My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past


Jennifer Teege - 2013
    Millions of people worldwide know of him through Ralph Fiennes’ chilling portrayal in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Goeth was the brutal commandant of the Plaszów concentration camp—Oskar Schindler’s drinking buddy, and yet his adversary. Responsible for the deaths of thousands, Amon Goeth was hanged in 1946.Goeth’s partner Ruth, Teege’s much-loved grandmother, committed suicide in 1983. Teege is their daughter’s daughter; her father is Nigerian. Raised by foster parents, she grew up with no knowledge of the family secret. Now, it unsettles her profoundly. What can she say to her Jewish friends, or to her own children? Who is she—truly?My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me is Teege’s searing chronicle of grappling with her haunted past. Her research into her family takes her to Poland and to Israel. Award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair supplies historical context in a separate, interwoven narrative. Step by step, horrified by her family’s dark history, Teege builds the story of her own liberation.

Grace Notes


Alexandra Stoddard - 1993
    Grace Notes.Reach out to others. Be outgoing. Be kind, gentle and thoughtful. To achieve these qualities requires great sensitivity and daring -- The more we forget about our ego's, the more open we are to love. Find the path to happiness within yourself.

The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire


Susan Ronald - 2007
    Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, she employed a network of daring merchants, brazen adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council to anchor her throne—and in doing so, planted the seedlings of an empire that would ultimately cover two-fifths of the world. In 'The Pirate Queen', historian Susan Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, relying on a wealth of historical sources and thousands of the queen's personal letters to tell the thrilling story of a visionary monarch and the swashbuckling mariners who terrorized the seas to amass great wealth for themselves and the Crown.

The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception


David Michaels - 2020
    In The Triumph of Doubt , former Obama and Clinton official David Michaels details how corrupt science becomes public policy -- and where it's happening today.Opioids. Concussions. Obesity. Climate Change.America is a country of everyday crises -- big, long-spanning problems that persist despite their toll on the country's health. And for every case of government inaction on one of these issues, there is a set of familiar, doubtful refrains: The science is unclear. The data are inconclusive. Regulation is unjustified. It's a slippery slope.Is it?The Triumph of Doubt traces the ascendance of science-for-hire in American life and government, from its origins in the tobacco industry in the 1950s to its current manifestations across government, public policy, and even professional sports. Amid fraught conversations of "alternative facts" and "truth decay," The Triumph of Doubt wields its unprecedented access to shine a light on the machinations and scope of manipulated science in American society. It is an urgent, revelatory work, one that promises to reorient conversations around science and the public good for the foreseeable future.

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements


Eric Hoffer - 1951
    The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences. Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one.

Armadillo


William Boyd - 1998
    The elements at play: a beautiful actress glimpsed in a passing taxi . . . an odd new business associate whose hiring, firing and rehiring make little sense . . . a rock musician who is losing his mind -- and a web of fraud in which virtually everyone Lorimer Black knows has been caught and in which he finds himself increasingly entangled.

The Secret History of MI6


Keith Jeffery - 2010
    Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was born a century ago amid fears of the rising power of other countries, especially Germany. The next 40 years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important & largely hidden role in shaping history. This revelatory account draws on a wealth of archival materials never before seen by outsiders to unveil the inner workings of the world's 1st spy agency. MI6's early days were haphazard but it was quickly forged into an effective organization during WWI. During the war years, MI6 also formed ties with the USA--harbingers of a relationship that would become vital to both. These early years also saw the development of techniques that would become plot devices in books & films--forgery, invisible ink, disguises, concealing mechanisms etc. The interwar years were nominally peaceful, but Britain perceived numerous threats, all of which MI6 was expected to keep tabs on. The outbreak of WWII again caught MI6 off balance, & high-profile blunders (& the memoirs of MI6 operatives like Graham Greene) created an impression of ineffectiveness. At the same time the service was pioneering cryptography at Bletchley Park, breaking the Enigma code & devising the methods & equipment inspiring Ian Fleming's novels. The aftermath of WWII was as dramatic as the war itself had been, because 1945-49 saw not only the end of the British Empire but also the emergence of a new sort of conflict--the Cold War. We witness MI6 wrestling with these epic changes as it tightens its bonds with the newly christened CIA, changes that would dictate the shape of the service & the world for decades.

