Showing titles in 21st Century

Am 14. Mai 1970 verhelfen ein Mann und vier Frauen - darunter Gudrun Ensslin und Ulrike Meinhof - in West-Berlin mit Waffengewalt dem Strafgefangenen Andreas Baader zur Flucht. Es war die erste Aktion der Roten Armee Fraktion, die dem Staat den Krieg erklärt hatte und bis zu hrem letzten Anschlag im Jahr 1993 die Republik immer wieder in Angst und Schrecken versetzte.

We Sell Drugs is a study grounded in the transnational geography and political economy of the coca-leaf and coca-derived commodities market stretching from Peru and Bolivia into the United States. More than a narrow biography of one famous plant and its equally famous derivative products - Coca-Cola and cocaine - this audiobook situates these commodities within the larger landscape of drug production and consumption. Examining efforts to control the circuits through which coca traveled, Suzanna Reiss provides a geographic and legal basis for considering the historical construction of designations of legality and illegality.

The book also argues that the legal status of any given drug is largely premised on who grew, manufactured, distributed, and consumed it and not on the qualities of the drug itself. Drug control is a powerful tool for ordering international trade, national economies, and society's habits and daily lives. In a historical landscape animated by struggles over political economy, national autonomy, hegemony, and racial equality, We Sell Drugs insists on the socio-historical underpinnings of designations of legality to explore how drug control became a major weapon in asserting control of domestic and international affairs.

The name "World Trade Center", when spoken by an American, tends to conjure up the best and worst about the nation. The idea for such a financial center was conceived of in the heady days of post-World War II prosperity, when the nation's financial prospects had never looked better and Americans were trading all over the world with both former allies and enemies.

In 2003, for the first time since the Second World War, the UK took part in an opposed invasion and full-scale occupation of a sovereign state - Iraq. Cabinet decided on 17th March to join the US-led invasion of Iraq. That decision was ratified by Parliament the next day and implemented the night after that. In June 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered an Inquiry to be conducted to identify lessons that could be learned from the Iraq conflict. This audiobook is an unabridged reading of that report's executive summary.

The athletes competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics included some of the most honored in Olympic history: decathlete Rafer Johnson, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, and Louisville boxer Cassius Clay, who at 18 seized the world stage for the first time, four years before he became Muhammad Ali.

Robin Wright first landed in the Middle East on October 6, 1973, the day the fourth Middle East war erupted. She has covered every country and most major crises in the region since then, through to the rise of al Qaeda and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For all the drama of the past, however, the region's most decisive traumas are unfolding today as the Middle East struggles to deal with trends that have already reshaped the rest of the world.

The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, The New Yorker writer Steve Coll discusses his most recent book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century. Coll talks to David Remnick, the editor in chief of The New Yorker.

In December 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation triggered protests that spread from his hometown in Sidi Bouzid to cities across the country. The next month, on January 14, the country's autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country. This would be the start of what became known as the "Arab Spring", which ultimately saw anti-government protests responded to with violence, reform, or both in countries across the Middle East.

The Lord's Resistance Army appeared on the conflict landscape of Central Africa at the dawn of perhaps one of the bleakest period of post-independence African history: the 1980s and 1990s. This was the era of Afro-pessimism, during which the proliferation of war and crisis in Africa appeared simply overwhelming.

Antisemitism never went away, but since the turn of the century it has multiplied beyond what anyone would have predicted. In The Devil That Never Dies, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen reveals the unprecedented, global form of this age-old hatred; its strategic use by states; its powerful appeal to individuals and groups; and how technology has fueled the flames that had been smoldering prior to the millennium.

Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth—the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.

Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democratic thought.

The Sweet Potato Queens are bona fide experts at planning a marvelous marriage (and ending one, look below if you're looking for advice on dumping a deadweight hubby!), so who better to provide this handy wedding planner? And even if you're not planning your own nuptials, surely you have dreamt about your perfect day, regardless of whether you've met Mr. Right yet!

In A Consequential President, Michael D'Antonio tallies Obama's long record of achievement, both his major successes and less noticed ones that nevertheless contribute to his legacy. Obama's greatest achievement came as he restored dignity and ethics to the office of the president, proof that he delivered the hope and change he promised.

John “Iwan” Demjanjuk was at the center of one of history’s most complex war crimes trials. But why did it take almost sixty years for the United States to bring him to justice as a Nazi collaborator? The answer lies in the annals of the Cold War, when fear and paranoia drove American politicians and the U.S. military to recruit “useful” Nazi war criminals to work for the United States in Europe as spies and saboteurs, and to slip them into America through loopholes in U.S. immigration policy.

In A Long Time Coming, a compelling narrative by Evan Thomas, Newsweek shares the inside stories from one of the most exciting elections in recent history, illuminating the personalities and events that influenced the outcome, and taking stock of the key players and key issues for the new administration.

Brought to Justice is a history of Osama bin Laden's infamous campaign against America and the decade-long U.S. attempt to find and bring him to justice. The last chapter includes a detailed depiction of the mission that eliminated bin Laden.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China is poised to become a major global power. And though much has been written of China's rise, a crucial aspect of this transformation has gone largely unnoticed: the way that China is using soft power to appeal to its neighbors and to distant countries alike.

Growing up during The Cold War: A Personal Perspective from the Forties to Today relates in narrative form the tumultuous, exciting and sometimes frightening era referred to as the Cold War Era. Civil Rights, Women's Lib, Anti-War Drafts and changes in the educational system all characterized the times.

Obama's presidency has suffered the fiercest opposition any administration has had and yet Mr. Obama has managed to lead the country to financial recovery, end the senseless war in Iraq, implement universal healthcare, put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions and re-open diplomatic relations with Cuba all the while remaking US standing in the world. But Republicans believe he is the worst president the country has had.