Book picks similar to
Defeat Is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896–1931 by Alison Liebhafsky Des Forges
african-history
belgian-history
major-exam
colonial-history
The Perception Deception - Part One
David Icke - 2013
What was once ridiculed and dismissed is now being confirmed again and again as Icke, a figure of fun for so long, is acknowledged as a man way ahead of his time.
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Peter Godwin - 2006
On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards into thejaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.Then Godwin discovered a shocking family secret that helped explain their loyalty. Africa was his father's sanctuary from another identity, another world.WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN is a stirring memoir of the disintegration of a family set against the collapse of a country. But it is also a vivid portrait of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love.
Bad Boy: The Life And Politics Of Lee Atwater
John Joseph Brady - 1996
He helped to create a solid Republican south. And he became notorious for turning national politics back into a blood sport, not only using nasty attacks but reveling in his image as the bad boy of Washington. Then, at the age of 39, Atwater was struck by a brain tumor. In thirteen months, cancer ended the most controversial career in modern politics—the charismatic, colorful, and contradictory life of Lee Atwater.Even today Atwater is a fallen leader Republicans love and a rival Democrats love to hate. He was the first political handler as mediagenic as his candidates—certainly the first chairman of the Republican National Committee to record a blues album. His campaigns represent the high-water mark of the GOPs postwar dominance of the presidency, and his techniques set the tone for races across the country. Watching Washington since his death, politicians and pundits still wonder, What if Lee Atwater had lived? Bad Boy reveals how Lee Atwater began his career controlling crowds as jittery class clown, traumatized by the agonizing death of his little brother. In college he discovered the subtle intercourse of policy and public opinion and grew from party animal to party man. Bad Boy details Atwater's political strategies from the grass roots to the national level. Even more ruthless were the behind-the-scenes power games as he crossed paths, and occasionally crossed swords, with nearly every major Republican of the 1980s: Reagan, Bush, Baker, Ailes, Rollins, and many more.In Bad Boy, we also see the faces Atwater tried to spin away. He was a compulsive womanizer, climbing through windows to avoid reporters. He played radical politics but promoted ”big tent” Republicanism. Even his last public moment is controversial. Did Atwater's deathbed words really repudiate entire campaigns, or were they twisted by political enemies and second-hand reporting? Was his repentance sincere or simply one last gasp of press manipulation? Was he responsible for the infamous Willie Horton ads, or was he unfairly blamed by 1988s losers, trying for a moral victory? Is Lee Atwater, a master of spin, now being spun in his grave?In its sudden end, Atwater's remarkable life resembled the rise and fall of a fine political novel. With the probing insights of an expert interviewer and a rare stylistic verve, John Brady tells that whole frantic, fascinating story—the life of the baddest boy in D.C.
Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters
Kishalay Bhattacharjee - 2015
Speaking to investigative journalist and conflict specialist Kishalay Bhattacharjee, the confessor tells of the toll this brutality has taken on him. An essay by Bhattacharjee and a postscript that analyses the hidden policy of extra-judicial killings and how it threatens India's democracy contextualize this searing confession. An explosive document on institutionalized human rights abuse.
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain
Sathnam Sanghera - 2021
In prose that is, at once, both clear-eyed and full of acerbic wit, Sanghera shows how our past is everywhere: from how we live to how we think, from the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism, from our distrust of intellectuals in public life to the exceptionalism that imbued the campaign for Brexit and the government's early response to the Covid crisis. And yet empire is a subject, weirdly hidden from view.The British Empire ran for centuries and covered vast swathes of the world. It is, as Sanghera reveals, fundamental to understanding Britain. However, even among those who celebrate the empire there seems to be a desire not to look at it too closely - not to include the subject in our school history books, not to emphasize it too much in our favourite museums.At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Sanghera's book urges us to address this bewildering contradiction. For, it is only by stepping back and seeing where we really come from, that we can begin to understand who we are, and what unites us.
Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp
Christopher R. Browning - 2010
In 1972 the Hamburg State Court acquitted Walter Becker, the German chief of police in the Polish city of Starachowice, of war crimes committed against Jews. Thirty years before, Becker had been responsible for liquidating the nearby Jewish ghetto, sending nearly 4,000 Jews to their deaths at Treblinka and 1,600 to slave-labor factories. The shocking acquittal, delivered despite the incriminating eyewitness testimony of survivors, drives this author’s inquiry. Drawing on the rich testimony of survivors of the Starachowice slave-labor camps, Christopher R. Browning examines the experiences and survival strategies of the Jewish prisoners and the policies and personnel of the Nazi guard. From the killings in the market square in 1942 through the succession of brutal camp regimes, there are stories of heroism, of corruption and retribution, of desperate choices forced on husbands and wives, parents and children. In the end, the ties of family and neighbor are the sinews of survival. 10 photos.
The Pentagon Papers: Making History at the Washington Post (A Vintage Short)
Katharine Graham - 2017
After inheriting the Post from her father, and assuming its leadership in 1963 after the death of her husband, Graham found herself unexpectedly playing a role in history. Here she recounts the riveting episodes that transformed a shy widow into a newspaper legend, as she defied the government to publish the Pentagon Papers’ secrets about the Vietnam War and then led the way in exposing the Watergate scandal. Graham gives us an intimate behind-the-scenes view of the tense debates and high stakes she and her editors faced, and concludes with a powerful argument for the freedom of the press as a bulwark against abuses of power. An ebook short.
Hillary (And Bill): The Sex Volume
Victor Thorn - 2008
It's a carefully plotted path that eventually led them to the White House. But along the way, a series of compromises had to be made, including a prearranged marriage, clandestine assignments for the CIA, and Hillary's ultimate role as a "fixer" for her husband's many dalliances. Pulling no punches, investigative journalist Victor Thorn paints a compelling portrait of secrecy, deceit, violence, and betrayal that shatters the myth Mrs. Clinton has spent so many years trying to create. This three-book series is the most comprehensive examination of the Clinton marriage ever compiled, with HILLARY (AND BILL): THE SEX VOLUME laying a riveting foundation for the next two books which follow: part two - HILLARY (AND BILL): THE DRUGS VOLUME, and then part three - HILLARY (AND BILL): THE MURDER VOLUME. Get all the lurid details of how Hillary Clinton harassed and intimidated Juanita Broaddrick after her husband violently raped her, as well as the lengths to which she went to terrorize other women who were victimized by Bill Clinton. - Extensive quotes from a plethora of public figures chronicling the Clinton Lie Machine. - Who was Bill Clinton's real father? Discover the startling facts concerning the death of William Blythe and why an overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that he could not have been the President s biological father. - Learn about Hillary's collegiate career and how it shaped her later views on feminism, globalism, and how to infiltrate the System from within. - What one culminating event not only brought Hillary Rodham to the attention of Washington, DC s power-brokers, but also made her a darling of the mainstream media. - Touching upon the work of Michael Collins Piper and other investigators, find out how during their academic careers Bill and Hillary were recruited into the CIA under Operation CHAOS to subvert the anti-war movement. - Although largely ignored by the corporate press, read how Hillary's family was associated with organized crime figures in the Chicago area, while Bill Clinton's relatives were integral members of the notorious Dixie Mafia. - For the first time anywhere: was Bill and Hillary's much ballyhooed first meeting at Yale actually part of a much larger prearranged marriage engineered by shadowy New World Order figures whose ultimate plans led them to the White House? - Despite being labeled radicals, volume one of this trilogy documents how Bill and Hillary were trained at three of the most prestigious globalist universities in the world: Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale; while simultaneously being groomed by such figures as Professor Carroll Quigley. - Did Hillary Rodham further her intelligence career by infiltrating underground groups such as the Black Panthers, and was she also used in this same context to leak highly sensitive information during Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate hearings? - Why did Bill Clinton travel to Russia and across Europe during the early 1970s (at the height of the Cold War), and what powerful forces from Arkansas and Washington, DC used their leverage to keep him from being drafted into the Vietnam War? - How has Hillary's marriage-made-in-hell become akin to a prison sentence one from which she has no escape due to the severe consequences she would face in doing so? - Also, Bill and Hillary's sordid sex lives, including: - Rape - Gennifer Flowers darkest secrets - A black love child - The real reason why Bill Clinton lost his case to Paula Jones &l
Running the Rift
Naomi Benaron - 2010
Born a Tutsi, he is thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical - where the man who used to sell you gifts for your family now spews hatred, where the girl who flirted with you in the lunchroom refuses to look at you, where your Hutu coach is secretly training the very soldiers who will hunt down your family. Yet in an environment increasingly restrictive for the Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medal contender in track, a feat he believes might deliver him and his people from this violence. When the killing begins, Jean Patrick is forced to flee, leaving behind the woman, the family, and the country he loves. Finding them again is the race of his life. This is the third Bellwether Prize winner published by Algonquin. The Bellwether Prize is awarded biennially by Barbara Kingsolver for an unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice and was previously awarded to The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and Mudbound.
