Book picks similar to
Broken Circles by Anna Haebich
social-political-economical
child-labor
politics
shortlist
Term Limits
Steve Powell - 2018
Having been a press officer for a US Senator for a number of years, I’ve had a front row seat to the inter workings of Capital Hill. To my mind, Powell has masterfully combined the timeliness of today’s political intrigue with a gripping detective story/who-done-it. By bringing the mind-boggling swirling mess that is Washington politics down to the level of one family’s pain he held me glued to the page."What I found particularly remarkable was how easily I found myself sympathizing with the ‘villain’, and how well-crafted and human was Powell’s plea that we need to finally bring common sense back to our government and its approaches to critical problems facing the country and the world."A deceptively easy read — given its thunderous message. Term Limits should be require reading for every new politician heading to Washington."Murder – week after week, month after month, across the country. Pushed beyond his limits, one man takes on the establishment, the gun lobby, and corruption at the highest levels. To break the power of entrenched elites, he leads the nation on a grisly hunt. He’s hunting them. And they’re hunting him. One side will have to blink. In the meantime, people are dying. Term Limits is a thriller from the front pages of our newspapers. It couldn’t be more topical.
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Michael Patrick MacDonald - 1999
In All Souls, MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community. MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs, murder, or suicide.MacDonald’s story is ultimately one of overcoming the racist, classist ideology he was born into. It's also a searing portrayal of life in a poor, white neighborhood plagued by violence and crime and deeply in denial about it.
Greed & Betrayal: The Sequel to the 1986 EDSA Revolution
Cecilio T. Arillo - 2011
A country of “yellow fever” victimsAs the elitist image of the Aquino regime permeated society as a whole, its propaganda experts began to shape the political landscape as well, and transformed most of the unsuspecting citizens into consumers of its own brand of illiberal democracy symbolized by the yellow banner, the yellow ribbon, and the yellow confetti.Arillo’s Greed & Betrayal relived the events that marked the Aquino regime’s bungled presidency and how it systematically and repeatedly blamed Marcos, Enrile, Honasan, Laurel, Mitra, and others as the all-purpose excuse to hide its own incompetence, failures, and perfidy.This book also inspired the writing of Arillo's latest book, A Country Imperiled: Tragic Lessons of a Distorted History.
The Point of Departure
Robin F. Cook - 2003
Based upon his journal.
HEBREWS TO NEGROES: Wake Up Black America
Ronald Dalton Jr. - 2014
This book will expose the truths that have been hidden by the powers that be in America. Since the European and Arab slave traders stepped foot into Africa, blacks have been told lies about their heritage. This was all by Satan’s design for he is the father of lies. There is an old stereotypical expression that says “If you want to hide something from a Black person, put it in a book.” Well, this is THE BOOK that ALL Black people must read! Since biblical times, there has been a satanic agenda to destroy God’s Chosen People. This agenda still exists today and is carried on by man in many forms. Satan knows who God’s Chosen People are, but for centuries we have been blind to this knowledge even though it’s been right in front of our face. After many years of research, the time has finally come for ALL Black people to know the truth. Inside Hebrews To Negroes you will find the answers to all the burning questions you have wanted ask your parents, teachers and pastors for years. It has been said that the mind has a strong drive to correct itself over a period of time if it can touch some substantial ORIGINAL historical base about itself. This time period is ending and the truth is being exposed! Is this signs of the End Times? The bible says in the last days that knowledge will increase. It also says “In the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:” Knowledge is the TRUTH and Satan’s time is running out. Don’t be left behind. Find out what’s really going on behind the scenes as it relates to BLACK AMERICA then and now. Afterwards you be the judge as to who God’s Chosen People really are and who Satan’s army is really after. AT THE END OF READING THIS BOOK, I GUARANTEE YOU WON’T REGRET IT.
Saffire
Sigmund Brouwer - 2016
But I went ahead and took that first step anyway. . .For President Teddy Roosevelt, controlling the east-west passage between two oceans mattered so much that he orchestrated a revolution to control it. His command was to "let the dirt fly," and for years, the American Zone of the Panama Canal mesmerized the world, working in uneasy co-existence with the Panamanian aristocrats.It's in this buffered Zone where, in 1909, James Holt takes that first step to protect a defenseless girl named Saffire, expecting a short and simple search for her mother. Instead it draws him away from safety, into a land haunted by a history of pirates, gold runners, and plantation owners, all leaving behind ghosts of their interwoven desires, sins, and ambitions, ghosts that create the web of deceit and intrigue of a new generation of revolutionary politics. It will also bring him together with a woman who will change his course or bring an end to it.A love story set within a historical mystery, Saffire brings to vibrant life the most impressive--and embattled--engineering achievement of the twentieth-century.
Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM
Don Watson - 2002
He was the Treasurer who deregulated the economy; the weaver of Labor's modern story; its heavy weapon in the parliament. He was also the great enigma - a self-educated boy from Sydney's working class and a defining element of the head-kicking Labor right who loved Paris, Mahler and Second Empire clocks. Paul Keating did become Prime Minister. In December 1991 he wrested it from Bob Hawke and the bruises from that struggle were part of the baggage he brought to the job: the other parts included the worst recession in 60 years and an electorate determined to make him pay for it. Keating defied the odds and won the 1993 election, and in his four years as Prime Minister set Australia on a new course - towards engagement with Asia, a republic, reconciliation, a social democracy built on a modern export-based economy and sophisticated public systems of education and training, health and social security. Widely regarded as a quintessential economic rationalist, Keating's record clearly shows that his vision was infinitely broader and more complex. Don Watson was employed as Keating's speechwriter. Though a 'bleeding heart' liberal trained in history rather than economics, he became an advisor and friend to Keating. RECOLLECTIONS OF A BLEEDING HEART - based on notes Watson kept through the four turbulent and exhausting years of Keating's Prime Ministership - is a frank, sympathetic and engrossing portrait of this brilliant and perplexing man, and a unique reflection on modern politics.
