Marshall Field's: The Store that Helped Build Chicago


Gayle Soucek - 2010
    Dayton-Hudson even had to take out advertising around town to apologize for changing the Field's hallowed green bags. And with good reason--the store and those who ran it shaped the city's streets, subsidized its culture and heralded its progress. The resulting commercial empire dictated wholesale tradeterms in Calcutta and sponsored towns in North Carolina, but its essence was always Chicago. So when the Marshall Field name was retired in 2006 after the stores were purchased by Macy's, protest slogans like "Field's is Chicago" and "Field's: as Chicago as it gets" weren't just emotional hype. Many still hope that name will be resurrected like the city it helped support during the Great Fire and the Great Depression. Until then, fans of Marshall Field's can celebrate its history with this warm look back at the beloved institution.

A Journey: My Political Life


Tony Blair - 2010
    Prime Minister Tony Blair — young, charismatic and complex — shaped the nation profoundly in the ten years that followed. From his work in Northern Ireland to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, few of his decisions were free from scrutiny and debate. Alternately beloved and reviled, he was an international figure to a degree matched by few British leaders — a role he continues in to this day through the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and his work in the Middle East. Now, for the first time, we see the fascinating journey and difficult choices of the prime minister through his own eyes. Grippingly candid and deeply intimate, A Journey is a must-read political memoir, full of startling insights into a host of world leaders, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. It is also a book that delves deeply and profoundly into what it means to be in a position of great power today, and its emotional and personal toll.

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld


Misha Glenny - 2008
    No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime. "McMafia" is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West. To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crime's phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. "McMafia "will change the way we look at the world.

And the Sun Shines Now: How Hillsborough and the Premier League Changed Britain


Adrian Tempany - 2014
    The Hillsborough disaster was broadcast live on the BBC; it left millions of people traumatised, and English football in ruins.And the Sun Shines Now is not a book about Hillsborough. It is a book about what arrived in the wake of unquestionably the most controversial tragedy in the post-war era of Britain's history. The Taylor Report. Italia 90. Gazza's tears. All seater stadia. Murdoch. Sky. Nick Hornby. The Premier League. The transformation of a game that once connected club to community to individual into a global business so rapacious the true fans have been forgotten, disenfranchised.In powerful polemical prose, against a backbone of rigorous research and interviews, Adrian Tempany deconstructs the past quarter century of English football and examines its place in the world. How did Hillsborough and the death of 96 Liverpool fans come to change the national game beyond recognition? And is there any hope that clubs can reconnect with a new generation of fans when you consider the startling statistic that the average age of season ticket holder here is 41, compared to Germany's 21?Perhaps the most honest account of the relationship between the football and the state yet written, And the Sun Shines Now is a brutal assessment of the modern game.

The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club: Power, Passion, and Politics in the Nation's Capital


C. David Heymann - 2003
    David Heymann chronicles the dinner parties, correspondence, overlappings, and underpinnings of some of the most influential women in Washington's history. "The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club" -- a term coined by Ronald Reagan -- comprises a list of formidable and fascinating women, among them Katharine Graham, Lorraine Cooper, Evangeline Bruce, Pamela Harriman, and Sally Quinn. Their husbands, government officials and newsmakers among them, relied on the ladies for their sharp wit and sensitivity, refined bearings, and congeniality. In a city characteristically and traditionally controlled by men, the Georgetown wives were, in turn, afforded an abundance of behind-the-scenes political clout. Filled with intriguing and often startling insights into Washington life, from the latter days of the Kennedy and Truman administrations to the Clinton era and the advent of President George W. Bush, The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club is a compelling testament to the sex, lies, and red tape of American politics.

Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire


Leslie Carroll - 2009
    Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici—all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge...Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Angevins to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry—and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality


Peter Pomerantsev - 2019
    In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we’ve lost not only our grip on peace and democracy — but our very notion of what those words even mean.Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, “behavioral change” salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia — but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water: How I Threw My Life Overboard and Found Happiness at Sea


