Whatever your passion, Central America is jam-packed with possibilities. Written by experts who travel on your budget, this guide lets you go further, stay longer, and pay less for the adventure of a lifetime. The countries covered in this guide are: Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and also part of Mexico—Quintana Roo, the Yucatan, and Chiapas states.Explore It All—in-depth coverage of all seven Central American nations, plus Mexico's Yucatan and Chiapas.Find Your Way—120 user-friendly maps plus detailed bus schedules and crucial border-crossing information.Rest Easy—lodging and restaurants that offer bang for your buck...plus the occasional splurge.Talk The Talk—comprehensive Language, Culture and Conduct sections keep you street-smart and clued-in. Who We Are At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travelers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large. What We Do We offer travelers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages. We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.When we update our guidebooks, we check every listing, in person, every time. We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent. We challenge our growing community of travelers; leading debate anddiscussion about travel and the world. We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travelers; not clouded by any other motive. What We Believe We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.

    At the highest levels of the government, its code name was Operation Shocker. Lured by a double agent working for the USA, ten Russian spies, including a University of Minnesota professor, his wife & a classic sleeper spy in NYC, were sent by Moscow to penetrate America's secrets. Two FBI agents were killed & secret formulae were passed to the USSR in a dangerous ploy that may have spurred Moscow to create the world's most powerful nerve gas. Cassidy's Run tells this true story for the 1st time, following a trail that leads from DC to Moscow, with detours to Florida, Minnesota & Mexico. Based on documents secret until now & scores of interviews in the USA & USSR, the book reveals that: more than 4500 pages of classified documents, including US nerve gas formulas, were passed to the USSR in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars; an Armageddon code: a telephone call to a number in NYC, was to alert the sleeper spy to an impending nuclear attack--a warning he would transmit to the Soviets by radio signal from atop a rock in Central Park; two FBI agents were killed when their plane crashed during surveillance of one of the spies as he headed for the Canadian border; secret drops for microdots were set up by Moscow from NY to Florida to DC. More than a cloak-&-dagger tale, Cassidy's Run is the story of one ordinary man, Sergeant Joe Cassidy, not trained as a spy, who suddenly found himself the FBI's secret weapon in a dangerous clandestine war.

    It is an insight into their initiation ceremonies, their methods, their money-raising tactics; a timely portrayal of Britain's worst criminal problem.

    But where did he get his military experience? Why was picked to take command of the army? Why was he the only American president ever to be elected unanimously (twice!), and did he really chop down that cherry tree as a kid?In this book entitled George Washington: First Guardian of American Liberty by author Michael Crawley, you'll follow the course of George Washington's life, from his birth at Ferry Farm in Virginia in 1732, to his death at his Mount Vernon estate in 1799. You'll learn how his early fame as a hero of the French and Indian War, and his illustrious marriage to a wealthy widow, led to this farm boy becoming one of the most important men in Virginia, a delegate at the Continental Congress where the Founders of America gathered to decide the nation's fate. The first guardian of American liberty looks serene in his portraits, but he didn't always rise above the fray. Washington fought for what he believed in, and his political convictions shocked contemporaries like Thomas Jefferson. Do you know what kind of country George Washington wanted America to be?

    This updated edition of Gaddis' classic carries the history of containment through the end of the Cold War.Beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt's postwar plans, Gaddis provides a thorough critical analysis of George F. Kennan's original strategy of containment, NSC-68, The Eisenhower-Dulles New Look, the Kennedy-Johnson flexible response strategy, the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of detente, and now acomprehensive assessment of how Reagan - and Gorbechev - completed the process of containment, thereby bringing the Cold War to an end.He concludes, provocatively, that Reagan more effectively than any other Cold War president drew upon the strengths of both approaches while avoiding their weaknesses. A must-read for anyone interested in Cold War history, grand strategy, and the origins of the post-Cold War world.

    Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach of prosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite and unconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of any wrongdoing and certain that history would remember his great accomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of the Vietnam War—and forget his “mistake,” the “pipsqueak thing” called Watergate.In 1977, three years after his resignation, Nixon agreed to a series of interviews with television personality David Frost. Conducted over twelve days, they resulted in twenty-eight hours of taped material, which were aired on prime-time television and watched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Nixon, a skilled lawyer by training, was paid $1 million for the interviews, confident that this exposure would launch him back into public life. Instead, they sealed his fate as a political pariah.James Reston, Jr., was David Frost’s Watergate advisor for the interiews, and The Conviction of Richard Nixon is his intimate, behind-the-scenes account of his involvement. Originally written in 1977 and published now for the first time, this book helped inspire Peter Morgan’s hit play Frost/Nixon. Reston doggedly researched the voluminous Watergate record and worked closely with Frost to develop the interrogation strategy. Even at the time, Reston recognized the historical importance of the Frost/Nixon interviews; they would result either in Nixon’s de facto conviction and vindication for the American people, or in his exoneration and public rehabilitation in the hands of a lightweight. Focused, driven, and committed to exposing the truth, Reston worked tirelessly to arm Frost with the information he needed to force Nixon to admit his culpability. In The Conviction of Richard Nixon, Reston provides a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall account of his involvement in the Nixon interviews as David Frost’s Watergate adviser. Written in 1977 immediately following these celebrated television interviews and published now for the first time, The Conviction of Richard Nixon explains how a British journalist of waning consequence drove the famously wily and formidable Richard Nixon to say, in an apparent personal epiphany, “I have impeached myself.”From the Hardcover edition.

    From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa channeled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings and intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a "Get Hoffa" squad within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over. Drawing upon a treasure trove of previously secret and undisclosed documents, James Neff has crafted a brilliant, heart-pounding epic of crime and punishment, a saga of venom and relentlessness and two men willing to do anything to demolish each other.

