Showing titles in Freedom & Security

With her characteristic brilliance, grace, and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration," and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

The world of espionage is shrouded in mystery—even to those in it—but so much of what we think we know about spy craft is rooted in pop culture. Even though the true nature of espionage is quite different, that doesn’t mean history’s real spies are any less heroic, or less fascinating. In these nine episodes, go behind the shadows with a distinguished panel of historians—including a former intelligence case officer—in search of the secret meeting places, complex codes, stealth observations, and cutting-edge technologies spies have used throughout history.

A sobering and fascinating study on war in the modern era, Unrestricted Warfare carefully explores strategies that militarily and politically disadvantaged nations might take in order to successfully attack a geopolitical super-power like the United States. American military doctrine is typically led by technology; a new class of weapon or vehicle is developed, which allows or encourages an adjustment in strategy. Military strategists Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui argue that this dynamic is a crucial weakness in the American military.

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 to end all traffic between the city’s two halves: the democratic west and the communist east. The iconic symbol of a divided Europe, the Wall became a focus of western political pressure on East Germany; as Ronald Reagan’s famously said in a 1987 speech in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OFFICIAL SECRETS FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION In January 2003, 28-year-old GCHQ translator Katharine Gun received an email from the US National Security Agency that would turn her world upside down. The message requested Katharine’s assistance in...

The revelatory, much-anticipated memoir from the Wall Street Journal reporter who was wrongly imprisoned in Putin’s Russia for more than a year – a glimpse inside the perils and contradictions of a country in the midst of autocracy In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan...

Operation Gold is one of the most extraordinary—and least believed—Cold War operations ever attempted: a secret tunnel dug beneath divided Berlin so Britain and America could listen directly to Soviet communications. It sounds like the plot of a spy thriller, yet it happened in real life, in a city where every street corner had eyes, every building had informants, and every shadow seemed to belong to someone else. This book takes you into that world, where engineering became espionage, and where the ground itself became a battleground.

Churchill’s Secret Warriors tells the electrifying story of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)—the shadowy organisation Britain created in World War II to fight the Nazis from behind enemy lines. This book pulls back the curtain on one of history’s most daring and unconventional wartime initiatives. Born in desperation after the fall of France and the near-collapse of Europe, the SOE was Churchill’s audacious answer to the Nazi stranglehold across the continent.

Veteran CIA agent Kevin Shipp, who worked with all four Directorates of the agency, including protecting the head of the CIA, provides his perspective on how the agency has strayed so far from its original mission to provide accurate intelligence to the American president.

In 2014, American private contractor Alan Gross was rotting in a Cuban prison, convicted of undermining the Havana regime. At that same time, Cuban intelligence agent Gerardo Hernández was serving two life sentences in a US federal penitentiary on charges related to espionage. Then, it all changed. I Spy: The U.S., Cuba, and the Secret Deal That Ended the Cold War describes how secret negotiations to free the two men helped bring an end to half a century of hostilities between the United States and Cuba.

As the biggest criminal trial since the Boston Strangler draws nearer, the public’s fascination with the life and crimes of mob boss Whitey Bulger continues to heat up. Many stories have been told about the murders Whitey and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi committed, and the tacit permission they received from the FBI.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden's reign of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes listeners inside the walls of Bin Laden's compound.

A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.

"A true-crime masterpiece." —Don Winslow A Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award Finalist (Best Fact Crime) | Narrated by author Frank Figiluzzi From the FBI’s former assistant director, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI Highway Serial Killings...

Brought to you by Penguin. Stolen Revolution follows the lives of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history: the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy and a people’s undying spirit of resistance. Fuelled by Iranians’ dreams of...

The first major book on ISIS to be published since the group exploded on the international stage in summer 2014. Drawing on their unusual access to intelligence sources and material, law enforcement, and groundbreaking research into open source intelligence, Stern and Berger outline the origins...

Power to the People addresses growing voter apathy and disenchantment worldwide - that familiar sense that governments have become decoupled from their constituencies, that votes no longer count, and that politicians and institutions are too focused on short-term issues to grapple with complex global issues such as climate change and rising inequality. The book is structured into two halves, the first half diagnosing problems and the second half proposing solutions. Danny urges listeners to make a positive difference through engagement and active citizenry.

God’s people are hiding in plain sightTens of millions of Christians live in China today, leading double lives to hide from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. By day, Bob Fu was a teacher in a communist school; by night, he was a preacher in an underground house church network. This edge-of-your-seat book tells the true story of Fu’s conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his oppressed brethren.

The brilliant and disturbing 100-year history of modern terrorism and car bombs—the ubiquitous weapon of urban mass destruction On a September day in 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda exploded a horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite and iron scrap near New York's Wall Street...