The World's 100 Greatest Speeches
Terry O'Brien - 2016
These speeches−by kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, freedom fighters and political leaders, dictators and writers−have made a mark in world history. These speeches not only give us an insight into the past, but also inspire us with their demands for equality, cries of freedom, a call to arms, rooting for the cause of the individual or the nation.Learn from the inspirational words of King Charles, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Mohandas K. Gandhi, George Washington, Rabindranath Tagore, Anne Besant, Theodore Roosevelt and Subhas Chandra Bose, among many others.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Roméo Dallaire - 2003
Digging deep into shattering memories, Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism & international politics. His message is simple, undeniable: Never again. When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was called to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in '93, he thought he was heading off on a straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned & suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes readers with him on a return voyage into hell, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven thru the story of this disastrous mission is his own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, hope & reconciliation. This book is a personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth & secure in his assumptions to one conscious of his own weaknesses & failures & critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to him & his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into dirty wars.
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
Jung Chang - 1991
Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
Rahul Pandita - 2013
The heartbreaking story of Kashmir has so far been told through the prism of the brutality of the Indian state, and the pro-independence demands of separatists. But there is another part of the story that has remained unrecorded and buried. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the unspoken chapter in the story of Kashmir, in which it was purged of the Kashmiri Pandit community in a violent ethnic cleansing backed by Islamist militants. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed, and about 3,50,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country. Rahul Pandita has written a deeply personal, powerful and unforgettable story of history, home and loss.
A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story
Qais Akbar Omar - 2013
Until he was 7, he lived with his father, a high school physics teacher, and mother, a bank manager, in the spacious, garden-filled compound his grandfather had built. Noisy with the laughter of his cousins (with whom they lived in the typical Afghan style), fragrant with the scent of roses and apple blossoms, and rich in shady, tucked-away spots where Qais and his grandfather sat and read, home was the idyllic centre of their quiet, comfortable life. But in the wake of the Russian withdrawal and the bloody civil conflict that erupted, his family was forced to flee and take refuge in the legendary Fort of Nine Towers, a centuries-old palace in the hills on the far side of Kabul. On a perilous trip home, Omar and his father were kidnapped, narrowly escaping, and the family fled again, his parents leading their 6 children on a remarkable, sometimes wondrous journey. Hiding inside the famous giant Bamiyan Buddhas sculpture, and among Kurchi herders, Omar cobbles together an education, learning the beautiful art of carpet-weaving from a deaf mute girl, which will become the family's means of support. Against a backdrop of uncertainty, violence and absurdity, young Qais Omar weaves together a story--and a self--that is complex, colourful, and profound.
Fire
Sebastian Junger - 2001
Few writers have been to so many disparate and desperate corners of the globe. Fewer still have met the standard of great journalism more consistently. None has provided more starkly memorable evocations of extreme events. From the murderous mechanics of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, to an inferno forest fire burning out of control in the steep canyons of Idaho, to the forensics of genocide in Kosovo, this collection of Junger's reporting will take readers to places they need to know about but wouldn't dream of going on their own. In his company we travel to these places, pass through frightening checkpoints, actual and psychological, and come face-to-face with the truth.
Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead
Shannon K. O'Neil - 2013
A Mexican drug cartel dismembers the body of a rival and then stitches his face onto a soccer ball. These are the sorts of grisly tales that dominate the media, infiltrate movies and TV shows, and ultimately shape Americans' perception of Mexico as a dangerous and scary place, overrun by brutal drug lords.Without a doubt, the drug war is real. In the last six years, over 60,000 people have been murdered in narco-related crimes. But, there is far more to Mexico's story than this gruesome narrative would suggest.While thugs have been grabbing the headlines, Mexico has undergone an unprecedented and under-publicized political, economic, and social transformation. In her groundbreaking book, Two Nations Indivisible, Shannon K. O'Neil argues that the United States is making a grave mistake by focusing on the politics of antagonism toward Mexico. Rather, we should wake up to the revolution of prosperity now unfolding there.The news that isn't being reported is that, over the last decade, Mexico has become a real democracy, providing its citizens a greater voice and opportunities to succeed on their own side of the border. Armed with higher levels of education, upwardly-mobile men and women have been working their way out of poverty, building the largest, most stable middle class in Mexico's history.This is the Mexico Americans need to get to know. Now more than ever, the two countries are indivisible. It is past time for the U.S. to forge a new relationship with its southern neighbor. Because in no uncertain terms, our future depends on it.
My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir
Jagmohan - 1993
The present Sixth edition updates the book to February 18, 2002. It deals not only with the Pokhran Nuclear Test and Kargil war and the events leading to the Vajpayee-Musharraf Summit but also with the ever-increasing dimensions of international terrorism which resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Indian Parliament.