    During the period of 1940 to this day the power brokers, working from their positions of trust, have committed and then covered up the most heinous of crimes known to mankind. Investigative journalist Craig Roberts, author of "Kill Zone--a Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza", now provides us with the results of his ten -year investigation regarding the secret crimes and coverups of the U.S. Government. You will read his case files on such subjects as the Japanese "Devil Unit 731" who experiments on American POWs in WWII with germ warfare weapons--and what happened when the war ended and the commanding officer was hired by the government instead of hanged for war crimes; Operation Paperclip in WWII when the U.S. brought Nazi scientists to America to work for us on our weapons programs instead of standing trial as war criminals; CIA and military mind control experiments on unsuspecting citizens--including children--without our knowledge; Secret drug and bacteriological weapons experiments on the American population; Atomic guinea pigs, Agent Orange, and the Gulf War Syndrome; what really happened to over 30,000 U.S. POWs after World War II, Korea and Vietnam; International assassinations, drug smuggling and money laundering; What the media did not tell you about the shoot down of TWA 800, the bombing of Pan AM 103, the Oklahoma City bombing, the crash of Arrow Air in Gander, Newfoundland, the derailment of the Sunset Limited in Arizona, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and much more….

    Vastly outnumbered, the patrols faced overwhelming odds as they fought to carry out their missions, from gathering intelligence, acting as hunter/killer teams, or engaging in infamous “Parakeet” flights– actions in which teams were dropped into enemy areas and expected to “develop” the situation. PHANTOM WARRIORS II presents heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat stories from individuals and teams. These elite warriors relive sudden deadly firefights, prolonged gun battles with large enemy forces, desperate attempts to help fallen comrades, and the sheer hell of bloody, no-quarter combat. The LRRP accounts here are a testament to the courage, guts, daring, and sacrifice of the men who willingly faced death every day of their lives in Vietnam.From the Paperback edition.

    Stoner and Peter A. Conway tell for the first time in full detail the twisted story of a pair of young, aspiring gay adult film producers whose quest for fame at any cost leads to the gruesome murder of the man who stands in their way, gay porn entrepreneur Bryan Kocis.News of the killing of the forty-four-year-old (stabbed twenty-eight times, his throat slashed to near decapitation) in his suburban home sends shock waves through the bucolic Pennsylvania town. Neighbors were horrified to hear about the murder but equally astonished to learn that Kocis ran a small but thriving online porn operation from his home.The murder investigation leads police and prosecutors to the far reaches of the country, from Virginia to New York City, to Las Vegas, and ultimately to a nude beach in San Diego, where investigators facilitate an incredible clandestine suspect surveillance. The manhunt nets Harlow Cuadra and his lover Joseph Kerekes, both former military men, turned male models, turned hustlers, turned porn producers, who finally land at the bottom of a deadly conspiracy.Cobra Killer takes readers into the sometimes alluring, sometimes dangerous and often surprising world of gay porn and the deceit, schemes, and ultimate betrayals lying underneath the fantasy.

    

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Their motives, long held by historians to have had an ideological thrust, were, in fact, to gain control over access to oil and claim geographic and strategic advantage. In his new book, Rashid Khalidi, considered the foremost U.S. historian of the Middle East, makes the compelling case that the dynamics that played out during the Cold War continue to exert a profound influence even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.The pattern of superpower intervention during the Cold War deeply affected and exacerbated regional and civil wars throughout the Middle East, and the carefully calculated maneuvers fueled by the fierce competition between the United States and the USSR actually provoked breakdowns in fragile democracies. To understand the momentous events that have occurred in the region over the last two decades-including two Gulf wars, the occupation of Iraq, and the rise of terrorism-we must, Khalidi argues, understand the crucial interplay of Cold War powers there from 1945 to 1990.Today, the legacy of the Cold War continues in American policies and approaches to the Middle East that have shifted from a deadly struggle against communism to a War on Terror, and from opposing the Evil Empire to targeting the Axis of Evil. The current U.S. deadlock with Iran and the upsurge of American-Russian tensions in the wake of the conflict in Georgia point to the continued centrality of the Middle East in American strategic attention. Today, with a new administration in Washington, understanding and managing the full impact of this dangerous legacy in order to move America toward a more constructive and peaceful engagement in this critical arena is of the utmost importance.

    The Korean War, the Taiwan Strait crises, and the Vietnam War--all of which involved China as a central actor--represented the only major hot conflicts during the Cold War period, making East Asia the main battlefield of the Cold War, while creating conditions to prevent the two superpowers from engaging in a direct military showdown. Beijing's split with Moscow and rapprochement with Washington fundamentally transformed the international balance of power, argues Chen, eventually leading to the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the decline of international communism.Based on sources that include recently declassified Chinese documents, the book offers pathbreaking insights into the course and outcome of the Cold War.

    The recipient, who didn’t know the sender, only knew she was supposed to bring this box to a friend, who would ferry it to another friend. This was Edward Snowden’s box—materials proving that the U.S. government had built a massive surveillance apparatus and used it to spy on its own people--and the friend on the end of this chain was filmmaker Laura Poitras.   Thus the biggest national security leak of the digital era was launched via a remarkably analog network, the US Postal Service. This is just one of the odd, ironic details that emerges from the story of how Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge, two experienced journalists but security novices (and the friends who received and ferried the box) got drawn into the Snowden story as behind-the-scenes players. Their initially stumbling, increasingly paranoid, and sometimes comic efforts to help bring Snowden’s leaks to light, and ultimately, to understand their significance, unfold in an engrossing narrative that includes emails and diary entries from Poitras. This is an illuminating story on the status of transparency, privacy, and trust in the age of surveillance.   With an appendix suggesting what citizens and activists can do to protect privacy and democracy.