among Western countries and companies to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Western and Asian markets. The author also discusses the controversial changes in American attitudes toward the Talibanfrom early support to recent bombings of Osama Bin Laden's hideaway and other Taliban-protected terrorist basesand how they have influenced the stability of the region.
Disunited Nations: Succeeding in a World Where No One Gets Along
Peter Zeihan - 2019
The Briefing: Politics, the Press, and the President
Sean Spicer - 2018
Really good, go get it!" —
President Donald J. Trump
No job is more of a pressure cooker than being a White House press secretary…especially in this White House. For more than two decades, Sean Spicer had been a respected political insider, working as a campaign and communications strategist. But in December 2016, he got the call of a lifetime. President-elect Donald J. Trump had chosen him to be the White House press secretary. And life hasn’t been the same since. When he accepted the job, Spicer was far from a household name. But then he walked into the bright lights of the briefing room, and the cameras started rolling. His every word was scrutinized. Every movement was parodied. Every detail became a meme. And that’s just the public side. Behind the scenes, things were almost as difficult in an administration plagued by leaks that frustrated and angered both Spicer and the president. Not to mention the extraordinary pressures on Spicer’s family and his faith. Now, in his provocative and enlightening political memoir, The Briefing, Spicer reveals the truth behind some of the biggest news stories of our time, and he offers a glimpse into what it’s like to stand at the press secretary’s podium—and how he got there. The Briefing is the first insider account written by someone who worked on the Trump campaign, with the Trump transition team, and in the Trump White House—and has seen Donald Trump rallying voters, building an administration, and making crucial policy decisions. Spicer’s riveting and personal account makes The Briefing the must-read political book of the year.
Legacy: Gangsters, Corruption and the London Olympics
Michael Gillard - 2019
A team of local detectives made it their business to take him on until Scotland Yard threw them under the bus and the business of putting on 'the greatest show on earth' won the day.Award-winning journalist Michael Gillard took up where they left off to expose the tangled web of chief executives, big banks, politicians and dirty money where innocent lives are destroyed and the guilty flourish. Gillard's efforts culminated in a landmark court case, which finally put the Long Fella and his friends on trial exposing London's real Olympic legacy.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
Michael Wolff - 2018
Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion.
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
Yuri Slezkine - 2017
Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children's loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union.Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 550 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building's residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths.Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
H.W. Brands - 2010
American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
Andy Greenberg - 2012
WikiLeaks brought to light a new form of whistleblowing, using powerful cryptographic code to hide leakers’ identities while they spill the private data of government agencies and corporations. But that technology has been evolving for decades in the hands of hackers and radical activists, from the libertarian enclaves of Northern California to Berlin to the Balkans. And the secret-killing machine continues to evolve beyond WikiLeaks, as a movement of hacktivists aims to obliterate the world’s institutional secrecy.This is the story of the code and the characters—idealists, anarchists, extremists—who are transforming the next generation’s notion of what activism can be.With unrivaled access to such major players as Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and WikiLeaks’ shadowy engineer known as the Architect, never before interviewed, reporter Andy Greenberg unveils the world of politically-motivated hackers—who they are and how they operate.
Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West
Mark Steyn - 2009
In 2007, the Canadian Islamic Congress brought three suits against Maclean s, Canada s biggest-selling newsweekly, for running an excerpt from Steyn s bestselling book America Alone, plus other flagrantly Islamophobic columns by the author. A year later the CIC had lost all its cases and Steyn had become a poster boy for a worldwide phenomenon - the collision between Islam, on the one hand, and, on the other, western notions of free speech, liberty and pluralism. In this book, Steyn republishes all the essays the western world's new thought police attempted to criminalize, along with new material responding to his accusers. Covering other crises from the Danish cartoons to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, he also takes a stand against the erosion of free speech, and the advance of a creeping totalitarian "multiculturalism"; and he considers the broader relationship between Islam and the west in a time of unprecedented demographic transformation.
9-11
Noam ChomskyRadio B92 - 2001
involvement with Afghanistan, media control, and the long-term implications of America's military attacks abroad. Informed by his deep understanding of the gravity of these issues and the global stakes, 9-11 demonstrates Chomsky's impeccable knowledge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia, and sheds light on the rapidly shifting balance of world power. Speaking out against escalating violence, Chomsky critically examines the United States' own foreign policy record and considers what international institutions might be employed against underground networks and national states accused of terrorism. 9-11's analysis still stands as a measure of how well the media is able to serve its role of informing the citizenry, so crucial to our democracy in times of war.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Robert Fisk - 2005
A book of searing drama as well as lucid, incisive analysis, The Great War for Civilisation is a work of major importance for today's world.
Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
H.R. McMaster - 2020
General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, ret., the former National Security Advisor and author of the bestselling classic Dereliction of Duty, comes a bold and provocative re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security.Across multiple administrations since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has been misconceived, inconsistent, and poorly implemented. As a result, America and the free world have fallen behind rivals in power and influence. Meanwhile threats to security, freedom, and prosperity, such as nuclear proliferation and jihadist terrorism have grown. In BATTLEGROUNDS, H.R. McMaster describes efforts to reassess and fundamentally shift policies while he was National Security Advisor. And he provides a clear pathway forward to improve strategic competence and prevail in complex competitions against our adversaries.BATTLEGROUNDS is a groundbreaking reassessment of America’s place in the world, drawing from McMaster’s long engagement with these issues, including 34 years of service in the U.S. Army with multiple tours of duty in battlegrounds overseas and his 13 months as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House. It is also a powerful call for Americans and citizens of the free world to transcend the vitriol of partisan political discourse, better educate themselves about the most significant challenges to national and international security and work together to secure peace and prosperity for future generations.