Book picks similar to
The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama by Larry Holcombe
non-fiction
history
nonfiction
conspiracy
Inside UFOs: True Accounts of Contact with Extraterrestrials
Preston Dennett - 2017
A wide variety of ETs are presented, including various types of grays, Praying Mantis-type ETs, humanoids and Nordics. The witnesses are normal everyday people who suddenly find themselves in very unusual situations. The unique and unusual nature of the cases in this book will surprise even those well-versed in the UFO literature. • A Navy Corpsman is invited aboard a UFO by his shipmate, only to meet fifteen-foot tall friendly Praying Mantis-type ETs. • A young child experiences an encounter with Nordic ETs that marks a lifelong series of contacts. • A paperboy encounters a UFO and missing time, leaving him with an undiagnosed illness and a mystery that remained unsolved for years. • An office-worker is confronted by a nine-foot-tall praying mantis, only to discover that she’s also having contact with gray-type ETs too. • a teacher stops on the road when a huge metallic sphere drops from the sky, and out steps a handsome-looking spaceman. • A new mother is shocked to see an alien right outside her window, staring intently at her newborn son. • a desperately ill housewife is transported from her home into an unknown base and cured by an eight-foot-tall orange-haired humanoid. • A young farm-boy encounters UFOs on his family’s farm, beginning a very close and lifelong relationship with ETs. • A Navy Electronics Specialist has a complex UFO encounter aboard a Navy Ship, and is taught by the ETs about alternative energy sources. • A nursing assistant experiences a life-long series of missing time incidents culminating in a fully conscious encounter with gray-type ETs who attempt to answer all his questions Why are the aliens here? What is their agenda on our planet? Are they hostile or benevolent? This book answers these questions and more, directly from the witnesses’ themselves. This is not just another book about abductions by grays. This collection of true UFO stories shows how fascinating and bizarre extraterrestrial contact can be.
Columbine
Dave Cullen - 2009
As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob
Dick Lehr - 2000
Decades later, in the mid 1970's, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened next -- a dirty deal to being down the Italian mob in exchange for protection for Bulger -- would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments, and, ultimately, the biggest informant scandal in the history of the FBI.Compellingly told by two Boston Globe reporters who were on the case from the beginning, Black Mass is at once a riveting crime story, a cautionary tale about the abuse of power, and a penetrating look at Boston and its Irish population.
Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists
Chris Stirewalt - 2018
Whatever the ideological fad of the moment, American populism has always been home to a fascinating assortment of charismatic leaders, characters, kooks, cranks, and sometimes charlatans who have - with widely varying degrees of success - led the charge of ordinary folks who have gotten wise to the ways of the swamp. This attitude of skeptical resentment also makes populism a fertile field for the work of conspiracy theorists and other enthusiastic apostates from civic convention. After all, if the people in power are found to be rigging one part of the system, why not the rest? Every Man a King tells the stories of America's populist leaders, from an elderly Andrew Jackson brutally caning his would-be-assassin, to William Jennings Bryan's pre-speech routine that combined equally prodigious quantities of prayer and food, to Ross Perot's military-style campaign that made even volunteers wear badges with stars to show rank. It is a rollicking history of an American attitude that has shaped not only our current moment, but also the long struggle over who gets to define the truths we hold to be self evident.
The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer
Skip Hollandsworth - 2016
But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch.Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.
The Road to Character
David Brooks - 2015
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives.Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.“Joy,” David Brooks writes, “is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.”
Making Contact: Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial Existence
Alan Steinfeld - 2021
What is needed is a new story and Alan Steinfeld’s Making Contact is part of that story.” —Deepak Chopra, Author, Total MeditationHow can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent Pentagon’s disclosures as to who and why these beings are here. The volume contains original writings by the leading experts of the phenomena such as: Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles reporter, Whitley Strieber best-selling author of Communion, Professor John E. Mack, former head of the Harvard Medical school of psychiatry and an alien abduction investigator, Darryl Anka internationally known for his communication with the extraterrestrial Bashar, Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator, Grant Cameron expert on American presidents and UFOs, Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, globalists and founders of the worldwide organization, The Academy for Future Science, Caroline Cory, director of Superhuman and ET: Contact, Mary Rodwell, author of the New Human about star-seed children, Henrietta Weekes, actress and writer, expressing the poetic aspects of making contact. Alan Steinfeld, contributes and curates the collection with 30 years of experience with the subject. The Foreword by George Noory of Coast to Coast AM kicks off the volume with his veteran overview of the need to wake up to the “new realities of extraterrestrial existence.”At this critical juncture in the government’s official acknowledgement of the reality of UFOs/UAPs, scientists, politicians and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of these startling revelations or the outpouring of sightings and “contact” experiences currently being reported on a global scale. The book stands as the most comprehensive clarification to date on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. The variety of viewpoints expressed in the volume provide a solid foundation for the “preparation” of the greatest challenge to ever face humankind.Making Contact stands as the essential handbook for embracing the most exalted moment in history: Meeting the cosmic others.
