Book picks similar to
The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing by Jayna Davis
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Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show
Jonathan Karl - 2021
As the reporter who has known Donald Trump longer than any other White House correspondent, Karl told the story of Trump's rise in the New York Times bestseller Front Row at the Trump Show. Now he tells the story of Trump's downfall, complete with riveting behind-the-scenes accounts of some of the darkest days in the history of the American presidency and packed with original reporting and on-the-record interviews with central figures in this drama who are telling their stories for the first time.This is a definitive account of what was really going on during the final weeks and months of the Trump presidency and what it means for the future of the Republican Party, by a reporter who was there for it all. He has been taunted, praised, and vilified by Donald Trump, and now Jonathan Karl finds himself in a singular position to deliver the truth.
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11
Garrett M. Graff - 2019
But one perspective has been missing up to this point—a 360-degree account of the day told through firsthand.Now, in The Only Plane in the Sky, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived—in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet.Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid.More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time: the father and son caught on different ends of the impact zone; the firefighter searching for his wife who works at the World Trade Center; the operator of in-flight telephone calls who promises to share a passenger’s last words with his family; the beloved FDNY chaplain who bravely performs last rites for the dying, losing his own life when the Towers collapse; and the generals at the Pentagon who break down and weep when they are barred from trying to rescue their colleagues.At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.
Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America's Space Espionage
Philip Taubman - 1999
Led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, they invented the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and the first reconnaissance satellites that revolutionized spying, proved that the missile gap was a myth, and protected the United States from Soviet surprise nuclear attack. They also made possible the space-based mapping, communications, and targeting systems used in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Veteran New York Times reporter and editor Philip Taubman interviewed dozens of participants and mined thousands of previously classified documents to tell this hidden, far-reaching story. He reconstructs the crucial meetings, conversations, and decisions that inspired and guided the development of the spy plane and satellite projects during one of the most perilous periods in our history, a time when, as President Eisenhower said, the world seemed to be "racing toward catastrophe." This is the story of these secret heroes, told in full for the first time.
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State
Nadia Murad - 2017
A member of the Yazidi community, she and her brothers and sisters lived a quiet life. Nadia had dreams of becoming a history teacher or opening her own beauty salon.On August 15th, 2014, when Nadia was just twenty-one years old, this life ended. Islamic State militants massacred the people of her village, executing men who refused to convert to Islam and women too old to become sex slaves. Six of Nadia's brothers were killed, and her mother soon after, their bodies swept into mass graves. Nadia was taken to Mosul and forced, along with thousands of other Yazidi girls, into the ISIS slave trade.Nadia would be held captive by several militants and repeatedly raped and beaten. Finally, she managed a narrow escape through the streets of Mosul, finding shelter in the home of a Sunni Muslim family whose eldest son risked his life to smuggle her to safety.Today, Nadia's story - as a witness to the Islamic State's brutality, a survivor of rape, a refugee, a Yazidi - has forced the world to pay attention to an ongoing genocide. It is a call to action, a testament to the human will to survive, and a love letter to a lost country, a fragile community, and a family torn apart by war.
The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
Michael Lewis - 2018
Nobody appeared. Across all departments the stories were the same: Trump appointees were few and far between; those who did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace.Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives, from ensuring the safety of our food and medications and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black- market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences of what happens when the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
Geoffrey R. Stone - 2004
Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era. Full of fresh legal and historical insight, Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents—Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon—to the Supreme Court justices—Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren—to the resisters—Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises.
The Interrogators: Inside the Secret War Against Al Qaeda
Chris Mackey - 2004
Greg Miller was the only American reporter granted access to U.S. interrogators.- Hogan and Miller offer an illuminating examination of the psychology and physiology of lying and determining whether someone is telling the truth.- THE INTERROGATORS will appeal to the audience of "The Cell, which grossed 100,000 copies.
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
James Risen - 2006
From warrantless wiretapping to secret financial data mining to the CIA's rogue operations, he has shown again and again that the executive branch has dangerously overreached, repudiated checks and balances on its power, and maintained secrecy even with its allies in Congress. In no small part thanks to Risen and State of War, the "secret history" of the Bush years has now come partially into view. In a new epilogue for the paperback edition, Risen describes the two-front war that President Bush is now fighting: at home against Congress and the Supreme Court, as his administration is increasingly reined in from its abuses; and in the Middle East, where George W. Bush's great gamble to bring a democratic revolution is failing radically. We must learn the lessons of Risen's history now, before it is too late.
