The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken


The Secret Barrister - 2018
    These are the stories of life inside the courtroom. They are sometimes funny, often moving and ultimately life-changing. How can you defend a child-abuser you suspect to be guilty? What do you say to someone sentenced to ten years who you believe to be innocent? What is the law and why do we need it? And why do they wear wigs? From the criminals to the lawyers, the victims, witnesses and officers of the law, here is the best and worst of humanity, all struggling within a broken system which would never be off the front pages if the public knew what it was really like. This is a first-hand account of the human cost of the criminal justice system, and a guide to how we got into this mess, The Secret Barrister shows you what it’s really like and why it really matters.

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan


Michael Hastings - 2011
    Now, THE OPERATORS will lead us even deeper into the war, its politics, and its major players at a time when such insight is demanded and desperately needed. Based on exclusive reporting in Afghanistan, Europe, the Middle East, and Washington, DC, this landmark work of journalism will elucidate as never before the United States' involvement in Afghanistan in vivid, unforgettable detail. Part wild travelogue, part expos, and part sobering analysis, THE OPERATORS promises an unprecedented behind-the-scenes account of the war from the only journalist uniquely poised to tell it.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America


Richard Rothstein - 2017
    Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't


Nate Silver - 2012
    He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.

Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street (Kindle Single)


Janet M. Tavakoli - 2015
    A prominent bank CEO seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown.In Washington D.C., a former Wall Street regulator checks into a hotel using the name of a hedge fund manager for an illicit meeting with a prostitute. In a D.C. suburb, the CFO of a beleaguered mortgage giant chooses a drastic personal end to “relentless pressure”.In a picturesque suburb of Zug, Switzerland, the CFO of a major insurance company decides to end his life. In London, a financier kills himself in a way he once said he never would.In her new memoir, Janet Tavakoli shines a bright light on the money-driven culture of Wall Street and Washington, and the life and death consequences of our decisions that put profit above all.Approximately 16,000 words of text (not including front and back matter and references. 105 total pages)Praise for Decisions"Tavakoli takes us on a scenic tour of the recent lowlights of Wall Street and Washington...demystified and rendered tragically human. It's a compelling tale.” Jake Bernstein, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting "Merrill Debauchery Only Begins This Woman's Tale... 'Neither Bill nor I believed Calvi committed suicide,' Tavakoli writes. 'Bill joked that he'd never hang himself. It was too gruesome.'"Bloomberg News "Janet Tavakoli is a born storyteller with an incredible tale to tell. She takes us on a br /isk journey from the depravity of 1980s Wall Street to the systemic recklessness that crushed the global economy.”Nomi Prins, author of All the Presidents' Bankers “An authority on credit derivatives, has written a reflective memoir about life in the world of finance. Tavakoli is not a woman who employs words carelessly, and when she says fraud she means ... fraud.” All About Alpha Praise for Janet M. Tavakoli“She knows her stuff, has strong opinions, and turns a colourful quote.” Financial Times “Janet Tavakoli knows more about the inside of the financial world than nearly anyone else!”Jim Rogers, Author of Street Smarts - Adventures on the Road and in the Markets“Intelligent analyst whose command of the arcane world...mixed with a brutally honest analytical framework makes it a pleasure to read her work.” Asia Times Online

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America


Jill Leovy - 2015
    His assailant ran down the street, jumped into an SUV, and vanished, hoping to join the vast majority of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case was assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shifted. Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential American murder--one young black man slaying another--and a determined crew of detectives whose creed was to pursue justice at all costs for its forgotten victims. Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of murder in America--why it happens and how the plague of killings might yet be stopped.

The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America


David Horowitz - 2021
    Horowitz lays out how we have ended up in the worst national crisis since the Civil War. He details: • The Left’s embrace of Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism—the underpinnings of their totalitarian ideology • The decades-long infiltration of our education system by ideologies hostile to America, our institutions, and our freedom • Why the Obama administration marked a point of no return in the division of America into two irreconcilable political factions • The Democrats’ unprincipled campaign to destroy a duly elected U.S. president • Their political exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic • Their complicity in the riots of the summer of 2020, which left twenty-five dead, injured two thousand police officers, caused billions of dollars in property damage, and revealed the fragility of our civic order.

Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency


Bill O'Reilly - 2015
    Just two months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable -- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world?Told in the same riveting fashion as Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, and Killing Patton, Killing Reagan reaches back to the golden days of Hollywood, where Reagan found both fame and heartbreak, up through the years in the California governor's mansion, and finally to the White House, where he presided over boom years and the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it was John Hinckley Jr.'s attack on him that precipitated President Reagan's most heroic actions. In Killing Reagan, O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the scenes, creating an unforgettable portrait of a great man operating in violent times.

Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover


Ruth Marcus - 2019
    Brett Kavanaugh set his sights on the court right out of law school. Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus goes behind the scenes to document the inside story of how their supreme ambition triumphed. The Kavanaugh drama unfolded so fast in the summer of 2018 it seemed to come out of nowhere. With the power of the #MeToo movement behind her, a terrified but composed Christine Blasey Ford walked into a Senate hearing room to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault. This unleashed unprecedented fury from a Supreme Court nominee who accused Democrats of a “calculated and orchestrated political hit.” But behind this showdown was a much bigger one. In Supreme Ambition, Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus goes behind the scenes to document the thirty-year mission by conservatives to win a majority on the Supreme Court and the lifelong ambition of Brett Kavanaugh to secure his place in that victory. In that sense, Marcus has delivered a master class in how Washington works and an unforgettable case study in supreme ambition. The reporting in Supreme Ambition is also full of revealing and weighty headlines, as Marcus answers the most pressing questions surrounding this historical moment: How did Kavanaugh get the nomination? Was Blasey Ford’s testimony credible? What does his confirmation mean for the future of the court? Were the Democrats outgunned from the start? On the way, she uncovers secret White House meetings, intense lobbying efforts, private confrontations on Capitol Hill, and lives forever upended on both coasts. Supreme Ambition is a page-turner that traces how Brett Kavanaugh deftly maneuvered to become the nominee; how he quashed resistance from Republicans who worried he was too squishy on conservative issues and from a president reluctant to reward a George W. Bush loyalist. It shows a Republican party that had concluded Kavanaugh was too big to fail, with senators and the FBI ignoring potentially devastating evidence against him. And it paints a picture of Democratic leaders unwilling to engage in the no-holds-barred partisan warfare that might have defeated the nominee. In the tradition of The Brethren and The Power Broker, Supreme Ambition is the definitive account of a pivotal moment in modern history, one that was thirty years in the making and that will shape the judicial system of America for generations to come.

A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters


Newt Gingrich - 2011
    The political correctness police insist that America is “hated” around the world for being too big, too powerful, too rich, too successful, too loud, too intrusive. And besides, it’s not nice to brag. They are completely missing the point. America’s greatness, America’s exceptional greatness, is not based on that fact that we are the most powerful, most prosperous—and most generous—nation on earth. Rather, those things are the result of American Exceptionalism. To understand American Exceptionalism, as Newt Gingrich passionately argues in A Nation Like No Other, one must understand our unique birth as a nation. American Exceptionalism is found in the simple yet utterly remarkable principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.” Our nation is exceptional, continues Newt, because we—unlike any nation before or since—are united by the belief and the promise that no king, no government, no ruling class has the power to infringe upon the rights of the individual. And when such a government attempts to do so, we will vigorously reject them. Sadly, many politicians and leaders today have forgotten our sacred commitment to these ideals. Our government has strayed alarmingly far from the scope of limited powers framed by our Founders. Meanwhile, the liberal media seek out, and sometimes create, stories intended to portray America as a bully and a thief. Even our own president seems clueless, assuring us that yes, yes, he believes in American exceptionalism, just like the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British in British exceptionalism. But American Exceptionalism is not about cheerleading for the home team. It’s about recognizing and honoring the history-making, world-changing ideals our Founding Fathers enshrined to make this a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. And, as Lincoln warned, we must rededicate ourselves to those principles, lest our truly exceptional nation perish from this earth.

The 10 Big Lies about America


Michael Medved - 2008
    "It's the things we know that just ain't so." In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on ten of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country--in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In "The 10 Big Lies About America," Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues. The myths that Medved deftly debunks include: Myth: The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor. Fact: The colonies that became the United States accounted for, at most, 3 percent of the abominable international slave trade; the persistence of slavery in America slowed economic progress; and the U.S. deserves unique credit for ending slavery. Myth: The alarming rise of big business hurts the United States and oppresses its people. Fact: Corporations played an indispensable role in building America, and corporate growth has brought progress that benefits all with cheaper goods and better jobs. Myth: The Founders intended a secular, not Christian, nation. Fact: Even after ratifying the Constitution, fully half the state governments endorsed specific Chris-tian denominations. And just a day after approving the First Amendment, forbidding the establishment of religion, Congress called for a national "day of public thanksgiving and prayer" to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God." Myth: A war on the middle class means less comfort and opportunity for the average American. Fact: Familiar campaign rhetoric about the victimized middle class ignores the overwhelming statistical evidence that the standard of living keeps rising for every segment of the population, as well as the real-life experience of tens of millions of middle-class Americans. Each of the ten lies--widely believed among elites and taught as truth in universities and public schools--is a grotesque, propagandistic distortion of the historical record. For everyone who is tired of hearing America denigrated by people who don't know what they're talking about, "The 10 Big Lies About America "supplies the ammunition necessary to fire back the next time somebody tries to recycle these baseless beliefs. Medved's witty, well-documented rebuttal is a refreshing reminder that as Americans we should feel blessed, not burdened, by our heritage.