From the Corner of the Oval
Beck Dorey-Stein - 2018
The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travelers--young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a consummate DC insider, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters, and discovering her voice in the process.
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
Thomas King - 2012
In the process, King refashions old stories about historical events and figures, takes a sideways look at film and pop culture, relates his own complex experiences with activism, and articulates a deep and revolutionary understanding of the cumulative effects of ever-shifting laws and treaties on Native peoples and lands.This is a book both timeless and timely, burnished with anger but tempered by wit, and ultimately a hard-won offering of hope—a sometimes inconvenient, but nonetheless indispensable account for all of us, Indian and non-Indian alike, seeking to understand how we might tell a new story for the future.
You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
Alexis Coe - 2020
Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. Coe focuses on his activities off the battlefield—like espionage and propaganda.After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War, Washington once again shocked the world by giving up power, only to learn his compatriots wouldn't allow it. The founders pressured him into the presidency—twice. He established enduring norms but left office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created.Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty finally confronted his greatest hypocrisy—what to do with the hundreds of men, women, and children he owned—before succumbing to a brutal death.Alexis Coe combines rigorous research and unsentimental storytelling, finally separating the man from the legend.
It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism
Thomas E. Mann - 2012
Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America’s two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime. In It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call “asymmetric polarization,” with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost. With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no “silver bullet” reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.
Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men: The Surviving Elites of the Cosmic War and Their Hidden Agenda
Joseph P. Farrell - 2011
Consider the possibility that the evolutionary scientific explanation for mankind has ignored critical facts that are buried deep within the fossils and mankind's DNA. Consider the possibility that the religious stories that have often been the core basis for mankind's understanding of where it belongs in the history of creation may actually reveal a planet occupied with tyrannical giants and an elite highly intelligent race bent on genetic mutation.As horrifying as such possibilities are, Genes, Giants, Monsters, and Men sets forth a plausible theory revealing a hidden history of mankind and a possible reason that it has remained veiled for hundreds of thousands of years. With his well-documented style and breathtaking conclusions, Dr. Joseph P. Farrell pulls back the veil and takes the reader on an odyssey behind the mysterious history and myths of the human race.Joseph P. Farrell is a recognized scholar whose credentials include a PhD in philosophy from the University of Oxford. His literary contribution is a veritable resumé unto itself covering such fields as Nazi Germany, sacred literature, physics, finances, the Giza pyramids, and music theory. A renowned researcher with an eye to assimilate a tremendous amount of background material, Farrell is able to condense the best scholastic research in publication and draw insightful new conclusions on complex and controversial subjects.
The Astronaut Wives Club
Lily Koppel - 2013
Overnight, these women were transformed from military spouses into American royalty. They had tea with Jackie Kennedy, appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and quickly grew into fashion icons.Annie Glenn, with her picture-perfect marriage, was the envy of the other wives; JFK made it clear that platinum-blonde Rene Carpenter was his favorite; and licensed pilot Trudy Cooper arrived with a secret that needed to stay hidden from NASA. Together with the other wives they formed the Astronaut Wives Club, providing one another with support and friendship, coffee and cocktails.As their celebrity rose-and as divorce and tragedy began to touch their lives-the wives continued to rally together, forming bonds that would withstand the test of time, and they have stayed friends for over half a century. THE ASTRONAUT WIVES CLUB tells the story of the women who stood beside some of the biggest heroes in American history.
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
Candice Millard - 2011
Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his condition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet. Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.
LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination
Phillip F. Nelson - 2010
Johnson's flawed personality and character traits were formed when he was a child, and - through his primary enablers, his mother and his wife - grew unchecked for the rest of his life as he suffered severe bouts of manic-depressive illness. The people-manipulation skills he learned at his father's side and had perfected by the time he graduated from college became the currency he used to barter, steal and finesse his way through the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. These skills, combined with his overpowering manic personality, amoral instincts and thirst for power, allowed him to prosper both financially and politically during his years in Congress. Neither his family nor his employees, aides, associates and cabinet officials would ever confront him on any issue for which he had made up his mind, including the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, his "darker side" included a lifetime struggle with "bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder" which he successfully hid from the public, though not all of his aides. It is the premise of this book that Lyndon Johnson suffered recurrent and progressively stronger bouts of mental collapses during the period of his vice presidency as he planned his ascension to the presidency, purposely undermining Kennedy's domestic and foreign policy initiatives for the purpose of cleverly saving them for his own legacy. His active involvement with JFK's assassination will be conclusively shown, including photographic evidence that he knew in advance when and where it would happen. The stunning conclusion of this book is that Lyndon Johnson began planning his takeover - the fulfillment of his life-time dreams - even before being named as the vice presidential nominee in 1960.