From Mark Bowden, the preeminent chronicler of our military and special forces, comes , a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded.After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda—a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track—demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a ...
Potok, well known for his novels of Jewish family life such as The Chosen, turns to nonfiction in The Gates of November, a wrenching family chronicle with a riveting historical undercurrent. The story of the family patriarch, Solomon Slepak, spans most of the book: ignoring his mother's wish that he become a rabbi, Slepak emigrated at 13 to America, became a Marxist in New York, returned to fight in the Russian Revolution, and rose to prominence within the Communist Party. But while Solomon remained a convinced Bolshevik, his son Volodya rejected socialism when anti-Semitism emerged during Stalin's era. Disowned by ...
Marketing consultant Blakemore finds that in moments of struggle and stress she revisits her favorite childhood women authors and their plucky heroines for respite, escape, and perspective. Jane Austen, who broke off an engagement and threw away her last chance at a respectable marriage, poked fun at polite society and its expectations of women in her novels, and she created a self-assured, self-respecting protagonist in Pride and Prejudice's Lizzy Bennet--who also doesn't need a man to complete her even if Lizzy does get a rich, handsome husband in the end. As Blakemore pushes against the boundaries of her own ...
The sinking of the has captured the imagination of the public like no other tragedy of the modern age. Lawrence Beesley’s eyewitness account of the disastrous voyage stands as one of the most carefully written and authoritative books on the subject, despite the fact that it was published only months after the event. Beesley was uniquely qualified to write this book, having himself been a second class passenger aboard the SS . He gives a detailed description of his personal experiences aboard the doomed luxury liner, setting the record straight on many topics, as well as presenting the event from a variety of other perspectives. Rich in both narrative detail and compassion, should be the first port of call for anyone interested in the famous ship.
The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies uncovers 100 cover-ups “they” really don't want you to know about. This collection delves into some of the biggest lies in history.Jon E. Lewis is a historian and writer, whose books on history and military history are sold worldwide. He is also the editor of many anthologies, including the best-selling .
Reason to be afraid—over 50 unsolved cases of serial murder. Fact: murderers and serial killers do not always get caught. Behind every headline of a newsworthy conviction lie other cases of vicious murderers who got away, and who remain somewhere among us. Here in one giant volume are more than 50 of the most serious serial killings and other murder cases that continue to remain unsolved.The cases covered in this alarming book include: Argentina’s crazed highway killer, responsible for mutilating and killing at least five people since 1997 and dumping their bodies along remote highways The Green River ...
is the chilling account of how a low-level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world.Handpicked as a successor by the “family” surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the oligarchy to shape according to its own designs. Suddenly the boy who had stood in the shadows, dreaming of ruling the world, was a public figure, and his popularity soared. Russia and ...
In a frank expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman’s mission to the world’s poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish is to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa’s good works answer any higher purpose than the need of the world’s privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa’s fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds.
was a best seller in the early 1960s, selling more than 1.5 million copies. It found its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across America and overseas in Spanish and excerpted in other languages.In this hard-hitting book an urgent need is finally fulfilled. In one exciting, readable volume, the incredible story of Communism is graphically told. We believe this to be the most vivid and comprehensive book on the subject ever published. It contains a distillation of more than a hundred books and treatises on Communism, many written by ...
ABSTRACTThe Russian Federation nuclear powered submarine sank in August 2000 with the loss of all 118 lives on board. In May 2001 the Russian Federation entered into a contract with the Dutch consortium Mammoet-Smit for the recovery of the on the condition that it had to be completed within that year. The consortium prepared for this World-first salvage of a nuclear powered and conventionally armed submarine that was very substantially damaged lying at 110m in the icy waters of the Barents Sea. Working at sometimes breathtaking pace, Mammoet-Smit prepared, lifted and transported the wreckage of the delivering her to a floating dock at Rosljakovo, about 200km south of the foundering site, in just over six months from the contract date. This paper tracks how the nuclear and other hazards of the , its nuclear reactors and weaponry were assessed and monitored throughout the recovery and salvage program, and it provides an insight into the reasons why the sank.
The heroic, real-life personal account of Chris Ryan's most famous mission, , is now reworked for a new generation.During the Gulf War in 1991, Chris Ryan became separated from the other members of the SAS patrol, Bravo Two Zero. Alone, he beat off an Iraqi attack and set out for Syria. Over the next seven days he walked almost 200 miles, his life constantly in danger.Of the eight SAS members involved in this famous mission, only one escaped capture. This is his story…
In their latest adventure, precocious 14-year-old reporters Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson get a chance to help major Washington newspapers cover the Army-Navy football game and stumble across an illegal gambling racket, perpetrated by the game’s officiating squad. Along the way, the cub reporters meet a number of actual famous people (Bob Woodward and Barack Obama, among others). Some of the dropped names of retired players and other old guys will have little resonance with young readers, and fans of the series will recognize that the mystery here isn’t as compelling as those in previous installments. Still, sports fans, especially college football followers, will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at the famous game.
In this searching and courageous work, Ayn Rand cuts through the haze of sentimentality and vague thinking that surrounds the subject of art. For the first time a precise definition is given to art, and a careful analysis made of its nature. With the uncompromising honesty Ayn Rand’s millions of readers have come to expect, the author presents a devastating case against both naturalistic and abstract art—and explains the force that drives her to write, and the goals she strives to attain. takes its place as a keystone book in the towering intellectual edifice raised by one of the most remarkable writers and thinkers of our age.
They say that history is written by the victors. But what if history—or what we come to know as history—has all along been written by the wrong people? What if everything we’ve been told is only part of the story? What if it’s the wrong part? In this groundbreaking new work, Mark Booth embarks on an enthralling intellectual tour of our world’s secret histories. Starting from a dangerous premise—that everything we’ve been taught about our world’s past is corrupted, and that the stories put forward by the various cults and ...
A stunning narrative account of the mysterious Jordanian who penetrated both the inner circle of al-Qaeda and the highest reaches of the CIA, with a devastating impact on the war on terror.In December 2009, a group of the CIA’s top terrorist hunters gathered at a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, to greet a rising superspy: Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian double-agent who infiltrated the upper ranks of al-Qaeda. For months, he had sent shocking revelations from inside the terrorist network and now promised to help the CIA assassinate Osama bin Laden’s top deputy. Instead, as he ...
The creator of TomDispatch dissects America’s endless urge to go to war.In 2008, when the US National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the administration of newly elected President Barack Obama, it predicted that the planet’s “sole superpower” would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing fifteen years hence. In his new book , Tom Engelhardt makes clear that Americans should don their crash helmets and buckle their seat belts, because the United States is on the path to a major decline at a startling speed. Engelhardt offers a savage anatomy of how successive ...
Pistol Marksmanship Training Guide published by the Army Marksmanship Unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. It is an excellent source of information for the competitive pistol shooter.Because it is a U.S. government publication, it is public domain
Carl Sagan's prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spiritualityThe late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as "informed worship." Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century.
Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in , as in his earlier, influential , is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists—the optimistic ones at least—are inevitably prey to. What ...
Congressmen are big winners in the stock market. They cultivate companies in their loyalty structure from whom they get insider information often at the committee level. There are many ways they get rich while serving constituents, especially if you know what big deal Warren Buffett will do and when. Many names are given in this book of successful inside information operators within Congress.While Throw Them All Out is our wake up call, it is also a potential training guide for future politicians. After all, Congress is unlikely to change the substance of rules that allow them to make a killing year on year. We should not aspire to do what they do. This would land the rest of us in prison and earn their contempt for us.
