Book picks similar to
One Point Safe by Andrew Cockburn


nuclear
history
non-fiction
political-war-journalism

The Death of Trotsky (Kindle Single)


Cecelia Holland - 2015
    In The Death of Trotsky, Cecelia Holland brings this fated and fatal day to life, from its quotidian beginnings to its dramatic close. Between Trotsky’s waking and his final rest, she probes the outer-workings and inner thoughts of those who were with him till the end, illuminating a man who exited life as he lived it: defiantly. Cecelia Holland, author of more than 30 books and articles, lives in northern California with her family.Cover Design by Adil Dara.

Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB's Master Spy


Tim Milne - 2014
    He was a Soviet spy at the heart of British intelligence, joining Britain's secret service, MI6, during the war, rising to become head of the section tasked with rooting out Russian spies and then head of liaison with the CIA. Philby betrayed hundreds of British and US agents to the Russians and compromised numerous operations inside the Soviet Union.Protected by friends within MI6 who could not believe the service's rising star was a traitor, he was eventually dismissed in 1951, but continued to work for the service surreptitiously until his defection in 1963. His admission of guilt caused profound embarrassment to the British government of the day and its intelligence service, from which neither fully recovered.Tim Milne, Philby's close friend since childhood and recruited by him into MI6 to be his deputy, has left us a memoir that provides the final and most authoritative word on the enduring and fascinating story of Kim Philby the legendary Soviet master spy. It is a riveting read, with new detail on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two other members of the Cambridge spy ring, and on Konstantin Volkov, the would-be KGB defector who was betrayed by Philby, one of several hundred people who died as a direct result of Philby's treachery.Tim Milne retired from SIS in October 1968 and never spoke publicly of his friendship with Kim Philby.

Why Israel is the Victim


David Horowitz - 2009
    David Horowitz’s classic Why Israel is the Victim, updated by the author, sets the record straight about the basic truths of the Middle East conflict. In addition to restoring the authentic history of the region – a history of obsessive aggression first by Arab countries determined to physically annihilate the Jewish State and later by terror groups determined to destroy its will to survive and right to exist—this booklet brings the story up to date by showing the systematic way in which Hamas and Hezbollah, under Iran’s direction, have subverted peace in the Middle East. As Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield notes in his insightful introduction, this pamphlet “tells us why we should reject the “Blame Israel First” narrative that has so thoroughly saturated the mainstream media… It confronts the myth of Palestinian victimhood… and it delivers a rousing restatement of the true history of the hate that led us to all this.” America should be Israel’s protector. Instead, as David Horowitz notes, under the leadership of Barack Obama, it has become its prosecutor.

Lyndon Johnson's War: America's Cold War Crusade in Vietnam, 1945-1968


Michael H. Hunt - 1996
    Hunt's Lyndon Johnson's War reinterprets the values, choices, misconceptions, and miscalculations that shaped the long process of American intervention in Southeast Asia, and renders more comprehensible--if no less troubling--the tangled origins of the war.

Churchill


Ashley Jackson - 2011
    He was, according to Evelyn Waugh, 'always in the wrong, surrounded by crooks, a terrible father, a radio personality'. To others, he was the saviour of the nation, even of Western civilization, 'the greatest Briton' who ever lived. Whatever one's view, Winston Churchill remains splendidly unreduced. He also remains enormous fun--a cartoonist's and caricaturist's dream on the one hand, one of the most powerful and successful statesmen in modern history on the other. Globally famed for his role as a leader during the Second World War, this study resists the temptation to conflate Churchill's post-war career with Britain's demise on the international stage. Nor does it endorse the notion that Churchill became an anachronism as he lived and continued to work, at a prodigious rate, through his seventies and eighties. As well as being Britain's most celebrated politician and war leader, Winston Churchill was a Nobel Prize-winning author. He was one of the most prolific writers of his age and his accounts of the momentous events through which he lived have indelibly marked the way in which modern British history has been conceptualized. Uniquely endowed with talent, energy and determination, Winston Churchill was, as a close wartime colleague put it, 'unlike anyone you have ever met before'. Ashley Jackson describes the contours and contradictions of Churchill's remarkable life and career as a soldier, politician, historian, journalist, painter, amateur farmer and homemaker. From thrusting subaltern to high-flying politician, Cabinet outcast to elder statesman, this is the eternally fascinating story of Winston Churchill's appointment with destiny"--Publisher's description, p. [2] of dust jacket.

The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov: The Story of Stalin's Persecution of One of the Great Scientists of the Twentieth Century


Peter Pringle - 2008
    In a drama of love, revolution, and war that rivals Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago," Pringle tells the story of a young Russian scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, who had a dream of ending hunger and famine in the world. Vavilov's plan would use the emerging science of genetics to breed super plants that could grow anywhere, in any climate, in sandy deserts and freezing tundra, in drought and flood. He would launch botanical expeditions to find these vanishing genes, overlooked by early farmers ignorant of Mendel's laws of heredity. He called it a "mission for all humanity."To the leaders of the young Soviet state, Vavilov's dream fitted perfectly into their larger scheme for a socialist utopia. Lenin supported the adventurous Vavilov, a handsome and seductive young professor, as he became an Indiana Jones, hunting lost botanical treasures on five continents. In a former tsarist palace in what is now St. Petersburg, Vavilov built the world's first seed bank, a quarter of a million specimens, a magnificent living museum of plant diversity that was the envy of scientists everywhere and remains so today.But when Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin took over, Vavilov's dream turned into a nightmare. This son of science was from a bourgeois background, the class of society most despised and distrusted by the Bolsheviks. The new cadres of comrade scientists taunted and insulted him, and Stalin's dreaded secret police built up false charges of sabotage and espionage.Stalin's collectivization of farmland caused chaos in Soviet food production, and millions died in widespread famine. Vavilov's master plan for improving Soviet crops was designed to work over decades, not a few years, and he could not meet Stalin's impossible demands for immediate results.In Stalin's Terror of the 1930s, Russian geneticists were systematically repressed in favor of the peasant horticulturalist Trofim Lysenko, with his fraudulent claims and speculative theories. Vavilov was the most famous victim of this purge, which set back Russian biology by a generation and caused the country untold harm. He was sentenced to death, but unlike Galileo, he refused to recant his beliefs and, in the most cruel twist, this humanitarian pioneer scientist was starved to death in the gulag.Pringle uses newly opened Soviet archives, including Vavilov's secret police file, official correspondence, vivid expedition reports, previously unpublished family letters and diaries, and the reminiscences of eyewitnesses to bring us this intensely human story of a brilliant life cut short by anti-science demagogues, ideology, censorship, and political expedience.

Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954


Nick Cullather - 1999
    Given full access to the Agency’s archives, he produced a vivid insider’s account, intended as a training manual for covert operators, detailing how the C.I.A. chose targets, planned strategies, and organized the mechanics of waging a secret war. In 1997, during a brief period of open disclosure, the C.I.A. declassified the history with remarkably few substantive deletions. The New York Times called it “an astonishingly frank account . . . which may be a high-water mark in the agency’s openness.” Here is that account, with new notes by the author which clarify points in the history and add newly available information.In the Cold War atmosphere of 1954, the U.S. State Department (under John Foster Dulles) and the C.I.A. (under his brother Allen Dulles) regarded Guatemala’s democratically elected leftist government as a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere. At the C.I.A.’s direction, the government was overthrown and replaced by a military dictatorship installed by the Agency. This book tells, for the first time, how a disaster-prone operation—marked by bad planning, poor security, and incompetent execution—was raised to legendary status by its almost accidental triumph.This early C.I.A. covert operation delighted both President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers, and Allen Dulles concluded that the apparent success in Guatemala, despite a long series of blunders, made the venture a sound model for future operations. This book reveals how the legend of PBSUCCESS grew, and why attempts to imitate it failed so disastrously at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and in the Contra war in the 1980’s. The Afterword traces the effects of the coup of 1954 on the subsequent unstable politics and often violent history of Guatemala.

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.

Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict


Edwin P. Hoyt - 1986
    The book, which takes into account Japanese and Asian documents and scholarship in addition to American and European sources, chronicles events in the Pacific from 1853 to 1951. During those years, the leaders of Japan, believing in the superiority of their nation and culture, sought to dominate East Asia and the Pacific Basin. That period also saw Japan and America becoming entangled in each other's national affairs, starting when Commodore Perry's ships ended Japan's isolation policy, and continuing into the occupation by the U. S. Army following the war. Author Hoyt shows conflicting personalities and historical context that led to the rise of Japanese militarism and wars with China and Russia. Japan's War examines the decisions that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the escalating climate of violence that resulted in the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March.

Desperate Venture: The Story of Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of North Africa


Norman Gelb
    Its mission was to launch Operation Torch, the first massive Allied offensive operation of World War Two. This is the story of the most crucial campaigns of World War Two. It is an account of Operation Torch and of the start of the process that led to the destruction of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Torch — the Allied invasion and conquest of North Africa — was an intricate enterprise. More than five hundred American and British warships, supply vessels, and troop transports were taking part. It involved political intrigue, espionage, conspiracy, a massive disinformation campaign, a muddled coup d’état, the most momentous amphibious assault ever undertaken until then, and the transformation of half-trained, pummelled troops into victorious warriors. Norman Gelb masterfully weaves these various elements into an absorbing account of an historic moment. He describes how the Allies, their military prospects grim early in the war, agonised on how and where to expend their still slender resources on their first major offensive operation; how Winston Churchill 'hijacked’ the direction of Allied strategy from America’s generals who wanted to fight the war a different way; how Eisenhower, the Torch supreme commander, was often out of his depth but nevertheless forged an effective, harmonious Anglo-American military alliance; how the attitudes of Vichy France and Franco’s Spain distorted invasion calculations; how arch rivals Montgomery and Rommel influenced the course of events; and how, finally, for better or worse, Operation Torch determined the Allied strategy for most of the rest of the war. A senior American diplomat has called Operation Torch the most important decision made in the struggle against Hitler. Desperate Venture shows how and why in a meticulously researched and highly detailed narrative account of one of the most crucial operations in World War Two.  NORMAN GELB was born in New York and is the author of seven highly acclaimed books, including The Berlin Wall, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain, and Less Than Glory. He was, for many years, correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, first in Berlin and then in London. He is currently the London correspondent for New Leader magazine. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security


William E. Burrows - 1986
    They are spy satellites--the means by which the super-pwers keep tabs on each other in the deep black of space. Excellent . . . Highly recommended!--Booklist.

World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism


Norman Podhoretz - 2007
    Now, in this provocative and powerfully argued book, he takes on the most controversial issue of our time—the war against the global network of terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power


Victor Davis Hanson - 2001
    Offering riveting battle narratives and a balanced perspective that avoids simple triumphalism, Carnage and Culture demonstrates how armies cannot be separated from the cultures that produce them and explains why an army produced by a free culture will always have the advantage.

Gang War: The Inside Story of the Manchester Gangs


Peter Walsh - 2005
    

The Strange Death Of David Kelly


Norman Baker - 2007