Conundrum


Jan Morris - 1974
    James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man’s man.Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. Conundrum , one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

Back from the Brink: 1000 Days at Number 11


Alistair Darling - 2011
    In the late summer of 2007, shares of Northern Rock went into free-fall, causing a run on the bank - the first in over 150 years. Northern Rock proved to be only the first. Twelve months later, as the world was engulfed in the worst banking crisis for more than a century, one of its largest banks, RBS, came within hours of collapse. Back from the Brink tells the gripping story of Alistair Darling's one thousand days in Number 11 Downing Street. As Chancellor, he had to avert the collapse of RBS hours before the cash machines would have ceased to function; at the eleventh hour, he stopped Barclays from acquiring Lehman Brothers in order to protect UK taxpayers; he used anti-terror legislation to stop Icelandic banks from withdrawing funds from Britain. From crisis talks in Washington, to dramatic meetings with the titans of international banking, to dealing with the massive political and economic fallout in the UK, Darling places the reader in the rooms where the destinies of millions weighed heavily on the shoulders of a few. His book is also a candid account of life in the Downing Street pressure cooker and his relationship with Gordon Brown during the last years of New Labor. Back from the Brink is a vivid and immediate depiction of the British government's handling of an unprecedented global financial catastrophe. Alistair Darling's knowledge and understanding provide a unique perspective on the events that rocked international capitalism. It is also a vital historical document.

Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire


Simon Winchester - 1985
    He traveled 100,000 miles back and forth, from Antarctica to the Caribbean, from the Mediterranean to the Far East, to capture a last glint of imperial glory.His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling, often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and those who keep the flag flying.With a new introduction, this updated edition tells us what has happened to these extraordinary places while the author's been away.

Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World


Timothy Garton Ash - 2016
    If we have Internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like and potentially reach an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan.   Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Timothy Garton Ash argues that in this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free speech. Across all cultural divides we must strive to agree on how we disagree. He draws on a thirteen-language global online project—freespeechdebate.com—conducted out of Oxford University and devoted to doing just that. With vivid examples, from his personal experience of China's Orwellian censorship apparatus to the controversy around Charlie Hebdo to a very English court case involving food writer Nigella Lawson, he proposes a framework for civilized conflict in a world where we are all becoming neighbors.

The Song of Lunch


Christopher Reid - 2009
    A mock elegy for the heady joys of old-time Soho, 'The Song of Lunch' displays the full range of Reid's wit, craft and human sympathy.

Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit


Craig Oliver - 2016
    As David Cameron's director of Politics and communications, Craig Oliver was in the room at every key moment during the EU referendum - the biggest political event in the UK since World War 2.Craig Oliver worked with all the players, including David Cameron, George Osbourne, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Theresa May and Peter Mandelson.Unleashing Demons is based on his extensive notes, detailing everything from the decision to call a referendum, to the subsequent civil war in the Conservative Party and the aftermath of the shocking result.This is raw history at its very best, packed with enthralling detail and colourful anecdotes from behind the closed doors of the campaign that changed British history.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other


Sherry Turkle - 2011
    Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them.In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It’s a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of today’s self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.

White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business


Dan Alexander - 2020
    is the definitive book on money and politics in the Trump era. It examines every aspect of the president's portfolio: his exclusive clubs, D.C. hotel, overseas partnerships, commercial properties, personal mansions and private planes.It also investigates Trump associates. The president's disregard for norms set the tone at the top of the federal government, sparking a trickle-down ethics crisis with no precedent in modern American history. Trump appointed an inner circle of centimillionaires and billionaires--including Jared Kushner, Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn--who all arrived in Washington with their own conflict-ridden portfolios. With the president as their guide, they busted through barriers meant to separate their financial holdings from their government roles.Alexander tracks hundreds of millions flowing freely between big businesses and President Trump. He explains, in plain language, how Donald Trump bought and sold the presidency. In the tradition of game-changing political exposés like Dark Money, White House, Inc. represents the most complete financial account of the Trump presidency.