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** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** Kompromat n.—Russian for "compromising information" This is a story of dirty secrets,…
and the most powerful people in the world. Craig Unger&’s new book, American Kompromat, tells of the spies and salacious events underpinning men&’s reputations and riches. It tells how a relatively insignificant targeting operation by the KGB&’s New York rezidentura (New York Station) more than forty years ago—an attempt to recruit an influential businessman as a new asset—triggered a sequence of intelligence protocols that morphed into the greatest intelligence bonanza in history. And it tells of a coterie of associates, reaching all the way into the office of the Attorney General, who stood to advance power, and themselves. Based on extensive, exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—Soviets who resigned from the KGB and moved to the United States, former officers in the CIA, FBI counterintelligence agents, lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms—and analysis of thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, American Kompromat shows that something much more sinister and important has been taking place than the public could ever imagine: namely, that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and transformed them into potent weapons. Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could such an audacious feat have been accomplished? American Kompromat is situated in the ongoing context of the Trump-Russia scandal and the new era of hybrid warfare, kleptocrats, and authoritarian right-wing populism it helped accelerate. To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to understand kompromat —operations that amassed compromising information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged power by appealing to what is for some the most prized possession of all: their vanityFrom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags, the thrilling unknown story of America's mission in Syria: to find and…
destroy Syria's chemical weapons and keep them out of the hands of the Islamic State In August 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When secret intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, President Obama warned that doing so would cross "a red line." Assad did it anyway, bombing the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with sarin gas, killing hundreds of civilians and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular Middle Eastern war. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria's chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out. So begins an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war. The extraordinary little-known effort is a triumph for the Americans, but soon Russia's long game becomes clear: it will do anything to preserve Assad's rule. As America's ability to control events in Syria shrinks, the White House learns that ISIS, building its caliphate in Syria's war-tossed territory, is seeking chemical weapons for itself, with an eye to attacking the West. Red Line is a classic Joby Warrick true-life thriller: a character-driven narrative with a cast of heroes and villains, including weapons hunters, politicians, doctors, diplomats, and spies. Drawing on astonishing original reporting, Warrick reveals how the United States embarked on a bold adventure to prevent one catastrophe but could not avoid a tragic chain of events that empowered America's enemiesThe princess spy: The true story of world war ii spy aline griffith, countess of romanones
Par Larry Loftis. 2021
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Seen on Today What to Read in 2021 — The Washington Post Book of the…
Month — Palm Beach Book Festival Best Books to Read This February — Town & Country The international bestselling author of the "exciting, suspenseful, inspirational" (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Code Name: Lise weaves another exceptional and thrilling hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS's most daring spies in World War II before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman of No Importance and Code Girls . When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live "a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious " ( Time ). As the US enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline's life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services—forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats, and titled Europeans, any of whom could be an enemy agent. Against this glamorous backdrop of galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in deep-cover espionage to counter Nazi tactics in Madrid. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones, one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections. Filled with twists, romance, and plenty of white-knuckled adventures fit for a James Bond film, The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a remarkable American woman who risked everything to serve her countryA short history of humanity: A new history of old europe
Par Johannes Krause. 2021
&“Thrilling . . . a bracing summary of what we have learned [from] &‘archaeogenetics&’—the study of ancient DNA . .…
. Krause and Trappe capture the excitement of this young field.&”—Kyle Harper, The Wall Street Journal Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics—archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology—which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. This Anatolian farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of people with contemporary European ancestry. Archaeogenetics has also revealed that indigenous North and South Americans, though long thought to have been East Asian, also share DNA with contemporary Europeans. Krause and Trappe vividly introduce us to the prehistoric cultures of the ancient Europeans: the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved flutes and animal and human forms from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe&’s most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. Genetics has earned a reputation for smuggling racist ideologies into science, but cutting-edge science makes nonsense of eugenics and &“pure&” bloodlines. Immigration and genetic exchanges have always defined our species; who we are is a question of culture, not biological inheritance. This revelatory book offers us an entirely new way to understand ourselves, both past and presentLiving fossils: Survivors from earth's distant past
