He pleaded Not Guilty. Each of Shipman's alleged victims was middle-aged or elderly and each was his patient and neighbour. The macabre exhumations of some of the bodies devastated the suburban community of Hyde in Greater Manchester, and it is the authors' inside knowledge of the region that provides the context for their investigation of the case.

    After being convicted and disbarred, Fraser became the confidant of one of Australia’s most notorious serial killers, Peter Dupas. What he learned made him the Homicide Squad’s secret weapon. Angry at his treatment in jail and his excessive sentence, the long–time defence lawyer enjoyed the irony of his situation: the authorities who destroyed his career now needed his cooperation. There was never any doubt that Andrew would give evidence, even though he knew that the defence would try to destroy his credibility by bringing up the past he desperately wanted to forget. Fraser paints a vivid picture of the grim, terrifying, and futile reality of maximum security prison life and of his time spent with the murderers, psychopaths, and paedophiles. Lunatic Soup relates his harrowing experiences of the justice system as a prisoner and on the stand as a witness in a murder trial.

    Others are often summed up in a few words: the stubborn, taciturn Grant; the gentlemanly, gifted Lee; the stomping, cursing Sheridan; and the flamboyant, boyish Stuart. But the enigmatic Sherman still manages to elude us. Probably no other figure of his day divides historians so deeply-leading some to praise him as a genius, others to condemn him as a savage.Now, in Sherman, Lee Kennett offers a brilliant new interpretation of the general's life and career, one that embraces his erratic, contradictory nature. Here we see the making of a true soldier, beginning with a colorful view of Sherman's rich family tradition, his formative years at West Point, and the critical period leading up to the Civil War, during which Sherman served in the small frustrated peacetime army and saw service in the South and California, and in the Mexican War Trying to advance himself, Sherman resigned from the army and he soon began to distinguish hiniself as a general known for his tenacity, vision, and mercurial temper. Throughout the spirited Battles of Bull Run and Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and ultimately the famous march to the sea through Georgia, no one displayed the same intensity as did Sherman.From the heights of success to the depths of his own depression, Sherman managed to forge on after the war with barely a moment of slowing down. Born to fight, he was also born to lead and to provoke, traits he showed by serving as commanding general of the army, cutting a wide swath through the western frontier, and finally writing his classic -- and highly controversial -- memoirs. Eventually Sherman would die famous, well-to-do, and revered -- but also deeply misunderstood.By drawing on previously unexploited materials and maintaining a sharp, lively narrative, Lee Kennett presents a rich, authoritative portrait of Sherman, the man and the soldier, who emerges from this work more human and more fascinating than ever before.

    Through the eyes of key people--Jacob Lew, White House director of the Office of Management and Budget; Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office; Blackstone founder and former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson; and more--Wessel gives readers an inside look at the making of our unsustainable budget.

    Asking the correct question is fundamental to knowing how to arrive at the correct answer.”Scriptural principles exist for both our personal and our political quandaries. We should be willing to dig deep to find them and move away from voting based on tradition or mere preferences.Dr. Tony Evans takes on foundational questions of a Christian approach to politics, like:What does the Bible say about the role and responsibilities of government?How can we be salt and light when our political systems fail us?Should we submit to candidates we didn’t vote for?What if we don’t know whom to choose, or worse—what if there is no good choice?Evans won’t pressure you to check this box or that, but he will equip you with solid biblical principles that will challenge you to vote with a “kingdom perspective”—informed, compassionate, and aware of Who is really in charge.

    As one of five children of divorced parents, he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school, but spent his holidays as a plumbers' mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years and 11 days in government, including long and influential spells as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how he got there.His memoirs offer a unique insight into the complex, sometimes self-serving but always fascinating world of British politics and reveals the toll that high office takes but also, more importantly, the enormous satisfaction and extraordinary privilege of serving both your constituents and your country.Straw’s has been a very public life, but he reveals the private face, too, and offers readers a vivid and authoritative insight into the Blair/Brown era and, indeed, the last forty years of British politics.

