All of the mentioned are just puppets on an invisible string doing the biddings of a few unseen puppeteers. Yes, that’s right. A few elite and undisclosed organizations send our children off to war, restrict the growth of the middle class, and limit educational opportunities for American citizens. The sad truth is this is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin warned of the dangers and destructive power of these elites if left unchecked. These few unchosen were able, and continue, to use the Federal Reserve Banking System, universities, and war to create economic recessions and depressions that provide unnoticed benefits to a select group of social manipulators. In this stunning new book, Mark Mullen takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of secret partnerships created by unfamiliar ideologues designed to acquire most of the nation’s wealth and power. In Who Controls America, Mullen shines a light on those few elites who place greed, power, and profits above the interests of the American citizen and the pursuit of the American Dream.

    The Rape of Nanking, or Nanking Massacre, in which at least 369,366 people were slaughtered and 80,000 women were raped by Japanese invasion troops, has become little more than a historical footnote in the West. The horror began on the morning of December 13, 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Soldiers went through the streets indiscriminately killing Chinese men, women, and children without apparent provocation or excuse until in places the streets and alleys were littered with the bodies of their victims. Thousands of women were raped by Japanese soldiers; death was frequently the penalty for the slightest resistance by a victim or members of her family. Even large numbers of young girls and old women were raped throughout the city, and many cases of abnormal and sadistic behavior in connection with these rapes were reported. Many women were killed after the act and their bodies mutilated. For the next six weeks, while horrific rape continued, wholesale murder of male civilians was conducted with the apparent sanction of the Japanese high command. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed ex-soldiers were arrayed in formation, their hands bound behind their backs, and marched outside the city wall where, in groups, they were beheaded, or buried alive, or bayoneted, or raked with machine-gun fire, or doused with gasoline and burned. This book, using more than 400 historical photographs, many of which were taken by Japanese soldiers themselves, is published to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Rape of Nanking, to remind the world of the forgotten holocaust of WWII, and to honor history and answer any attempt to deny or change it.

    Many people think of them as "an awe-inspiring group of ascetic, fanatic, and inhuman supermen."Ernest R. Pope knew all too well how illusory this idea was. As senior correspondent for Reuters in Munich from 1936-1941, American Ernest Pope saw the cruel and outrageous behavior of Nazis in their native habitat. In Munich they ran wild, let their hair down, and indulged in every fantasy money and power could avail them. Pope has all the gossip...and the confirmed stories. HISTORY AS IT HAPPENED "I have seen the leading actors in the Nazi tragedy, playing their parts on the Bavarian stage. Long before the climax—the outbreak of the war—I knew what the denouement in Hitler's theater would be."Pope knew, saw, and/or interviewed all the top Nazis and dozens of lower-level officials, including some of Hitler's security. He saw the Nazis for what they were: a corrupt, debauched, all-to-human menace.Once back in the U.S., Pope let loose his frustration and ire at what he'd seen—but couldn't write about when he was reporting from Germany. With great humor and faced-paced prose, he writes of encounters with Hitler, Hess, Streicher, and many more.He was in Munich during the fated compromise with Chamberlain. He reported on the Nazi invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia.He reported on Hitler's obsession with Dorothy van Bruck's "blitz-tease" and he knew Hitler's English girlfriend, Unity Mitford. AT THE CENTER OF ACTION Pope turns his savage wit and erudition on his former hosts. Fluent in Bavarian German dialect, Pope made many friends in Munich with citizens and officials alike. He heard jokes from Munichers that could get them thrown in a concentration camp and he poked fun at Nazis whenever he dared.On the Austrian border during Hitler's invasion of that country:Guard: “Heil Hitler! What are you doing here?” Pope: “Just enjoying the scenery.” Guard: “Why did you come to Kiefersfelden today?” Pope: “Well, I'll tell you. It's like this. I'm an American student, and I came to Munich when I read the fascinating travel prospectuses which invited me to ‘Visit the beautiful Alps.’ My friend and I have already seen the Alps at Garmisch, so we thought we might look at them today around Kufstein. They really are pretty, in spite of all the uniforms we didn't expect to find here. But I do think it is odd of you to ask me why I am here. For if I were walking in Central Park in New York, I would not expect a policeman to ask me why I wasn't feeding the pigeons in front of the Public Library.”You won't find another account like this of the Nazis in their favorite playground. INCLUDED CHAPTERS: DER FÜHRER AT PLAY MY FRIENDS THE GESTAPO PORTRAIT OF A NAZI GRAFTER HITLER DABBLES IN ART THE ONE-LEGGED BOSS OF BAVARIA CATHOLICISM IN THE NAZI CAPITAL LUNCH WITH JULIUS STREICHER And more Pope turns serious in the final chapters. As he left Germany, he knew he was saying goodbye to friends he would never see again.

