Book picks similar to
Thatcher’s Spy: My Life as an MI5 Agent Inside Sinn Féin by Willie Carlin
non-fiction
history
northern-ireland
spy
The Perfect Weapon: How the Cyber Arms Race Set the World Afire
David E. Sanger - 2018
The Perfect Weapon is the riveting story of how, in less than a decade, cyberwarfare displaced terrorism and nuclear attacks as the greatest threat to American national security. Cheap to acquire, difficult to defend against, and designed to shield their user's identities so as to complicate retaliation, these weapons are capable of an unprecedented range of offensive tactics; they can take us just short of war, allowing for everything from disruption to theft to the cause of widespread damage of essential infrastructure systems. And the vulnerability of those systems has created a related but equally urgent conflict: American companies like Apple and Cisco must claim allegiance to no government in the name of selling secure products around the globe yet the US intelligence agencies want the help of such companies in defending against future cyberattacks. Reported and written with unprecedented access by New York Times chief Washington correspondent and bestselling author David Sanger, The Perfect Weapon takes readers inside war rooms and boardrooms, into the secret cyberdens of American and Chinese military, to give the deep-background story of the increasingly pitched battle between nations, their governments, their cyberwarriors, and their corporations.
The Swamp: Washington's Murky Pool of Corruption and Cronyism and How Trump Can Drain It
Eric Bolling - 2017
was first built, it was on top of a swamp that had to be drained. Donald Trump says it's time to drain it again. In The Swamp, bestselling author and Fox News Channel host Eric Bolling presents an infuriating, amusing, revealing, and outrageous history of American politics, past and present, Republican and Democrat. From national political scandals to tempests in a teapot that blew up; bribery, blackmail, bullying, and backroom deals that contradicted public policies; cronyism that cost taxpayers hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars; and personal conduct that can only be described as regrettable, The Swamp is a journey downriver through the bayous and marshes of Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. The presidential election of 2016 was ugly, but it exposed a political, media, industry, and elite establishment that desperately wanted to elect a politician who received millions of dollars from terror-funding states over a businessman willing to tell the corrupt or incompetent, “You’re fired.”The book concludes with a series of recommendations for President Trump: practical, hard-headed, and concise ways to drain the swamp and force Washington to be more transparent, more accountable, and more effective in how it serves those who have elected its politicians and pay the bills for their decisions.Last year President Trump declared Wake Up America to be a "huge" book; Eric Bolling's second book is sure to build on that success. Entertaining and timely, The Swamp is the perfect book for today's political climate.
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
Casey CepCasey Cep - 2019
With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case.Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.
Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory
Keggie Carew - 2016
As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for.Tom Carew was a maverick, a left-handed stutterer, a law unto himself. As a member of an elite SOE unit he was parachuted behind enemy lines to raise guerrilla resistance in France, then Burma, in the Second World War. But his wartime exploits are only the start of it...Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. As Keggie pieces Tom – and herself – back together again, she celebrates the technicolour life of an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable man.
Summary of The Body by Bill Bryson: A Guide for Occupants
Best Book Briefings - 2019
So often, we take our bodies for granted. We’re rarely curious about how they work and what we can do to make them work better. In The Body, Bill Bryson takes you on a tour inside your body so you can gain a better understanding of how it functions and its amazing ability to heal itself. At the times you doubt yourself, or think of yourself as less than wonderful, this summary of The Body will remind you of the miracle you truly are.
The IRA
Tim Pat Coogan - 1993
With clarity and objectivity, Coogan examines the IRA's origins, its foreign links, bombing campaigns, hunger strikes and sectarian violence and its role in the latest attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Meticulously researched and featuring interviews with past and present members of the organization, this is a compelling account of modern Irish history.
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.
The Kennedy Autopsy
Jacob Hornberger - 2014
Some claim that the Warren Commission got it right — that Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone-nut assassin. Others contend that Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy. It is not the purpose of this book to engage in that debate. The purpose of this book is simply to focus on what happened at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the evening of November 22, 1963. What happened that night is so unusual that it cries out for truthful explanation even after all these years. In this book, you will learn that 1. Kennedy’s body was actually delivered to the Bethesda morgue twice, at separate times and in separate caskets. 2. Some photographs and x-rays from the autopsy went missing from the record, and other photographs in the record were forged or otherwise fraudulent. 3. The president's body was altered by tampering with the wounds before the autopsy took place. And much more.
Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland
Amanda Berry - 2015
. . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.” A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained. In the decade that followed, the three were raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death. Berry had a daughter—Jocelyn—by their captor. Drawing upon their recollections and the diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe a tale of unimaginable torment, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on efforts to find the missing girls. The full story behind the headlines—including details never previously released on Castro’s life and motivations—Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage, ingenuity, and resourcefulness ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.
An Improbable Life: The Autobiography
Trevor McDonald - 2019
Now in his 80th year, he is known and loved by people the world over for his humility, charm and natural ease. As a natural storyteller and communicator, he has few equals. In An Improbable Life, Sir Trevor recounts his personal experience of world events and interviews with globally famous - or notorious - figures. He has witnessed war and death and risked his own life to meet and talk with despots and liberators. We read about his first trip to South Africa, and obtaining the first British television interview with Nelson Mandela; his reflections on the Windrush generation; and experiencing Barack Obama's momentous inauguration as President of the USA. We are also present at his dramatic meetings with Saddam Hussein (the first and only one by a British television correspondent) and Muammar Gaddafi.Engaging, intimate and moving, this is the life story of an exceptional journalist and broadcaster who over decades has expertly revealed to us history in the making.
Renaissance Nation: How the Pope's Children Rewrote the Rules for Ireland
David McWilliams - 2018
Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler
Lynne Olson - 2019
Brave, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country's conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group's name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah's Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. Marie-Madeleine's codename was Hedgehog.No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence as Alliance--and as a result, the Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including her own lover and many of her key spies. Fourcade had to move her headquarters every week, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, yet was still imprisoned twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape, once by stripping naked and forcing her thin body through the bars of her cell. The mother of two young children, Marie-Madeleine hardly saw them during the war, so entirely engaged was she in her spy network, preferring they live far from her and out of harm's way. In Madame Fourcade's Secret War, Lynne Olson tells the tense, fascinating story of Fourcade and Alliance against the background of the developing war that split France in two and forced its citizens to live side by side with their hated German occupiers.
After the Civil War: The Heroes, Villains, Soldiers, and Civilians Who Changed America
James Robertson - 2015
Relentless politicians, intrepid fighters, cunning innovators—the times called for bold moves, and this resilient generation would not disappoint. From William Tecumseh Sherman, a fierce leader who would revolutionize modern warfare, to Thomas Nast, whose undefeatable weapon was his stirring cartoons, these are the people who weathered the turmoil to see a nation reborn. Following these extraordinary legends from the battle lines to the White House, from budding metropolises to the wooly west, we re-discover the foundation of this great country.From the Hardcover edition.
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
Sherry Sontag - 1998
Now, after six years of research, those missions are told in Blind Man's Bluff, a magnificent achievement in investigative reporting. It reads like a spy thriller -- except everything in it is true. This is an epic of adventure, ingenuity, courage, and disaster beneath the sea, a story filled with unforgettable characters who engineered daring missions to tap the enemy's underwater communications cables and to shadow Soviet submarines. It is a story of heroes and spies, of bravery and tragedy.
Parkland: Birth of a Movement
Dave Cullen - 2019
David Hogg called out Adult America. The uprising had begun. Cameron Kasky immediately recruited a colorful band of theatre kids and rising activists and brought them together in his living room to map out a movement. Four days after escaping Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, two dozen extraordinary kids announced the audacious March for Our Lives. A month later, it was the fourth largest protest in American history.Dave Cullen, who has been reporting on the epidemic of school shootings for two decades, takes us along on the students’ nine-month odyssey to the midterms and beyond. With unrivaled access to their friends and families, meetings and homes, he pulls back the curtain to reveal intimate portraits of the quirky, playful organizers that have taken the nation by storm. Cullen brings us onto the bus for the Road to Change tour showing us how these kids seized an opportunity. They hit the highway to organize the young activist groups mushrooming across America in their image. Rattled but undeterred, they pressed on in gun country even as adversaries armed with assault weapons tailed them across Texas and Utah trying to scare them off. The Parkland students are genuinely candid about their experiences. We see them cope with shattered friendships and PTSD, along with the normal day-to-day struggles of school, including AP exams and college acceptances. Yet, with the idealism of youth they are mostly bubbling with fresh ideas. As victims refusing victimhood, they continue to devise clever new tactics to stir their generation to action while building a powerhouse network to match the NRA’s. This spell-binding book is a testament to change and a perceptive examination of a pivotal moment in American culture. After two decades of adult hand-wringing, the MFOL kids are mapping a way out. They see a long road ahead, a generational struggle to save every kid of every color from the ravages of gun violence in America. Parkland is a story of staggering empowerment and hope, told through the wildly creative and wickedly funny voices of a group of remarkable kids.