    It’s a decision Huck’s creator already had made, albeit for somewhat different reasons, a quarter of a century earlier. He wasn’t even Mark Twain then, but as Huck might have said, “That ain’t no matter.” With the Civil War spreading across his native Missouri, twenty-five-year-old Samuel Clemens, suddenly out of work as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, gladly accepted his brother Orion’s offer to join him in Nevada Territory, far from the crimsoned battlefields of war.A rollicking, hilarious stagecoach journey across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains was just the beginning of a nearly six-year-long odyssey that took Samuel Clemens from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Hawaii, with lengthy stopovers in Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco. By the time it was over, he would find himself reborn as Mark Twain, America’s best-loved, most influential writer. The “trouble,” as he famously promised, had begun.With a pitch-perfect blend of appreciative humor and critical authority, acclaimed literary biographer Roy Morris, Jr., sheds new light on this crucial but still largely unexamined period in Mark Twain’s life. Morris carefully sorts fact from fiction—never an easy task when dealing with Twain—to tell the story of a young genius finding his voice in the ramshackle mining camps, boomtowns, and newspaper offices of the wild and woolly West, while the Civil War rages half a continent away.With the frequent help of Twain’s own words, Morris follows his subject on a winding journey of selfdiscovery filled with high adventure and low comedy, as Clemens/Twain dodges Indians and gunfighters, receives marriage advice from Brigham Young, burns down a mountain with a frying pan, gets claim-jumped by rival miners, narrowly avoids fighting a duel, hikes across the floor of an active volcano, becomes one of the first white men to try the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing, and writes his first great literary success, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”Lighting Out for the Territory is a fascinating, even inspiring, account of how an unemployed riverboat pilot, would-be Confederate guerrilla, failed prospector, neophyte newspaper reporter, and parttime San Francisco aesthete reinvented himself as America’s most famous and beloved writer. It’s a good story, and mostly true—with some stretchers thrown in for good measure.

    Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his explosive stories in The New Yorker, including his headline-making pieces on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Now, Hersh brings together what he has learned, along with new reporting, to answer the critical question of the last four years: How did America get from the clear morning when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of the war on terror and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a critical chapter in America's recent history. In a new afterword, he critiques the government's failure to adequately investigate prisoner abuse -- at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- and punish those responsible. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an administration blinded by ideology and of a president whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.

     It’s the story about how a Chinese fishing village became a global economic powerhouse of innovation and technology. Just four decades ago Shenzhen was a backwater area, populated by fishermen and rice farmers. Today, it’s home to up to 20 million people and some of the world’s leading technology companies and most innovative tech startups. No other city better symbolizes the rise of modern China. And no other city challenges Silicon Valley more aggressively as the global hub for innovation and technology startups. In many ways, the Chinese city has already outsmarted the Valley. “Shenzhen has an energy of growth – the same energy I felt when I first came to Silicon Valley ten years ago. And it’s not just in technology. It’s this idea that whoever you are, whatever you’re into, you can come to China, and especially Shenzhen, and do it!” American entrepreneur Scotty Allen says in the book. Shenzhen Superstars is written for anyone who wants to be part of this raging growth story – no matter if you’re a tech buff, investor or just someone curious about knowing what’s driving the future. As a journalist for CNN, Forbes and other international media, Johan Nylander has witnessed the astonishing transformation of the south Chinese city. Its speed, energy and determination are just mind-blowing. His aim is to take you inside, to the very heart of what is shaping this vibrant city. KEY QUOTES FROM THE BOOK “In terms of hardware plus software innovation, Shenzhen is ahead of the curve.” – Jeffrey Towson, private equity investor and Peking University professor “The next ten years will be the era of robots and intelligent machines, and Shenzhen will play well to that.” – Jixun Foo, managing partner of GGV Capital “Shenzhen is just better than Silicon Valley in terms of hardware and software integration.” – Qin Li, CEO of startup Sennotech “If you’re not already in Shenzhen, you're crazy.” – Edith Yeung, general partner of 500 Startups

    Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion.

