Politics War

One of the best books ever written about Lincoln by Dale Carnegie. Chronicles the inner life and struggles of Abraham Lincoln, how he led a life of poverty, how he went from pauper to become president, how he emerged from obscurity and became the Republican nominee at the 1860 Chicago convention, how he loved to tell humorous stories, and that he was an avid reader of Shakespeare.

An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

Guerrilla Warfare by the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, written in 1960, has become a how-to manual for thousands of guerrilla fighters in various countries around the world. Guevara intended it to be a guidebook on guerrilla warfare, as inspiration for the revolutionary movement. Fascinating to admirers and adversaries alike, he captured the minds of millions with his leadership and his belief in guerrilla warfare as the only effective agent to achieve political change.

Who will defend Europe? The answer should be obvious: Europe should be able to defend itself. Yet, for decades, most of the continent enjoyed a defense holiday, outsourcing protection to the United States while banking an increasingly illusory 'peace dividend'. Now, after three decades of reducing armed forces and drawing down defense industries, Europe finds itself close to unprotected—while Russia is intent on continuing its war of expansion, and the United States is distracted and divided.

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

Long before the waterboarding controversy exploded in the media, one CIA agent had already gone public. In a groundbreaking 2007 interview with ABC News, John Kiriakou called waterboarding torture - but admitted that it probably worked. This book, at once a confessional, an adventure story, and a chronicle of Kiriakou's life in the CIA, stands as an important, eloquent piece of testimony from a committed American patriot.

In six weeks in 1940, France was overrun by German troops and surrendered. One junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered into history. For the rest of the war, de Gaulle frequently bit the hand that fed him. He insisted on being treated as the true embodiment of France, and quarrelled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. But he managed to have France recognised as one of the victorious Allies.

At the height of the Cold War, two secretaries are pulled out of the typing pool at the CIA and given the assignment of a lifetime. Their mission: to smuggle Doctor Zhivago out of the USSR, where no one dare publish it, and help Pasternak's magnum opus make its way into print around the world. Glamorous and sophisticated Sally Forrester is a seasoned spy who has honed her gift for deceit all over the world - using her magnetism and charm to pry secrets out of powerful men. Irina is a complete novice, and is under Sally's tutelage....

John Wells barely survived his homecoming when it was thought he’d become too close to the terrorists. Though his wounds have healed, his mind is far from clear. He needs to get back in the fight. And there is a fight waiting for him. A power play in China is causing chaos around the globe. And even as Wells does what he does best, a mole within the CIA is preparing to light the final fuse that will propel an unsuspecting world toward open war and annihilation. And this time, there may be nothing John Wells can do to stop it....

John Kelly, former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran, has a mission - but the Pentagon wants him for a mission of their own. As Clancy takes us through the twists and turns of Without Remorse, he blends the exceptional realism and authenticity that are his trademarks with intricate plotting, knife-edge suspense, and a remarkable cast of characters.

In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted list. Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white State Trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Peter Maass went to the Balkans as a reporter at the height of the nightmarish war there, but this audiobook is not traditional war reportage. Maass examines how an ordinary Serb could wake up one morning and shoot his neighbor, once a friend - then rape that neighbor's wife. He conveys the desperation that makes a Muslim beg the United States to bomb his own city in order to end the misery.

In a thrilling dramatic narrative, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents.

John Puller's older brother, Robert, was convicted of treason and national security crimes. His inexplicable escape from prison makes him the most wanted criminal in the country. Some in the government believe that John Puller represents their best chance at capturing Robert alive, and so Puller takes on the burden of bringing his brother in to face justice. But Puller quickly discovers that there are others pursuing his brother, who only see Robert as a traitor and are unconcerned if he survives.

In the summer of 1941, German troops surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad—now St. Petersburg—and began the longest blockade in recorded history, one that would ultimately claim the lives of nearly three-quarters of a million people. At the center of the besieged city stood a converted palace that housed the world’s largest collection of seeds—more than 250,000 samples hand-collected over two decades from all over the globe by world-famous explorer, geneticist, and dissident Nikolai Vavilov, who had recently been disappeared by the Soviet government.

Dewey Andreas, still reeling from recent revelations about his own past, is ready to retire from the CIA. But he's the only available agent with the skills to carry out the CIA's plan to stop North Korea, which has made a secret nuclear deal with Iran. The plan is to inject a singular designer poison into the head of the North Korean military and in exchange for the nuclear plans provide him with the one existing dose of the antidote. But it goes awry when Dewey manages to inject a small amount of the poison into himself.

Dewey Andreas, former Delta and current intelligence agent, is sidelined. Still drowning in grief after the tragic murder of his fiancee, Dewey has seemingly lost his focus, his edge, and the confidence of his superiors. A high-level Russian hacker, known only as Cloud, is believed to be behind a series of major terror operations, and the mission is to capture and render Cloud harmless. At the same time, a backup team is sent after the only known associate of Cloud, a ballerina believed to be his girlfriend.

Antonio Mendez and his future wife, Jonna, were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, tapped their phones, and even planted listening devices within the US embassy. In short, intelligence work was effectively impossible. The Soviet threat loomed larger than ever. The Moscow Rules tells the story of the intelligence breakthroughs that turned the odds in America's favor.

For twenty years, James Carville and Mary Matalin have held the mantle of the nation's most politically opposed, ideologically mismatched, and intensely opinionated couple. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, Carville and Matalin take a look at how they - and America - have changed in the last two decades. If nothing else, this new collaboration proves that after twenty years of marriage they can still manage to agree on a few things.