Mary South - 2007
    But shuttling between the conference room at work and her couch in front of the TV at home, South couldn't help feeling that she was missing something intangible but essential. So she decided to go looking for it where so many have before: at sea.Six months later, she had quit her job, sold the house, graduated seamanship school and was living aboard a 40-foot, 30-ton steel trawler. Despite South's total lack of experience, the maiden voyage of the rechristened Bossanova was to be a journey up the eastern seaboard. Along with her crew (the dogs and her buddy John—her odd-couple opposite in politics, lifestyle and pretty much everything except a love of the open ocean), she set off on a fifteen-hundred mile odyssey from Florida to Maine. But what began as the fulfillment of an idle wish became a crash course in navigating the byways of the self.The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water traces South's voyage from the charming Americana of Florida's Intracoastal Waterway out into the often stormy waters of the Atlantic. As the trip progresses, South grapples not only with whatever Poseidon throws her way, but also with the ghosts of family and loves lost. For anyone with a secret dream that's gone unfulfilled, here is a reckoning—both funny and poignant—of what's really involved in casting off an old life and making a new one.

Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain


Fintan O'Toole - 2018
    He also discusses the fatal attraction of what he calls, "heroic failure", once a self-deprecating cult in a hugely successful empire that could well afford the occasional disaste. Now failure is no longer heroic – it is just failure, and the author says, terrible costs will be paid by the most vulnerable of Brexit's supporters, and by those who may suffer the consequences of a hard border in Ireland and the breakdown of a fragile peace.

Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table: A Collection of Essays from the New York Times


Amanda Hesser - 2008
    Eat, Memory collects the twenty-six best stories and recipes to accompany them.Ann Patchett confronts her stubbornness in a heated argument she once had with her then-boyfriend, now husband, over dinner at the famed Paris restaurant Taillevent. Tom Perrotta explains how his long list of food aversions almost landed him in an East German prison. Gabrielle Hamilton finds that hiring a blind cook leads her into ethical terrain she wasn't prepared to navigate. And poet Billy Collins muses over his relationship with a fish he once ate.Also included are stories by Chang-rae Lee, Patricia Marx, John Burnham Schwartz, George Saunders, Colson Whitehead, Kiran Desai, Pico Iyer, and Heidi Julavits, among others.

9 Lessons in Brexit


Ivan Rogers - 2019
    RowlingTwo and a half years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the political debate over Brexit seems as intense and as complicated as ever. Who and what can we trust? And how on earth do we make sense of it all?Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU, is uniquely placed to tell some home truths about the failure of the British political class and the flaws, dishonesty and confusion inherent in the UK’s approach to Brexit so far.In this short, elegant essay, Rogers draws up nine lessons that we, as a soon-to-be ‘third country’, need to learn from the last few years, if the next few years – indeed the next decade – are not to be even more painful.

Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology


James R. Chiles - 2001
    Combining firsthand accounts of employees' escapes with an in-depth look at the structural reasons behind the towers' collapse, Chiles addresses the question, Were the towers "two tall heroes" or structures with a fatal flaw?

My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy


Kim Philby - 1968
    “Kim” Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as MI6’s liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War.Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John le Carré’s Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history’s most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.

The Naked Communist


W. Cleon Skousen - 1960
    It found its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across America and overseas in Spanish and excerpted in other languages. In this hard-hitting book an urgent need is finally fulfilled. In one exciting, readable volume, the incredible story of Communism is graphically told. We believe this to be the most vivid and comprehensive book on the subject ever published. It contains a distillation of more than a hundred books and treatises on Communism, many written by Marxist authors. We see the Communist the way he sees himself---stripped of propaganda and pretense. Hence the title, "The Naked Communist." Here is explained Communism's amazing appeal, its history, and its basic and unchanging concepts---even its secret time-table of conquest! Vital questions are clearly answered---Who gave Russia the A-bomb? How did the FBI fight the battle of the underground? Why did the West lose 600 million allies after World War II? What really happened in Korea? What is Communism's great secret weapon? Is there an answer to Communism? What lies ahead?

Searching for Captain Wentworth


Jane Odiwe - 2012
    But, the neglected house is harbouring more than the antiquated furniture and nesting mice, though initially Sophie tries to dismiss the haunting visions of a young girl. On discovering that an ancient glove belonging to her mysterious neighbour, Josh Strafford, will transport her back in time to Regency Bath, she questions her sanity, but Sophie is soon caught up in two dimensions, each reality as certain as the other. Torn between her life in the modern world, and that of her ancestor who befriends Jane Austen and her fascinating brother Charles, Sophie's story travels two hundred years across time, and back again, to unite this modern heroine with her own Captain Wentworth. Blending fact and fiction together the tale of Jane Austen’s own quest for happiness weaves alongside, creating a believable world of new possibilities for the inspiration behind the beloved novel, Persuasion.