    By delving into lives that would otherwise go unremarked, Kelly documents the modernization of the sex industry during the neoliberal era in the city of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and illustrates how state-regulated sex became part of a broader effort by government officials to bring modernity to Chiapas, one of Mexico's poorest and most conflicted states. Kelly's innovative approach locates prostitution in a political-economic context by treating it as work. Most valuably, she conveys her analysis through vivid portraits of the lives of the sex workers themselves and shows how the women involved are neither victims nor heroines.

    Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs who used starvation to demonstrate religious devotion, "wonders of science" whose families capitalized on their ability to survive on flower petals and air, silent screen stars whose strict "slimming" regimens inspired a generation. Here, too, is a fascinating look at how the cultural ramifications of the Industrial Revolution produced a disorder that continues to render privileged young women helpless. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, Fasting Girls offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.

    An acclaimed expose that has already helped reform Olympic sports—now updated to reflect the latest developments in women's gymnastics and figure skating—it continues to plead for sanity, safety, and an end to our national obsession: winning at any cost.

    But to the women locked up there it was something else. A Living Hell. More than 4,000 internees were held there from January 1942 until February 1945.'Living Hell' is their harrowing story. The book is based on the diaries of Isla Corfield. An Englishwoman whose comfortable life in Shanghai was suddenly disrupted by the outbreak of World War Two, she fled with her daughter Gill on an evacuee ship.But the ship was captured by the Japanese -- and Isla and Gill would have to struggle to survive as prisoners of war in both Santo Tomas and Los Banos internment camps.In the communities of the camps, Isla and her daughter experienced the extremes of both friendship and loss. Cut-off from information about the war and with no end to their internment in sight, the pair experience starvation, disease and desperation.Finally liberated by the Americans after four years, Isla's story is both humbling and life-affirming - the story of one brave Englishwomen's battle to survive against terrible odds.It is one of the great untold stories of World War Two. "An incredible story of bravery and will-power." - Robert Foster, best-selling author of 'The Lunar Code'. Celia Lucas is a writer of children’s fiction and biography. She is a journalist, feature writer and public relations consultant. Winner of Tir na Nog Prize 1988 she has also collaborated on a TV series with husband Ian Skidmore. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

    This fascination has spawned a wealth of extraordinary fictional creations, from Puccini's Madame Butterfly to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. But as denizens of a world defined by silence and mystery, real geisha are notoriously difficult to meet and even to find. As a result, their history has long been cloaked in secrecy. Lesley Downer, an award-winning writer, Japanese scholar, and consummate storyteller, gained more access to this world than almost any other Westerner, and spent several months living in it. In Women of the Pleasure Quarters, she weaves together intimate portraits of modern geisha with the romantic legends and colorful historical tales that shape their fascinating past. Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but, literally, "arts people." Accomplished singers, dancers, and musicians, they are, above all, masters of the art of conversation, soothing the worries and stroking the egos of wealthy businessmen who can afford their attentions. Looking into such traditions as mizuage, the ritual deflowering that was once a rite of passage for all geisha, and providing colorful descriptions of their dress, training, and homes, Downer transforms their reality into a captivating narrative, and reveals an enthralling world unlike any other.