The Malay Dilemma
Mahathir Mohamad - 2012
First published in 1970, the book seeks to explain the causes for the 13 May 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur.Dr Mahathir sets out his view as to why the Malays are economically backward and why they feel they must insist upon immigrants becoming real Malaysians speaking in due course nothing but Malay, as do immigrants to America or Australia speak nothing but the language of what the author calls “the definitive people”. He argues that the Malays are the rightful owners of Malaya. He also argues that immigrants are guests until properly absorbed, and that they are not properly absorbed until they have abandoned the language and culture of their past.
Currency
L. Todd Wood - 2011
Currency, combines multiple historical strands that converge on the number one issue of our time, the geographic location of economic and military power in the 21st century. Economic Thriller! An incredible story of power, romance, revenge and international finance spanning three centuries. The issues could not be more timely!"Currency combines history, finance, romance and action into a timely and entertaining read on a subject that has serious economic and national security implications. My wife and I both enjoyed reading it." Hon. David M. Walker Former U.S. Comptroller General.In Currency, Wood has pulled off a first novel that captures the reader with a page-turning adventure, while it addresses head-on the most pressing and intense global economic, military and political issues of our very challenging current times.Wood's real world experience on both Wall Street and at the center of the US Military Special Operations world, combine with his love of history and command of current global issues, to create a story that is as intense and gripping as it is timely.Currency weaves the historical adventures of our US Founding Fathers who built the country's early economic structure, with current day hero Connor Murray. Connor unexpectedly finds himself thrust into a world shaped as much by greed, betrayal and violence as it by heroism, loyalty, love and the quest for personal peace.Fate forces Murray to navigate events that play out on the world stage. The United States' current economic weakness collides with its international rival's very real drive for economic, political and military influence. This collision produces an intense drama and adventure that is as scary as it is possible amidst the world's current state of affairs and balance of power.If you love a good adventure story on both the personal and international level - Currency is a must read. If you're concerned about how the United State's current economic challenges could play out for the country in a very real way - Currency is a must read. And if you want to be an early reader of a new author who has tremendous promise - Currency is definitely a must read.
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp
Ben Rawlence - 2016
Rawlence combines intimate storytelling with broad socio-political investigative journalism.
Peter Capstick's Africa: A Return To The Long Grass
Peter Hathaway Capstick - 1987
Such highly successful titles as Death in the Long Grass, Death in the Silent Places, and Death in the Dark Continent have established him as the modern-day master of African adventure writing. Sportsman, adventurer, raconteur par excellence, Capstick has in many ways done for contemporary hunting literature what Hemingway and Robert Ruark did in decades past.Until now, Capstick has written post facto about classic hunters of the past and safaris in which he participated as a professional hunter. Peter Capstick's Africa, however, is a very different breed of book: it is the enthralling tale of an entirely new safari, an exciting first-person adventure in which Peter Capstick returns to the long grass for his own dangerous and very personal excursion. The result is a definitive work on African hunting, and one of Peter Capstick's greatest achievements to date.In 1985, Capstick went back into the African bush with two top photographers and a crack professional hunter, It was a venture taken for personal challenge, and for the chance to look anew at what had become of the Africa immortalized in his own earlier works. Peter Capstick's Africa is the chronicle, in text and pictures, of this safari. It is full of the same edge-of-the-seat narration, witty anecdotes, and wry observations that have made Capstick's earlier books so popular. But in addition, it tells the story of Africa today as Capstick sees it: a place that is in some ways the same as, but in many different from, the "dark continent" of even a few years ago. The text of the book has been integrated with the photographs of Paul Kimble and Dick van Niekerk into a lavish full-color production that illustrates Capstick's story in a way his fans have never seen before.Peter Capstick's Africa is a book few lovers of travel and adventure will want to be without.
