- Table View
- List View
Science, Policy, And The Value-free Ideal
by Heather DouglasThe role of science in policymaking has gained unprecedented stature in the United States, raising questions about the place of science and scientific expertise in the democratic process. Some scientists have been given considerable epistemic authority in shaping policy on issues of great moral and cultural significance, and the politicizing of these issues has become highly contentious. Since World War II, most philosophers of science have purported the concept that science should be “value-free.” In Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal, Heather E. Douglas argues that such an ideal is neither adequate nor desirable for science. She contends that the moral responsibilities of scientists require the consideration of values even at the heart of science. She lobbies for a new ideal in which values serve an essential function throughout scientific inquiry, but where the role values play is constrained at key points, thus protecting the integrity and objectivity of science. In this vein, Douglas outlines a system for the application of values to guide scientists through points of uncertainty fraught with moral valence. Following a philosophical analysis of the historical background of science advising and the value-free ideal, Douglas defines how values should-and should not-function in science. She discusses the distinctive direct and indirect roles for values in reasoning, and outlines seven senses of objectivity, showing how each can be employed to determine the reliability of scientific claims. Douglas then uses these philosophical insights to clarify the distinction between junk science and sound science to be used in policymaking. In conclusion, she calls for greater openness on the values utilized in policymaking, and more public participation in the policymaking process, by suggesting various models for effective use of both the public and experts in key risk assessments.
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick PerlsteinTold with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency. Perlstein's epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon. Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, Richard J. Daley, and George Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay, and Jane Fonda. There are tantalizing glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry, and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and William Clinton -- and a not so ambitious young man named George W. Bush. Cataclysms tell the story of Nixonland: - Angry blacks burning down their neighborhoods in cities across the land as white suburbanites defend home and hearth with shotguns - The student insurgency over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention - The fissuring of the Democratic Party into warring factions manipulated by the "dirty tricks" of Nixon and his Committee to Re-Elect the President - Richard Nixon pledging a new dawn of national unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval Office Then, in November 1972, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness and resentment born of America's turmoil, was reelected in a landslide even bigger than Johnson's 1964 victory, not only setting the stage for his dramatic 1974 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide that characterizes America today. Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein's magisterial account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
by Sheila WellerA groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
by Doris Kearns GoodwinOne of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Time, USA TODAY, Christian Science Monitor, and more. "A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue" (Associated Press).The gap between rich and poor has never been wider...legislative stalemate paralyzes the country...corporations resist federal regulations...spectacular mergers produce giant companies...the influence of money in politics deepens...bombs explode in crowded streets...small wars proliferate far from our shores...a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life. These unnervingly familiar headlines serve as the backdrop for Doris Kearns Goodwin's highly anticipated The Bully Pulpit--a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft--a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country's history. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine--Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White--teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S. S. McClure. Goodwin's narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt's death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men. The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin's brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history--an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.
Joyful - A Journey From Scepticism To Faith: A Journey From Scepticism To Faith
by Paul J KellyI have written a raw, frank account of my life, holding nothing back. You will be inspired by my authenticity. This is life with all the highs, lows; the good, the bad and the very ugly. Survival of the fittest they say, character-building stuff they say. Well, see how I survived. My experience in leadership and management, my never-give-up approach and always a desire to have a go, although often failure bit me in the backside. From being in the Devil's camp for most of my life to finding faith. Married at a very young age with a baby on the way, the pressure this brings to bare on both partners. The learnings from being married for over 46 years, the effect of a marriage breakup, then reconciliation. One is always a parent and one always will be there when your kids hit rock bottom, the reader will see why you are always a parent, no matter how old your kids are. What looking in the mirror can do for self-reflection and growth, my learnings from my days as a rugby referee, that helped me develop as a leader. Mostly what and how my faith has dramatically impacted me.
Get Thee to a Bakery: Essays
by Rick BaileyGet Thee to a Bakery is a collection of short, tart essays that explore both humorous and harrowing aspects of growing older and making sense of social, technological, and environmental change. Topics range from earworms and industrial eggs to peaches and personal data, from bug die-offs to algae blooms and global warming, and from beards and yoga to the irrepressible American smile. Many of these essays make discursive moves into science and literature, framing issues and conflicts that resonate in contemporary American life. With a conversational style, distinctive voice, and great comic timing, Bailey entertains and surprises.
Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited: New Echoes of My Father's German Village
by Mimi SchwartzMimi Schwartz&’s father was born Jewish in a tiny German village thirty years before the advent of Hitler when, as he&’d tell her, &“We all got along.&” In her original memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Schwartz explored how human decency fared among Christian and Jewish neighbors before, during, and after Nazi times. Ten years after its publication, a letter arrived from a man named Max Sayer in South Australia. Sayer, it turns out, grew up Catholic in the village during the Third Reich and in 1937 moved into an abandoned Jewish home five houses away from where the family of Schwartz&’s father had lived for generations before fleeing to America a few months earlier. The two families had never met. Sayer wrote an unpublished memoir about his childhood memories and in Schwartz&’s new edition, Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited, the two memoirs talk to each other. Weaving excerpts from Sayer&’s memoir and from a yearlong correspondence with him into her book, Schwartz revisits village history from a new perspective, deepening our understanding of decency and demonization. Given the rise of xenophobia, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism in the world today, this exploration seems more urgent than ever.
The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America's Empire
by Lawrence J. HaasThe Kennedys in the World tells a new, rich, fascinating, and consequential story about Jack, Bobby, and Ted Kennedy. From an early age the brothers developed a deep understanding of the different peoples, cultures, and ideologies around the world; a keen appreciation for the challenges that such differences created for the United States; and a strong desire to reshape America&’s response to them. From their childhoods in the first half of the twentieth century, the brothers were prodded by their ruthless, demanding, win-at-all-costs father, Joe Kennedy, and their cold and distant mother, Rose, to learn and care about the world—and told they could shape America&’s role in it. For more than six decades after World War II, the brothers shaped broad issues of war and peace as well as the U.S. response to almost every major global challenge of their times: the Soviet Union and China, the Cold War and Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Korea and Vietnam, South Africa and Northern Ireland, and Iraq (twice). In their time, America was what it remains today—the world&’s greatest power, with roles and responsibilities that stretch across the planet. Consequently, as the brothers remade America&’s empire, they invariably changed the world.
The Best Team Over There: The Untold Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War
by Jim LeekeGrover Cleveland Alexander was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, with 373 career victories during twenty seasons in the Major Leagues. Elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938, the right-hander remains a compelling—and tragic—figure. &“Pete&” Alexander&’s military service during World War I was the demarcation line between his great seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and his years of struggle and turmoil with the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals after the Great War. Indeed, Alexander&’s service during World War I has all but been forgotten, even though it dramatically changed his life—and his game. Alexander served in the 342nd Field Artillery Regiment, which included big leaguers and star athletes among its officers and men. Naturally, the regiment fielded an outstanding baseball team, but it also faced hard service during the final weeks of the war. After the armistice in November 1918, the unit undertook occupation duty in Germany.The Best Team Over There examines this crucial period closely: where Alexander was stationed, how he was trained, how he withstood the effects of combat and shelling, how he interacted with his fellow athletes and soldiers, and how the war changed his baseball career, revealing for the first time the little-known details of this critical stage in the legendary pitcher&’s life and career. We can&’t truly understand Alexander and his enduring appeal to baseball fans without also understanding his life as a gunner and soldier.
Diario Rojo: Como se vivía en un país comunista
by Flávio MesquitaEl libro se originó a partir de un curso tomado en Kiev en la Unión Soviética en 1972, en plena vigencia del régimen comunista. Luego vino una gran oportunidad para conocer cómo vivía realmente la gente en ese país y cómo el gobierno trataba a su gente. A través de registros de eventos e ilustraciones fotográficas, se puede comprender cómo sucedió todo en ese momento y luego concluir sobre la ineficacia del tan propagado régimen comunista.
Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke
by Andrew Maraniss*"[An] excellent exercise in narrative nonfiction." --Booklist (starred review)From New York Times bestselling author Andrew Maraniss comes the remarkable true story of Glenn Burke, a "hidden figure" in the history of sports: the inventor of the high five and the first openly gay MLB player. Perfect for fans of Steve Sheinkin and Daniel James Brown. On October 2nd, 1977, Glenn Burke, outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, made history without even swinging a bat. When his teammate Dusty Baker hit a historic home run, Glenn enthusiastically congratulated him with the first ever high five. But Glenn also made history in another way--he was the first openly gay MLB player. While he did not come out publicly until after his playing days were over, Glenn's sexuality was known to his teammates, family, and friends. His MLB career would be cut short after only three years, but his legacy and impact on the athletic and LGBTQIA+ community would resonate for years to come. New York Times bestselling author Andrew Maraniss tells the story of Glenn Burke: from his childhood growing up in Oakland, his journey to the MLB and the World Series, the joy in discovering who he really was, to more difficult times: facing injury, addiction, and the AIDS epidemic.Packed with black-and-white photographs and thoroughly researched, never-before-seen details about Glenn's life, Singled Out is the fascinating story of a trailblazer in sports--and the history and culture that shaped the world around him.Praise for Singled Out:"A compelling narrative . . . This is a meticulously researched history of the ways queer culture in the &’70s intersected with baseball, Blackness, and larger culture wars, with one man at their center." --Kirkus Reviews
More Than You Can Handle: A Rare Disease, A Family in Crisis, and the Cutting-Edge Medicine That Cured the Incurable
by Miguel SanchoThe personally harrowing and medically enthralling story of a family's struggle to save a child from a deadly immune deficiency.A journey through the deepest valleys and highest peaks of parenting. When a two-month-old baby falls ill, his apparently ordinary symptoms turn out to signal a rare and lethal immune deficiency. For parents Miguel Sancho and Felicia Morton, the discovery that their son, Sebastian, has chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) upends their lives and leaves the family with few options, all of them terrifying. With Sebastian at constant risk of deadly infection, they spend the next six years in some degree of self-quarantine, with all its attendant anxieties and stressors, as they struggle to keep their son alive, their marriage intact, and themselves sane.The quest for a cure leads them into the alternate universe of the rare-disease community, and to the cutting edge of modern medicine, as their personal crises send them fumbling through various modalities of self-help, including faith, therapy, and meditation. With brutal honesty, Sancho describes how his struggles derail his career, put his marriage on life support, get his family evicted from a Ronald McDonald House, and ruin a Make-A-Wish trip.Sancho's riveting tale of the diagnosis and treatment of his son's illness takes us deep inside the workings of the immune system, and into the radically innovative treatment used to repair it. Ultimately Sebastian is saved with a stem cell transplant using discarded umbilical cord blood, a groundbreaking technique pioneered and practiced by the medical wizards at Duke University Hospital.Deeply researched and darkly humorous, this is a wrenching tale with a triumphant ending.
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa
by Brian J. PetersonThomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers the first complete biography in English of the dynamic revolutionary leader from Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. Coming to power in 1983, Sankara set his sights on combating social injustice, poverty, and corruption in his country, fighting for women's rights, direct forms of democracy, economic sovereignty, and environmental justice. Drawing on government archival sources and over a hundred interviews with Sankara's family members, friends, and closest revolutionary colleagues, Brian J. Peterson details Sankara's political career and rise to power, as well as his assassination at age 37 in 1987, in a plot led by his close friend Blaise Compaoré. Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers a unique, critical appraisal of Sankara and explores why he generated such enthusiasm and hope in Burkina Faso and beyond, why he was such a polarizing figure, how his rivals seized power from him, and why T-shirts sporting his image still appear on the streets today.
Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate
by Senator Carl LevinRepresenting Michigan for thirty-six years in the U.S. Senate, Carl Levin, the longest-serving senator in Michigan history, was known for his dogged pursuit of the truth, his commitment to holding government accountable, and his basic decency. Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate is his story – from his early days in Detroit as the son of a respected lawyer to the capstone of his career as chair of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Levin’s career placed him at the center of some of our nation’s most critical points in modern times: from the aftermath of the 1967 Detroit riots, to the Clinton impeachment, through 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 2008 financial crisis. He met with numerous world leaders, including Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and China’s Jiang Zemin. Getting to the Heart of the Matter recounts Levin’s experiences, thoughts, and actions during these historic moments. Consisting of seventeen chapters, the book takes the reader through Levin’s early life in Detroit of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s where he met his wife, started a family, practiced law and served as the first General Counsel for the newly created Michigan Civil Rights Commission and the chief appellate defender for Detroit’s Legal Aid Office. Elected to the Detroit City Council in 1969, where Levin served for eight years including four as Council president, the book describes how his fight against the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s devastating housing practices in the neighborhoods of Detroit led him to run for the U.S. Senate with a pledge to make government work more effectively. Winning election six times, Levin had an illustrious career in the Senate where he challenged leaders in government and the private sector for the greater good of the nation. Levin describes how, as a Democrat, throughout his time in the Senate, he worked with Republican senators who often held different policy positions in order to find common ground to achieve national goals, and how he and his Senate staff searched for creative solutions to trade issues, support for the auto industry and manufacturing sector, U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and efforts to protect the Great Lakes and the environment, among many other issues. Levin’s hope in writing this memoir is that by sharing his deeply held beliefs about the responsibility of elected officials, the book will serve as a resource for people beginning a career in, or contemplating running for, public office. Readers with an interest in politics, history, facts, and perseverance will find kinship in this book.
The Gentle Barbarian
by Bohumil HrabalAn unforgettable portrait of a major pioneering artist, by “Czechoslovakia’s greatest writer” (Milan Kundera) The Gentle Barbarian is Bohumil Hrabal’s homage to Vladimír Boudník, one of the greatest Czech visual artists of the 1950s and 1960s, whose life came to a tragic end shortly after the Soviet invasion of 1968. Boudnik and Hrabal had a close and often contentious friendship. For a brief period, in the early 1950s, they both worked in the steel works in Kladno and lived in the same building in Prague. Written in the early seventies, Hrabal’s anecdotal portrait of Boudnik includes another controversial member of that early group of the Czech avant-garde: the poet Egon Bondy. While Hrabal and Bondy were evolving their aesthetic of “total realism,” Boudnik developed his own artistic approach that he called “Explosionalism,” in which the boundaries between life and art become blurred, and everyday events take on the appearance and the substance of art. Hrabal’s portrait of Boudnik captures the strange atmosphere of a time in which the traditional values and structures of everyday life in Czechoslovakia were being radically dismantled by the Communists. But as The Gentle Barbarian demonstrates, creative spirits are able to reject, ignore, or burrow beneath the superficial “revolutionary” atmosphere of the time, and find humor, inspiration, and a kind of salvation amidst its general intellectual and creative poverty.
Muhammad: Prophet Of Islam
by Maxime RodinsonA classic secular history of the prophet Muhammad that vividly recreates the fascinating time in which Islam was born.Maxime Rodinson, both a maverick Marxist and a distinguished professor at the Sorbonne, first published his biography of Muhammad in 1960. The book, a classic in its field, has been widely read ever since. Rodinson, though deeply versed in scholarly studies of the Prophet, does not seek to add to it here but to introduce Muhammad, first of all, as &“a man of flesh and blood&” who led a life of extraordinary drama and shaped history as few others have. Equally, he seeks to lay out an understanding of Muhammad&’s legacy and Islam as what he called an ideological movement, similar to the universalist religions of Christianity and Buddhism as well as the secular movement of Marxism, but possessing a singular commitment to &“the deeply ingrained idea that Islam offers not only a path to salvation but (for many, above all) the ideal of a just society to be realized on earth.&” Rodinson&’s book begins by introducing the specific land and the larger world into which Muhammad was born and the development of his prophetic calling. It then follows the steps of his career and the way his leadership gave birth to a religion and a state. A final chapter considers the world as Islam has transformed it.
Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls
by Joe Parkinson Drew HinshawWhat happens after you click Tweet? The heart-stopping definitive account of the mission to rescue hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls whose abduction ignited a global social media campaign and a dramatic worldwide intervention. In the spring of 2014, millions of Twitter users, including some of the world’s most famous people, unwittingly helped turn a group of 276 schoolgirls abducted by a little-known Islamist sect into a central prize in the global War on Terror by retweeting a call for their release: #BringBackOurGirls. With just four words, their tweets launched an army of would-be liberators. Soldiers and drones, spies, mercenaries, and glory hunters descended into an obscure conflict that few understood, in a remote part of Nigeria that had barely begun to use the internet. When hostage talks and military intervention failed, the schoolgirls were forced to take survival into their own hands. As their days in captivity dragged into years, the young women learned to withstand hunger, disease, and torment, and became witnesses and victims of unspeakable brutality. Many of the girls were Christians who refused to take the one path offered them—converting to their captors' fundamentalist creed. In secret, they sang hymns, and kept a diary, relying on their faith and friendships to stay alive. Bring Back Our Girls unfolds across four continents, from the remote forests of northern Nigeria to the White House; from clandestine meetings in Khartoum safe houses to century-old luxury hotels on picturesque lakes in the Swiss Alps. A twenty-first century story that plumbs the promise and peril of an era whose politics are fueled by the power of hashtag advocacy, this urgent and engrossing work of investigative journalism reveals the unpredictable interconnectedness of our butterfly-wings world, where a few days of online activism can bring years of offline consequences for people continents away.
My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between
by Mari AndrewFrom New York Times bestselling author Mari Andrew, a collection of essays and illustrations, divided into phases of the sky--twilight, golden hour, night, and dawn--that serves as a loyal companion for life's curveballsA whole, beautiful life is only made possible by the wide spectrum of feelings that exist between joy and sorrow. In this insightful and warm book, writer and illustrator Mari Andrew explores all the emotions that make up a life, in the process offering insights about trauma and healing, the meaning of home and the challenges of loneliness, finding love in the most unexpected of places--from birds nesting on a sculpture to a ride on the subway--and a resounding case for why sometimes you have to put yourself in the path of magic.My Inner Sky empowers us to transform everything that's happened to us into something meaningful, reassurance that even in our darkest times, there's light and beauty to be found.
The Soul of a Woman
by Isabel AllendeFrom the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes a passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman. <P><P>“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have. <P><P>As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality. <P><P>So what feeds the soul of feminists—and all women—today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will “light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.”
On the Trail of the Serpent: The Epic Hunt for the Bikini Killer
by Richard Neville Julie ClarkeAn intimate portrait of Charles Sobrhaj--one of the world's greatest conmen and most notorious serial killers, and the subject of THE SERPENT, a new series on Netflix.Charles Sobhraj remains one of the world's great conmen, and as a serial killer, the story of his life and capture endures as legend. Born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, Sobhraj grew up deprived of a sense of identity, moving to France before being imprisoned and stripped of his multiple nationalities. Driven to floating from country to country, continent to continent, he became the consummate con artist, stealing passports, smuggling drugs and guns across Asia, busting out of prisons and robbing wealthy associates. But as his situation grew more perilous, he turned to murder, preying on Western tourists dropping out across the 1970s "hippie trail," leaving dead bodies and gruesome crime scenes in his wake, triggering an international manhunt that put him at the top of INTERPOL's most wanted list.On the Trail of the Serpent draws its readers into the story of Sobhraj's life as told exclusively to journalists Richard Neville and Julie Clarke by the investigators, families of the victims, and even Sobhraj himself. Blurring the boundaries between true crime and novelization, this remains the definitive book about Sobhraj--a riveting tale of sex, drugs, adventure, and murder.
Parent Like It Matters: How to Raise Joyful, Change-Making Girls
by Janice Johnson DiasAn accessible blueprint to embolden our daughters to be critical thinkers, fearless doers, and joyful change agents for our future—from the proud mother of teen activist Marley Dias, founder of 1000BLACKGIRLBOOKS.&“A stunning and pathbreaking how-to guide and memoir for every mom, dad, or caregiver who believes in rearing children to be healthy individuals and caring citizens.&”—Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness Renowned sociologist Dr. Janice Johnson Dias has devoted her life to nurturing and training girls to become change-makers—whether through her investment in her daughter Marley&’s humanitarian projects or through her work with the GrassROOTS Community Foundation&’s &“SuperCamp.&” In these unprecedented times, her work has never been more urgent, as parents find themselves asking: How do we teach our children to change the world? Dr. Johnson Dias knows that self-realized girls are created through intentional parenting. And so she asks parents to make deliberate choices—from babyhood through adolescence—that will give their girls the resources and foundation to take hold of their own futures and to create sustainable social change. Unlike other parenting experts, Dr. Johnson Dias doesn&’t urge parents to focus solely on their children. Instead, she tasks them with a personal challenge: to find their own joy. Just as Dr. Johnson Dias brings her own jubilant passion to parenting, mentoring, and teaching, she inspires caregivers to do the same. Using cutting-edge research and Dr. Johnson Dias&’s own experiences, Parent Like It Matters offers information and strategies for making discussions of racism and sexism a daily practice, identifying heroes and mentors, educating yourselves together, and uncovering your girl&’s passions and what issues drive her the most. Parenting is enormous work; it can be as overwhelming as it is fulfilling. Within the pages of Parent Like It Matters, parents will find the invaluable tools they need to raise resilient, optimistic girls who determine for themselves what their world will look like.