All Too Human
George Stephanopoulos - 1999
At thirty, the author was at Bill Clinton's side during the presidential campaign of 1992, & for the next five years he was rarely more than a step away from the president & his other advisers at every important moment of the first term. What Liar's Poker did to Wall Street, this book will do to politics. It is an irreverent & intimate portrait of how the nation's weighty business is conducted by people whose egos & idiosyncrasies are no sturdier than anyone else's. Including sharp portraits of the Clintons, Al Gore, Dick Morris, Colin Powell, & scores of others, as well as candid & revelatory accounts of the famous debacles & triumphs of an administration that constantly went over the top, All Too Human is, like its author, a brilliant combination of pragmatic insight & idealism. It is destined to be the most important & enduring book to come out of the Clinton administration.
When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences
Eric Alterman - 2004
One of the best-known left-of-center journalist-historians in America, Alterman argues that those costs are not merely moral but practical. As examples, he uses four key lies told by presidents in the postwar era. From FDR at Yalta to LBJ in Vietnam, and from JFK in Cuba to Ronald Reagan in Central America, Alterman shows how attempts to mislead the American people ended up haunting their authors and dooming the very policies they were meant to advance. Closing with an examination of the Bush deceptions in Iraq, When Presidents Lie is history at its most compelling.
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Gary Schroen - 2005
This is the riveting first-person account of the treacherous top-secret mission inside Afghanistan to set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and launch the war on terror.As thrilling as any novel, First In is a uniquely intimate look at a mission that began the U.S. retaliation against terrorism–and reclaimed the country of Afghanistan for its people.
Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David Enrich - 2020
Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank’s efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much.In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality—the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he’d seen at the bank—and his son’s obsessive search for the secrets he kept.
American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us
Jesse Ventura - 2010
For too long, we the people have sat by and let politicians and bureaucrats from both parties obfuscate and lie. And according to this former Navy SEAL, former pro wrestler, and former Minnesota governor, the media is complicit in these acts of deception. For too long, the mainstream press has refused to consider alternate possibilities and to ask the tough questions. Here, Ventura looks closely at the theories that have been presented over the years and separates the fact from the fiction. In Ventura’s eyes, the murder of Abraham Lincoln and the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, all need to be re-examined. Was Watergate presented honestly, or was the CIA involved? Did the Republican Party set out to purposefully steal two elections on behalf of George W. Bush? Has all the evidence been presented about the 9/11 attacks or is there another angle that the media is afraid to explore? And finally, is the collapse of today’s financial order and the bailout plan by the Federal Reserve the widest-reaching conspiracy ever perpetrated? “If you’re talking outspoken, unconventional, and no-holds-barred, you’re talking Jesse Ventura.”—Larry King “I wouldn’t mind seeing Ventura run for president (or for senator, or dog-catcher, or whatever). In addition to talking conspiracy, he’s likely to raise all sorts of other trouble.”—Damon W. Root, Reason Magazine
Countdown bin Laden: The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice
Chris Wallace - 2021
During that secret session, they tell Panetta that agents have tracked a courier with deep Al Qaeda ties to a three-story house at the end of a dead end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But they say it’s more than a house—it’s a heavily protected fortress. No one in the meeting says the name bin Laden. They don’t have to. Everyone understands that finally, after nearly a decade, maybe, just maybe, they’ve found the world’s most wanted man.In Countdown bin Laden, celebrated journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace delivers a thrilling new account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing, and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target.The book delivers new information collected from Wallace’s in-depth interviews with more than a dozen central figures, including Admiral William McRaven—leader of the operation in Pakistan—as well as CIA Director Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and two members of SEAL Team Six who participate in the raid, including the Special Operator who kills Osama bin Laden.Wallace also brings to life the human elements of this story, talking to families who lost loved ones on 9/11; sharing what relatives of SEAL Team Six went through; and bringing us inside the tense Situation Room during the raid.Published on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, Countdown bin Laden is a historical thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting about the race to apprehend and bring to justice the architect of the most consequential terrorist attack in American history.
By Way of Deception: The Making of a Mossad Officer
Victor Ostrovsky - 1990
By Way of Deception is the true story of an officer in Israel's most secret agency:Author's ForwardPrologue: Operation SphinxRecruitmentSchool DaysFreshmenSophomoresRookiesThe Belgian TableHairpieceHail & FarewellStrellaCarlosExocetCheckmateHelping ArafatOnly in AmericaOperation MosesHarbor InsuranceBeirutEpilogueAppendicesGlossary of TermsIndex