    

    Her psychiatrist quickly prescribed her Prozac, to which she would eventually agree to. Shortly after, she was prescribed four more medications in hopes of 'curing' her. She believes it did the exact opposite. Andrijka's raw and edgy memoir takes the reader down a rabbit hole in a fast-paced, graphic, and darkly humorous depiction of recovery, self-acceptance, and what it means to be depressed as a modern teenager.

    

    For only in Tokyo could an impressionable young man fresh out of college find, in one stroke, a new job, a new family, and a society that lavishes attention on Japanese-speaking gaijin. Yet, even as Alec claims a place in this new world, he is haunted by memories of the one he left behind—a world once infinitely secure but which disintegrated with the breakup of his parents' marriage.In this incandescently observed novel, John Burnham Schwartz introduces readers to one of the most appealing protagonists in contemporary fiction while enchanting them with the keenness of his eye and the aptness of his voice. Through its exquisitely rendered scenes—a fishing trip of Zen-like serenity; a night at a sex club where giggling businessmen dive into the action—and vividly imagined characters—the laughing mother who taught Alec to ride a bicycle; the beautiful sad Japanese woman who teaches him how to love—Bicycle Days surprises, moves, and enlightens us as very few books do.

    Authors Ned and Constance Sublette tell the brutal story of how the slavery industry made the reproductive labor of the people it referred to as “breeding women” essential to the young country’s expansion. Captive African Americans in the slave nation were not only laborers, but merchandise and collateral all at once. In a land without silver, gold, or trustworthy paper money, their children and their children’s children into perpetuity were used as human savings accounts that functioned as the basis of money and credit in a market premised on the continual expansion of slavery. Slaveowners collected interest in the form of newborns, who had a cash value at birth and whose mothers had no legal right to say no to forced mating.   This gripping narrative is driven by the power struggle between the elites of Virginia, the slave-raising “mother of slavery,” and South Carolina, the massive importer of Africans—a conflict that was central to American politics from the making of the Constitution through the debacle of the Confederacy. Virginia slaveowners won a major victory when Thomas Jefferson’s 1808 prohibition of the African slave trade protected the domestic slave markets for slave-breeding. The interstate slave trade exploded in Mississippi during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, drove the US expansion into Texas, and powered attempts to take over Cuba and other parts of Latin America, until a disaffected South Carolina spearheaded the drive to secession and war, forcing the Virginians to secede or lose their slave-breeding industry. Filled with surprising facts, fascinating incidents, and startling portraits of the people who made, endured, and resisted the slave-breeding industry, The American Slave Coast culminates in the revolutionary Emancipation Proclamation, which at last decommissioned the capitalized womb and armed the African Americans to fight for their freedom.

    It also examines some vital aspects of cultural transformation in modern India.Candidates of many competitive examinations, but especially those of the civil services, will find this book worth reading.

    With its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances, Noise has captured the imagination of a small but passionate transnational audience.For its scattered listeners, Noise always seems to be new and to come from somewhere else: in North America, it was called "Japanoise." But does Noise really belong to Japan? Is it even music at all? And why has Noise become such a compelling metaphor for the complexities of globalization and participatory media at the turn of the millennium?In Japanoise, David Novak draws on more than a decade of research in Japan and the United States to trace the "cultural feedback" that generates and sustains Noise. He provides a rich ethnographic account of live performances, the circulation of recordings, and the lives and creative practices of musicians and listeners. He explores the technologies of Noise and the productive distortions of its networks. Capturing the textures of feedback—its sonic and cultural layers and vibrations—Novak describes musical circulation through sound and listening, recording and performance, international exchange, and the social interpretations of media.