Showing titles in Politics & Social Sciences

From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th-century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process—writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.

The Tangled Web tells the dramatic story of detective Richard Cain's criminal career as revealed by his half-brother, Michael. Cain led a double-life—one as a well-known cop who led raids that landed on the front pages, and the other as a "made man" in one of Chicago's most notorious mob families.

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.

One decision can end everything...or lead to unlikely redemption. Millions watched the CBS 60 Minutes special on Jack Barsky in 2015. Now, in this fascinating memoir, the Soviet KGB agent tells his story of gut-wrenching choices, appalling betrayals, his turbulent inner world, and the secret life he lived for years without getting caught.

In his #1 New York Times bestseller, former Vice President Dick Cheney delivers a forty-year portrait of American politics and shares unyielding reflections on his role as one of the most steadfast and influential statesmen in the history of our country. In his enlightening and provocative...

'Lively . . . peppered with entertaining lines. One of [Low's] skills as a journalist is an ability to sift through mountains of archive material and pick out the gems' - Telegraph Covering 200 years of royal history from Queen Victoria to King Charles, and looking forward to the future reign of...

Erik Ronningen was on the 71st floor of the North Tower on September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. After an incredible, near miraculous journey down through the acrid, smoke-filled building, Erik tried to get to the security command center in the South Tower. Unable to do so, he was the last person to make it out of the South Tower alive. Here is the story of his harrowing escape, interwoven with the accounts of 14 others who were lucky enough to be able to recount them.

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

The Complete Book of Five Rings is an authoritative version of Musashi's classic The Book of Five Rings, translated and annotated by a modern martial arts master, Kenji Tokitsu. Tokitsu has spent most of his life researching the legendary samurai swordsman and his works, and in this book he illuminates this seminal text, along with several other works by Musashi.

In 1908, at the age of two, Henry Pu Yi ascended to become the last emperor of the centuries-old Manchu dynasty. After revolutionaries forced Pu Yi to abdicate in 1911, the young emperor lived for 13 years in Peking’s Forbidden City, but with none of the power his birth afforded him. The remainder of Pu Yi’s life was lived out in a topsy-turvy fashion: fleeing from a Chinese warlord, becoming head of a Japanese puppet state, being confined to a Russian prison in Siberia, and enduring taxing labor.

A Brief History of Thailand offers an engaging look at the country's last 250 years - from coups and violent massacres to the invention of Pad Thai in the 1930s. Listeners will learn the vibrant story of Thailand's emergence as a prosperous Buddhist state, its transformation from traditional kingdom to democratic constitutional monarchy, and its subsequent rise to prominence in Southeast Asian affairs. Thailand's dramatic history spans centuries of conflict, and this book recounts many of these fascinating episodes

The expectation used to be that men would be masculine and women would be feminine, and this was assumed to come naturally to them in virtue of their biology. On this view, sex is gender and gender is sex. A new view of gender has emerged in recent years, a view on which gender is an "identity," a way that people feel about themselves in terms of masculinity or femininity, regardless of their sex. On this view, sex is dismissed as unimportant, and gender is made paramount.

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD. Composed during his military campaigns from 170 to 180 AD, this profound work consists of twelve books that delve into Stoic philosophy, offering reflections on duty, resilience, and the human experience. This edition adapts Meditations for today's listeners, making Marcus Aurelius' wisdom relevant and accessible for navigating modern life.

In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.

"If you were God," asked Alan Watts, "what kind of universe would you create? A perfect one free of suffering and drama? Or one filled with surprise and delight?" With Just So, the celebrated philosopher and self-described "spiritual entertainer" invites us to explore the hidden dimensions that shape both the cosmos and our personal experience of it.

Award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People’s Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle.

The 25 years between the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Bourbon Restoration after Napoleon in 1814 is an astonishing period in world history. This era shook the foundations of the old world and marked a permanent shift for politics, religion, and society - not just for France, but for all of Europe. An account of the events alone reads like something out of a thrilling novel.

Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding? was a question shared by brides Helen McLaughlin and Karen Whitehouse after they tied the knot on 11 August, 2018 on a boat in Amsterdam. It was a question that launched a podcast, which led to the hiring of unqualified detective Lauren Kilby, the purchase of a €99 lie detector, and the bothering of some of the world’s best forensic experts - all in an attempt to find out “poo dunnit”. For season 2, the investigative trio take on a brand new mystery set in Sweden (Scandi Noir if you will) called The Case Of The Tiny Suit/Case. For season 3, the ...

"Mindhunter crossed with American Gothic. This chilling story has the ghostly unease of a nightmare."—Michael Cannell, author of Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling The pulse-pounding account of the first time in history that the FBI’s...