Thrill Seekers: 15 Remarkable Women in Extreme Sports (Women of Power)
by Ann McCallum StaatsWhat is the allure of the extreme? Who are the women who seek out and excel at sports outside the conventional, such as cave diving, wingsuit flying, or Formula 1 racing? This collection of female adventure dynamos is as fascinating as it is empowering. Thrill Seekers introduces readers to a diverse and fascinating selection of women whose determination, grit, and courage have propelled each of them into a life far from the sidelines. Each chapter introduces readers to modern role models and leaders, change-makers who opt into a life of risk—but one of astonishing rewards. Their stories inspire young people to approach life with the same bold resolve.
The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President
by Jill Wine-BanksObstruction of justice, the specter of impeachment, sexism at work, shocking revelations: Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor. It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts—and prevailed.In The Watergate Girl, Jill Wine-Banks opens a window on this troubled time in American history. It is impossible to read about the crimes of Richard Nixon and the people around him without drawing parallels to today’s headlines. The book is also the story of a young woman who sought to make her professional mark while trapped in a failing marriage, buffeted by sexist preconceptions, and harboring secrets of her own. Her house was burgled, her phones were tapped, and even her office garbage was rifled through.At once a cautionary tale and an inspiration for those who believe in the power of justice and the rule of law, The Watergate Girl is a revelation about our country, our politics, and who we are as a society.
Perpetuating Power: How Mexican Presidents Were Chosen
by Jorge G. Castaneda Padraic Arthur SmithiesA remarkably candid account of Mexican presidential politics, "destined to become the most important political book of the decade" (Foreign Policy). In Perpetuating Power, Jorge Castaneda lays bare the often mystifying workings of power in Mexico, offering readers a guided tour through the maze that leads to the Mexican presidential palace. Since the 1920s, Mexico has conducted presidential elections every six years, electing each time the handpicked successor to the sitting president. To outside observers, especially Americans accustomed to a fractious and relatively unpredictable political process, what stands out about the Mexican system is its odd mixture of democratic pretensions and inevitability: there are always elections, but everyone knows the next president will be the candidate of the appropriately named Party of the Institutional Revolution, which has governed Mexico throughout most of the last century and remains in power today. In six penetrating essays combined with interviews with each of the living Mexican ex-presidents, Castaneda provides a remarkably candid account of the political machinery of Mexican presidential politics--and a view, startling to political outsiders, of how power really operates.
Homage To A Broken Man: A True Story Of Faith, Forgiveness, Sacrifice, And Community (Bruderhof History Series)
by Peter Mommsen Eugene PetersonA dramatic true story of a man refined by fire, a Bruderhof pastor whose spiritual legacy continues to touch thousands. <P><P> Can our wounds become our greatest gift? Bruderhof pastor J. Heinrich Arnold was a broken man. Yet those who knew him said they never met another like him. Some spoke of his humility and compassion; others of his frankness and earthy humor. In his presence, complete strangers poured out their darkest secrets and left transformed. Others met him with hatred. <P><P> Writer Henri Nouwen called him a "prophetic voice" and wrote of how his words "touched me as a double-edged sword, calling me to choose between truth and lies, selflessness and selfishness. . . . Here was no pious, sentimental guide; every word came from experience." <P><P> Who was this extraordinary yet simple man? In this gripping and richly spiritual book, Peter Mommsen tells the dramatic true story of the grandfather he hardly knew. Read it, and you will never look at your own life the same way again. <P><P> Gold Medal Winner, 2016 IPPY Book of the Year Award in Biography, Independent Publishers Silver Medal Winner, 2016 Benjamin Franklin Award in Religion, Independent Book Publishers Association