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library


Trevor Noah - 2018
    Trump Twitter account, with analysis and “scholarly” commentary from the writers of The Daily Show and an introduction by Trevor Noah. In June 2017, just steps from Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah opened The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library, a 4,000-square-foot museum space that gave the 45th president and his amazing Twitter legacy the respect they deserve. In the single weekend it was open to the public, the Library pop-up drew 7,500 visitors and had to turn away countless others.But the Presidential Twitter Library experience should not be limited to the elite coastal few. Not fair! All citizens, even the Mexican ones, should have the chance to see Donald Trump’s tweets in their rightful context—organized and commented on in the fearless, hilarious, insightful voice of The Daily Show.This one-of-a-kind exhibition catalog presents the Library’s complete contents, including: • The Masterpieces: In-depth critical appreciations of history’s most important Trump tweets, from “Very Stable Genius” to “Covfefe” to “Trump Tower Taco Bowl/I Love Hispanics!”• The Greatest Battles: @realDonaldTrump’s brutal Twitter campaigns against fellow Republicans, Diet Coke, women generally, and Kristen Stewart specifically• Sad! A Retrospective: a compendium of the many people, events, and twists of fate that apparently made Donald Trump feel this human emotion• Trumpstradamus: DJT’s amazing 140-character predictions—none of which came true!• The Hall of Nicknames: the greatest of Trump’s monikers, from “Lyin’ Ted” to “Low I.Q. Crazy Mika,” accompanied by original caricature artwork• Trump vs. Trump: You’re going to want to sit for this one. Donald Trump has sometimes been known to contradict himself.• Always the Best: the greatest boasts of the greatest boaster of all time, ever!Comprising hundreds of Trump tweets, and featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, and even a place for readers to add their own future Trump tweet highlights—because he is making new Twitter history literally every day—The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library is a unique portrait of an artist whose masterworks will be studied by historians, grammarians, and mental health professionals for years to come.

Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership


Winston Lord - 2019
    Kissinger on Kissinger is a series of faithfully transcribed interviews conducted by the elder statesman's longtime associate, Winston Lord, which captures Kissinger's thoughts on the specific challenges that he faced during his tenure as NSA, his general advice on leadership and international relations, and stunning portraits of the larger-than-life world leaders of the era. The result is a frank and well-informed overview of US foreign policy in the first half of the 70s—essential reading for anyone hoping to understand tomorrow's global challenges.

On China


Henry Kissinger - 2011
    Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the global balance of power in the 21st century. Since no other country can claim a more powerful link to its ancient past and classical principles, any attempt to understand China's future world role must begin with an appreciation of its long history. For centuries, China rarely encountered other societies of comparable size and sophistication; it was the "Middle Kingdom," treating the peoples on its periphery as vassal states. At the same time, Chinese statesmen-facing threats of invasion from without, and the contests of competing factions within-developed a canon of strategic thought that prized the virtues of subtlety, patience, and indirection over feats of martial prowess. In On China, Kissinger examines key episodes in Chinese foreign policy from the classical era to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the decades since the rise of Mao Zedong. He illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, Richard Nixon's historic trip to Beijing, and three crises in the Taiwan Straits. Drawing on his extensive personal experience with four generation of Chinese leaders, he brings to life towering figures such as Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, revealing how their different visions have shaped China's modern destiny. With his singular vantage on U.S.-China relations, Kissinger traces the evolution of this fraught but crucial relationship over the past 60 years, following its dramatic course from estrangement to strategic partnership to economic interdependence, and toward an uncertain future. With a final chapter on the emerging superpower's 21st-century world role, On China provides an intimate historical perspective on Chinese foreign affairs from one of the premier statesmen of the 20th century.

The Bush Crime Family: The Inside Story of an American Dynasty


Roger Stone - 2017
    New York Times bestselling author Roger Stone lashes out with a blistering indictment, exposing the true history and monumental hypocrisy of the Bushes. In Stone’s usual “go for the jugular” style, this is a no-holds-barred history of the Bush family, comprised of smug, entitled autocrats who both use and hide behind their famous name. They got a long-overdue taste of defeat and public humiliation when Jeb’s 2016 presidential bid went down in flames.Besides detailing the vast litany of Jeb’s misdeeds — including receiving a $4 million taxpayer bailout when his father was vice president as well as his startlingly-close alignment with supposed “enemy” Hillary Clinton — Stone travels back to Bush patriarchs Samuel and Prescott, right on through to presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush to weave an epic story of privilege, greed, corruption, drug profiteering, assassination, and lies. A new preface to this paperback edition features explosive information, including the family’s Machiavellian plan to propel Jeb’s son George Prescott Bush forward as the family’s next political contender.The Bush Crime Family will have readers asking, “Why aren’t these people in prison?”