Par Rebecca E. Hirsch. 2021
In the history of life on this planet, 99.9 percent of all species have gone extinct. But a few have…
survived almost unchanged. Author Rebecca E. Hirsch introduces readers to six living fossils, including the chambered nautilus, the horseshoe crab with its sticky blue blood, and venomous platypuses that sting, as well as a comprehensive explanation of evolution and extinction for readers who may not be familiar with the terms yet. Readers will also discover a a spectacular timeline of the history of animal life on Earth. Dive into the stories of these incredible animals and find out how they help scientists piece together evolutionary historyThe Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Par David Graeber, David Wengrow. 2021
Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing…
account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.Cræft: an inquiry into the origins and true meaning of traditional crafts
Par Alexander Langlands. 2018
Archaeologist examines the meaning of the Old English word "craeft," which denoted a sense of knowledge, wisdom, and resourcefulness through…
the history of production of goods made by human hands. Topics include making hay, sticks and stones, beekeeping, textiles, homebuilding, agriculture, and more. 2017Discovering the mammoth: a tale of giants, unicorns, ivory, and the birth of a new science
Par John J. McKay. 2017
Examination of the evolving scientific study of fossils and the development of the modern understanding of mammoths and other related,…
extinct animals. Discusses significant discoveries across the world from the time of Ancient Greece through to the nineteenth century. 2017Author of Bringing Down the House and Sex on the Moon examines the work of researchers to bring the woolly…
mammoth back from extinction through the use of DNA extracted from a frozen specimen combined with the DNA of a modern elephant.Searching for the Amazons: the real warrior women of the ancient world
Par John Man. 2018
An exploration of the mythos of the Amazons, a tribe of female warriors. Discusses the stories told in many cultures…
about them and the past conclusions that they must have been merely myth. The author, however, uses research and archeological discoveries to demonstrate that they did, in fact, exist. 2018Forgotten bones: uncovering a slave cemetery
Par Lois Miner Huey. 2016
Dark emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture
Par Bruce Pascoe. 2018
Examination of the ways aboriginal Australians developed the land to support their societies long before colonization of the continent by…
European explorers. Topics include agriculture, aquaculture, population and housing, storage and preservation, fire, cultural norms, non-Aboriginal agriculture techniques, and understanding history to improve the future. 2018Walls: a history of civilization in blood and brick
Par David Frye. 2018
A historian discusses the role of man-made edifices and barriers throughout history. Explores the importance of walls in ancient civilizations,…
a thousand-mile-long wall in Asia, sieges of fortified cities, political conflicts centered upon walls, gated communities, and more. 2018The incredible untold story of WWII&’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue…
Britain&’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II&’s African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel&’s desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS&’s remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow. Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story, but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the mostUnder jerusalem: The buried history of the world's most contested city
Par Andrew Lawler. 2021
A sweeping history of the hidden world below the Holy City—a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers, and political upheaval…
"These untold stories of archeological digs near and under Jerusalem&’s sacred sites convey all the colorful and violent and contentious history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ... A compulsive read.&” —Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of The Outlier In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem&’s storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city&’s streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem&’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. It has served as a cudgel, a way to stake a claim to the most contested city on the planet. Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above. Under Jerusalem takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.  A "Manchurian Candidate" is an unwitting assassin brainwashed and programmed to kill. In this book, former State Department officer John…
Marks tells the explosive story of the CIA's highly secret program of experiments in mind control. His curiosity first aroused by information on a puzzling suicide. Marks worked from thousands of pages of newly released documents as well as interviews and behavioral science studies, producing a book that "accomplished what two Senate committees could not" (Senator Edward Kennedy)Cities: the first 6,000 years
Par Monica L. Smith. 2019
An account of cities throughout time that draws on archaeology, history, and contemporary observation. Discusses the rise of urban development…
and the role of cities in the development of civilization, networked infrastructure, the middle class, and more. 2019Mummies exposed!: Creepy and True #1 (Creepy and True)
Par Kerrie Logan Hollihan. 2019
Uncovers the mysteries behind unearthed human mummies from around the globe, from mutilated bodies preserved in Irish bogs to sacrificed…
children entombed in an Incan burial site on a mountaintop. For grades 5-8 and older readers. 2019Trial lawyer recounts his most challenging case, in which he represented five Cuban spies marooned in the US prison system.…
Explains the role of the Cuban Five in the following decade of Cuban-American relations. 2019The Little Ice Age: how climate made history, 1300-1850
Par Brian Fagan. 2019
History of climatic shifts and adaptations by Europeans to them. Covers the last ten centuries, describing the Medieval Warm Period…
to the era of global warming that began in the 1850s. Examines human vulnerability in the face of sudden climate change. Includes author's afterword from 2019. 2000