Politics

Heineken In Africa

7,500.00

For Heineken, “rising Africa” is already a reality: the profits it extracts there are almost 50 per cent above the global average, and beer costs more in some African countries than it does in Europe. Heineken claims its presence boosts economic development on the continent. But is this true?

Investigative journalist Olivier van Beemen has spent years seeking the answer, and his conclusion is damning: Heineken has hardly benefited Africa at all. On the contrary, there are some shocking skeletons in its African closet: tax avoidance, sexual abuse, links to genocide and other human rights
violations, high-level corruption, crushing competition from indigenous brewers, and collaboration with dictators and pitiless anti-government rebels.

Heineken in Africa caused a political and media furor on publication in The Netherlands, and was debated in their Parliament. It is an unmissable exposé of the havoc wreaked by a global giant seeking profit in the developing world.

Hidden Hand

7,500.00

The Chinese Communist Party is determined to reshape the world in its image.

Its decades-long infiltration of the West threatens democracy, human rights, privacy, security and free speech. Throughout North America and Europe, political and business elites, Wall Street, Hollywood, think tanks, universities and the Chinese diaspora are being manipulated with money, pressure and privilege. Hidden Hand reveals the myriad ways the CCP is fulfilling its dream of undermining liberal values and controlling the world.

Bring Back Our Girls

7,500.00

What 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.

Kremlin Winter

7,500.00

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics since Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency in his favor in May 2000. He served two terms as president before himself relinquishing the post to his prime minister, Dimitri Medvedev, only to return to presidential power for a third time in 2012. Putin’s rule, whether as president or prime minister, has been marked by a steady increase in domestic repression and international assertiveness.

Despite this, there have been signs of liberal growth and Putin—and Russia—now faces a far from certain future. In Kremlin Winter, Robert Service, acclaimed biographer of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and one of our finest historians of modern Russia, brings his deep understanding of that country to bear on the man who leads it. He reveals a premier who cannot take his supremacy for granted, yet is determined to impose his will not only on his closest associates but on society at large. It is a riveting insight into power politics as Russia faces a blizzard of difficulties both at home and abroad.

The Mauritanian

8,000.00

When The Mauritanian was first published as Guantánamo Diary in 2015—heavily redacted by the U.S. government—Mohamedou Ould Slahi was still imprisoned at the detainee camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, despite a federal court ruling ordering his release, and it was unclear when or if he would ever see freedom. In October 2016 he was finally released and reunited with his family. During his fourteen-year imprisonment the United States never charged him with a crime.

Now he is able to tell his story in full, with previously censored material restored. This searing diary is not merely a vivid record of a miscarriage of justice, but a deeply personal memoir—terrifying, darkly humorous, and surprisingly gracious. The Mauritanian is a document of immense emotional power and historical importance.

Secrets of the Secret Service

8,000.00

n his new book, former Secret Service officer Gary Byrne takes readers behind the scenes to understand the agency’s history and today’s security failings that he believes put Americans at risk

The American public knows the stories of Secret Service heroism, but they don’t know about the hidden legacy of problems that have plagued the agency ever since its creation.

Gary Byrne says that decades of catastrophic public failures, near misses, and bureaucratic and cultural rot threaten to erode this critical organization from the inside out.

Today, as it works to protect President Trump, the Secret Service stands at a crossroads, and the time needed to choose the right course is running out. Agents and officers are leaving the Secret Service in droves, or they’re being overworked to the point where they lose focus on the job. Management makes decisions based on politics, not the welfare of their employees.

Byrne believes that this means danger for the men and women of the Secret Service, danger for the President they protect, and danger for the nation. In this book, he shares what he has witnessed and learned about the Secret Service with the hope that the problems of this most important agency can be fixed before it’s too late.

Margaret Thatcher

8,000.00

Published in a single volume for the first time, Margaret Thatcher is the story of her remarkable life told in her own words–the definitive account of an extraordinary woman and consummate politician, bringing together her bestselling memoirs The Downing Street Years and The Path to Power.

Margaret Thatcher is the towering political figure of late-twentieth-century Great Britain. No other prime minister in modern times sought to change the British nation and its place in the world as radically as she did.Writing candidly about her upbringing and early years and the formation of her character and values, she details the experiences that propelled her to the very top in a man’s world. She offers a riveting firsthand history of the major events, the crises and triumphs, during her eleven years as prime minister, including the Falklands War, the Brighton hotel bombing, the Westland affair, the final years of the Cold War, and her unprecedented three election victories.

Thatcher’s judgments of the men and women she encountered during her time in power-from statesmen, premiers, and presidents to Cabinet colleagues-are astonishingly frank, and she recalls her dramatic final days in office with a gripping, hour-by-hour description from inside 10 Downing Street. Powerful, candid, and compelling, Margaret Thatcher stands as a testament to a great leader’s significant legacy.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics

8,000.00

The four most powerful African American women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in America.

The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years―Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore―a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson’s first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Over the years, they’ve filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they’ve worked with those who have shaped our country’s history―US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who’ve worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of “hurrying history” so that every American ― regardless of race, gender or religious background ― can have a seat at the table. This is their story.

