Showing titles in 21st Century

We have released the genie from the bottle: climate change is coming, and there's no stopping it. The question, according to Matthew Kahn, is not how were going to avoid a hotter future but how were going to adapt to it. In Climatopolis, Kahn, one of the worlds foremost experts on the economics of the environment, argues that cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures over time, slowly transforming our everyday lives.

Codenamed Operation Telic, the British component of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the largest gathering of British troops since the Second World War. While the British public prepared for the worst as its soldiers were facing weapons of mass destruction, most servicemen and women were under no illusion that they were invading Iraq to rid the people of Saddam Hussein.

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

The U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay - known to the public as Gitmo - has been called the American Gulag, a scene of medieval horrors where innocent farmers and goat herders swept up in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sequestered, tortured, and abused for years on end without access to legal counsel or basic medical services.

America Second exposes a deep network of Beijing’s influence in America, built quietly over the years through prominent figures like former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, Disney Chairman Bob Iger, and members of the Bush family. And it shows how to fight that influence - without being paranoid, xenophobic, or racist.

The key to understanding the calamitous Afghan war is the complex, ultimately failed relationship between the powerful, duplicitous Karzai family and the United States, brilliantly portrayed here by the former Kabul bureau chief for The Washington Post.

In this book Satter tells the story of the apartment bombings and how Boris Yeltsin presided over the criminalization of Russia, why Vladimir Putin was chosen as his sucessor, and how Putin has suppressed all opposition while retaining the appearance of a pluralist state. As the threat represented by Russia becomes increasingly clear, Satter's description of where Russia is and how it got there will be of vital interest to anyone concerned about the dangers facing the world today.

A witty, candid story of a daring young man who made his way to the heights of American journalism and public life, from a New Hampshire weekly through his foreign correspondent years in Europe, to the apex of his career at the Washington Post, whose Watergate coverage gave journalism its finest hours.

Dead Men Risen, winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for books, is the epic story of a beleaguered British battle group fighting desperately to prevent the Taliban from seizing Afghanistan's Helmand province just as the US Marines arrive to take over. Best-selling author Toby Harnden describes how men from the coal mining valleys and slate quarry villages of Wales found themselves in the most intense combat faced by British troops for a generation.

An eyewitness account of Donald Trump's clown car of lieutenants and lackeys who have polluted the corridors of power with their unprecedented awfulness. Two of Washington's most meddlesome reporters take listeners on a deep dive into the murky underworld of President Trump's Washington, dishing the hilarious and frightening dirt on the charlatans, conspiracy theorists, ideologues, and run-of-the-mill con artists who have infected the highest echelons of American political power.

For much of the past 30 years, Iraq has been one of the world’s greatest hot spots. The 1980s saw Ba’athist strongman Saddam Hussein go to war with Iran as well as the Kurds, who maintained an autonomous region of their own in Northern Iraq. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait touched off a Gulf War that was followed by biting sanctions. And the 2003 American-led invasion against Hussein’s regime provided the uninformed an all-too-brutal crash course on Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions and the Middle East’s as a whole.

Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights. The government's ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard.

In 21 Days to Baghdad, historian Dr. Heather Stur describes the commitment of the division to Kuwait, the invasion of Iraq and the three weeks of violent desert conflicts on the way to Baghdad before the siege and battle for the city itself, and the “thunder runs” that saw its fall to U.S. forces. She then details the complex security mission that required the soldiers and their commanders to convince Iraqi citizens that the U.S. was there to help them, while at the same time they continued fighting Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard, paramilitary forces, and terrorists.

Gripping and unforgettable, Chernobyl Roulette sounds the alarm about the dangers of nuclear sites in an unprecedented time, when plant workers are left to fight on their own while the world holds its breath. In a book that feels like a thriller, Serhii Plokhy tells a remarkable story about human nature, uncertainty and courage.

Well over 100 years ago the data industry put in place a business model that trades our attention for news and entertainment. That model has evolved into a complex art and science of message targeting and content ownership that has splintered communities while simultaneously concentrating media ownership to a few massive corporations. Forged in War takes a critical look at the systems we use and how we ended up in a society that values data over personal liberty and commerce over the public good.

Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on US global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the 21st century into a dark time of despotism.

The presidency of George W. Bush has been the subject of extensive commentary but limited scholarly analysis in the years since he left office. 43 draws extensively, but not solely, from the recently released interviews of the Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia.

The Arctic century is upon us. A great jockeying for power and influence has erupted among nations in the high north. At stake are trillions of dollars in profit or loss, US security, geopolitical influence and the fate of a fragile environment as well as the region's traditional people. As the ice melts and oil companies venture north, the polar regions may become the next Panama Canal, the next Arabian Peninsula-places on earth that remain relatively unknown in one century and become pivotal in the next.

From revolutionary to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world's most controversial leaders and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba's president for nearly 50 years, Castro's influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose - good or bad - Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled.

In November 1943, Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr. was mortally wounded while leading a successful assault on critical Japanese fortifications on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa. But it was not until August 2015 that he was finally laid to rest. Bonnyman Jr. was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor and Purple Heart for his heroic actions during the bloody battle, which would ultimately claim the lives of almost 2,000 Marines and 5,000 Japanese soldiers. But the lieutenant, along with hundreds of other Marines, was buried in an unmarked grave.