    He took on arguably the toughest extreme sport on the planet - to swim non-stop across seven of the world’s deadliest oceans wearing only swim trunks, cap and goggles. It is not a test for the faint-hearted: swimmers face freezing temperatures, huge swells and treacherous currents, potentially deadly marine life (from sharks to Portuguese men o’ war), vomiting and burning off a week’s calories in a single swim.In 2007, Adam, then a toaster salesman, saw a fi lm about a man attempting to swim the English Channel and change his life in doing so. Inspired by this, he decided to try to emulate the feat. After a year of rigorous training without a coach - his first open-water swim was in 9 degrees and he nearly died from hypothermia - Adam achieved his goal in 11 hours 35 minutes, despite a ruptured bicep tendon leading to medical advice to give up long-distance swimming. In 2011, after two operations and a change to his swimming style to take pressure off his injured shoulder, he became the first Briton to achieve a two-way crossing from Spain to Morocco and back. In the process, he broke the British record one way.Shortly afterwards, the Ocean’s Seven challenge was born, a gruelling equivalent to the Seven Summits mountaineering challenge. At fi rst it seemed that injury would prevent Adam from participating but, ignoring medical advice, he developed an innovative technique - the Ocean Walker stroke - that would enable him to continue with the ultimate aim of completing this seemingly impossible feat. Whether man would triumph over ocean, or fail in the attempt, forms the core of this extraordinary autobiography.Always intriguing, sometimes terrifying, and occasionally very funny, Adam’s story is about sport in its truest form: rather than competitions between teams and individuals, it is about man against nature - and against his own failings.

    Losing Ground argues that the ambitious social programs of the1960s and 1970s actually made matters worse for its supposed beneficiaries, the poor and minorities. Charles Murray startled readers by recommending that we abolish welfare reform, but his position launched a debate culminating in President Clinton’s proposal “to end welfare as we know it.”

    Set against the dark backdrop of Hurricane Katrina, this luminous and infinitely inviting memoir traces the affecting stories of Rea and his hilarious and dynamic friends and teammates. Comprised primarily of ex-pats over the age of 35, Finn McCool's Football Club boasts a dynamic mix of idiosyncratic personalities. From Macca, the team's Scottish coach and a hard-drinking ex-professional player, to its outspoken South African landscape gardener/striker Benji, each character comes vibrantly to life in Rea's fresh and frank prose. Hilarious moments and poignant reflections shine with equal intensity throughout this multifarious work, which captures the individual experiences of the Finn's players in the wake of Katrina. A literary memoir, soccer story, and tale of survival and resolve, this work is an indefatigable tribute to a city and its residents who determined to play on after their lives were all but washed away.

    Leonard Zeskind draws heavily upon court documents, racist publications, and first-person reports, along with his own personal observations. An internationally recognized expert on the subject who received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work, Zeskind ties together seemingly disparate strands—from neo-Nazi skinheads, to Holocaust deniers, to Christian Identity churches, to David Duke, to the militia and beyond. Among these elements, two political strategies—mainstreaming and vanguardism—vie for dominance. Mainstreamers believe that a majority of white Christians will eventually support their cause. Vanguardists build small organizations made up of a highly dedicated cadre and plan a naked seizure of power. Zeskind shows how these factions have evolved into a normative social movement that looks like a demographic slice of white America, mostly blue-collar and working middle class, with lawyers and Ph.D.s among its leaders. When the Cold War ended, traditional conservatives helped birth a new white nationalism, most evident now among anti-immigrant organizations. With the dawn of a new millennium, they are fixated on predictions that white people will lose their majority status and become one minority among many. The book concludes with a look to the future, elucidating the growing threat these groups will pose to coming generations.

    “How long had this been going on?” she wondered, on behalf of the rest of the nation. “Was it something that we said?”The more she looked at Texas, the more she realized it was at the heart of the American political story. The Tea Party had Texas roots, with its passion for states’ rights and sense of persecution by an overreaching Washington. But Texas also seemed to be running the federal government it despised. Through its vigorous support of banking deregulation, which began with the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and ended calamitously with the Wall Street crash of 2008, Texas’s boot prints were deep. In education, Texas had managed both to be the model for the wildly influential No Child Left Behind law and to provide some of the loudest political voices calling for the law to be trashed. In energy, Texas was the heart of the drill-baby-drill movement and the war against the whole concept of global warming.Collins brilliantly frames this national movement through the outsized behavior and inimitable swagger of some of Texas’s most colorful and influential political figures, from former House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who got into politics when the EPA banned his favorite fire ant repellent, to Perry himself, who when confronted with the fact that his state had the country’s third-highest teen pregnancy rate, defended its abstinence-only sex education policy by doggedly asserting, “I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works.”Digging beneath the veneer of cowboy hats, oil derricks, and Alamo cries, Collins has produced a profoundly original work demonstrating that much of what ails America was first birthed in Texas. Like it or not, as Texas goes, so goes the nation.