The Ogoni of the Eastern Niger Delta

8,000.00

The Ogoni of the Eastern Niger Delta are an ancient African community in Southern Nigeria, whose history dates back to BC times. Their history is rich in customs, traditions, economics, politics and culture, which date back to Herodotus, the Greek historian, who wrote about the Silent Trade in West Africa”, in the 4th century BC, a story also reported by the Ogoni in their oral tradition.

Scholars frequently relate the history of West Africa to the coming of the white man into the region. The Ogoni of the Eastern Niger Delta shows that the colonialists later came to see a lot of innovations by the Ogoni; such as trade, money, industry, agriculture, leadership training, government, law, music, sea travel, war and more.

This book is a giant attempt to record and preserve these cultures for future study and development. There is a seperate volume containing fieldwork data on almost every subject for researchers to consult.

Blood Gun Money

8,000.00

The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico’s powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren’t often connected in our heated discussions of gun control-but they should be. In Ioan Grillo’s groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.

Grillo travels to gun manufacturers, strolls the aisles of gun shows and gun shops, talks to FBI agents who have infiltrated biker gangs, hangs out on Baltimore street corners, and visits the ATF gun tracing center in West Virginia. Along the way, he details the many ways that legal guns can cross over into the black market and into the hands of criminals, fueling violence here and south of the border. Simple legislative measures would help close these loopholes, but America’s powerful gun lobby is uncompromising in its defense of the hallowed Second Amendment. Perhaps, however, if guns were seen not as symbols of freedom, but as key accessories in our epidemics of addiction, the conversation would shift. Blood Gun Money is that conversation shifter.

Blood And Silk

8,000.00

Why are the region’s richest countries such as Malaysia riddled with corruption? Why do Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines harbour unresolved violent insurgencies? How do deepening religious divisions in Indonesia and Malaysia and China’s growing influence affect the region and the rest of the world?

Thought-provoking and eye-opening, Blood and Silk is an accessible, personal look at modern Southeast Asia, written by one of the region’s most experienced outside observers. This is a first-hand account of what it’s like to sit at the table with deadly Thai Muslim insurgents, mediate between warring clans in the Southern Philippines and console the victims of political violence in Indonesia – all in an effort to negotiate peace, and understand the reasons behind endemic violence.

Too Famous

8,000.00

Bestselling author of Fire and Fury and chronicler of the Trump White House Michael Wolff dissects more of the major monsters, media whores, and vainglorious figures of our time. His scalpel opens their lives, careers, and always equivocal endgames with the same vividness and wit he brought to his disemboweling of the former president. These brilliant and biting profiles form a mesmerizing portrait of the hubris, overreach, and nearly inevitable self-destruction of some of the most famous faces from the Clinton era through the Trump years. When the mighty fall, they do it with drama and with a dust cloud of gossip.

This collection pulls from new and unpublished work―recent reporting about Tucker Carlson, Jared Kushner, Harvey Weinstein, Ronan Farrow, and Jeffrey Epstein―and twenty years of coverage of the most notable egomaniacs of the time―among them, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, Arianna Huffington, Roger Ailes, Boris Johnson, and Rupert Murdoch―creating a lasting statement on the corrosive influence of fame. Ultimately, this is an examination of how the quest for fame, notoriety, and power became the driving force of culture and politics, the drug that alters all public personalities. And how their need, their desperation, and their ruthlessness became the toxic grease that keeps the world spinning.

You know the people here by name and reputation, but it’s guaranteed that after this book you will never see them the same way again or fail to recognize the scorched earth the famous leave behind them.

Criminal Contagion

8,500.00

COVID-19 is reshaping and challenging governments, social order and the world economy in previously unimaginable ways–including changes to the illegal flow of goods and services. Livelihoods are shrinking or disappearing altogether, and mafias, gangsters and profiteers are adapting to find
new routes for illegal commodities, from counterfeit drugs to trafficked wildlife and people.

Shortages, lockdowns and citizen responses have brought the underworld and upperworld into greater convergence, as criminals strive to meet needs, maximize opportunities and fill governance vacuums. Unscrupulous fraudsters are touting fake remedies to desperate people: counterfeit drugs and illicit
wildlife used in traditional medicine. Social distancing and lockdowns have seen online financial transactions and cyber-communication and -operations replacing or supplementing physical shipments and interactions, again affording new opportunities for fraudsters and cyber-criminals. Heavy-handed
state responses have also, quite literally, created new illicit markets by prohibiting the sale of particular goods and services, while some elites have capitalized on the pandemic for personal or political gain.

The pandemic has cast a long shadow over the rule of law. Criminal Contagion uncovers its impacts on the global illicit economy, and unpacks the long-term implications of these extraordinary developments.

Strongmen

8,500.00

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the “strongman” playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future.

For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators.

They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power.

Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos.

No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country.

Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.

Lincoln’s Mentors

8,500.00

In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?

As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.

Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.

Reconsidering Reagan

8,500.00

Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his twentieth-century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the “right” kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today.

Using research from previously untapped resources including the Black press which critically covered Reagan’s entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan’s gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race, riding a wave of “white backlash” all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s—including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the “War on Drugs”—which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people.

Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.

1 4 5 6 9