States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control
Jeffrey Herbst - 2000
There, the interaction of power and space is dramatically different from what occurred in Europe. In his groundbreaking book, Jeffrey Herbst places the African state-building process in a truly comparative perspective, examining the problem of state consolidation from the precolonial period, through the short but intense interlude of European colonialism, to the modern era of independent states. Herbst's bold contention--that the conditions now facing African state-builders existed long before European penetration of the continent--is sure to provoke controversy, for it runs counter to the prevailing assumption that colonialism changed everything.In identifying how the African state-building process differs from the European experience, Herbst addresses the fundamental problem confronting African leaders: how to extend authority over sparsely settled lands. Indeed, efforts to exert control over vast, inhospitable territories of low population density and varied environmental and geographical zones have resulted in devastating wars, millions of refugees, and dysfunctional governments perpetrating destructive policies.Detailing the precise political calculations of distinct African leaders, Herbst isolates the basic dynamics of African state development. In analyzing how these leaders have attempted to consolidate power, he is able to evaluate a variety of policy alternatives for dealing with the fundamental political challenges facing African states today.
The Rise of Nazi Germany: The History of the Events that Brought Adolf Hitler to Power
Charles River Editors - 2015
Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it.” - Dr. Karl Alexander von Mueller It is often claimed that Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany through democratic means, and while that is a stretch, it is true that he managed to become an absolute dictator as Chancellor of Germany in the 1930s through a mixture of politics and intimidation. Ironically, he had set such a course only because of the failure of an outright coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch about a decade earlier. At the close of World War I, Hitler was an impoverished young artist who scrapped by through selling souvenir paintings, but within a few years, his powerful oratory brought him to the forefront of the Nazi party in Munich and helped make the party much more popular. A smattering of followers in the hundreds quickly became a party of thousands, with paramilitary forces like the SA backing them, and at the head of it all was a man whose fiery orations denounced Jews, communists and other “traitors” for bringing upon the German nation the Treaty of Versailles, which had led to hyperinflation and a wrecked economy. The early 1930s were a tumultuous period for German politics, even in comparison to the ongoing transition to the modern era that caused various forms of chaos throughout the rest of the world. In the United States, reliance on the outdated gold standard and an absurdly parsimonious monetary policy helped bring about the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the Empire of Japan began its ultimately fatal adventurism with the invasion of Manchuria, alienating the rest of the world with the atrocities it committed. Around the same time, Gandhi began his drive for the peaceful independence of India through nonviolent protests against the British. It was in Germany, however, that the strongest seeds of future tragedy were sown. The struggling Weimar Republic had become a breeding ground for extremist politics, including two opposed and powerful authoritarian entities: the right-wing National Socialists and the left-wing KPD Communist Party. As the 1930s dawned, these two totalitarian groups held one another in a temporary stalemate, enabling the fragile ghost of democracy to continue a largely illusory survival for a few more years. That stalemate was broken in dramatic fashion on a bitterly cold night in late February 1933, and it was the Nazis who emerged decisively as the victors. A single act of arson against the famous Reichstag building proved to be the catalyst that propelled Adolf Hitler to victory in the elections of March 1933, which set the German nation irrevocably on the path towards World War II. Like other totalitarian regimes, the leader of the Nazis kept an iron grip on power in part by making sure nobody else could attain too much of it, leading to purges of high-ranking officials in the Nazi party. Of these purges, the most notorious was the Night of the Long Knives, a purge in the summer of 1934 that came about when Hitler ordered the surprise executions of several dozen leaders of the SA. This fanatically National Socialist paramilitary organization had been a key instrument in overthrowing democratic government in Germany and raising Hitler to dictatorial power in the first place.