Showing titles in Freedom & Security

While numerous books address Israel-Palestine conflict, Gaza in Crisis brings together two renowned thinkers—American activist Noam Chomsky and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé—to examine why this conflict has lasted so long, who can stop it, and how. Israel's Operation Cast Lead, a 2008 military assault on the Gaza Strip, thrust the region to the center of the discussion. With expert knowledge and deep insight, Chomsky and Pappé survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and place it in historical context.

Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. Even before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was 'carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign' to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new. In this astonishing journey through a century of secret psychological war, Rid reveals for the first time some of history's most significant operations - many of them nearly beyond belief.

Conducted under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, intended to stem the flow of firearms to Mexico, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gun walking” sting operations, including Operations Wide Receiver and Operation Fast & Furious. The government allowed licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers so that they could continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels.

Brought to you by Penguin. In Democracy Awakening, American historian Heather Cox Richardson examines how, over the decades, an elite minority have made war on American ideals. By weaponising language and promoting false history, they are leading Americans into authoritarianism and creating a...

From kidnappings to terrorist incidents, violent armed stand-offs to talking someone back from the ledge: all these make up the day-to-day life of Nicky Perfect’s job as a crisis and hostage negotiator. One of the first on the scene in situations that most would run from, Nicky is deployed to defuse the most volatile and fraught situations imaginable. After a decade on the frontlines, confronting the extremes of human behaviour, these are the stories and cases that have shaped a career spent on high alert, where life often hangs in the balance.

In The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America's dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America's imperial designs. Washington's secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies.

Mafia Spies is the definitive account of America’s most remarkable espionage plots ever - with CIA agents, mob hitmen, “kompromat” sex, presidential indiscretion, and James Bond-like killing devices together in a top-secret mystery full of surprise twists and deadly intrigue. In the early 1960s, two top gangsters, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana, were hired by the CIA to kill Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, only to wind up murdered themselves amidst Congressional hearings and a national debate about the JFK assassination.

Part manifesto, part exploration of what justice truly means for survivors of trauma and abuse, Judith Herman forces us to reconsider our perspective on victims, revealing uncomfortable truths about our justice systems and proposing new ways to implement justice. Truth and Repair is a profound and timely commentary that lies at the intersection of several cultural moments including the #MeToo movement, a resurgent interest in trauma, and the global movements focusing on racial injustices and abuses of power towards people of colour.

Politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle have accused Russia of interfering with our elections and our intelligence agencies. But the war Russia is waging against America is very different from anything you have heard in the press, as Russian-born US intelligence expert Rebekah Koffler reveals. In Putin’s Playbook, Koffler details how Vladimir Putin is orchestrating a wide-ranging, multifaceted campaign to retake his country’s role as a superpower and to defeat America in the process.

Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the rise of militant Islam. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the agency's history.

Colonialism has not disappeared; it has taken a new form. In the new world order where data is the new oil, big Tech companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources - our data - exploiting our labour and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations and discriminate against us. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, two leading global researchers and founders of the concept of data colonialism reveal how history can help us understand the emerging future - and how we can fight back.

The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there’s a...

‘A brilliant and challenging book’ GORDON BROWN From the founder of Britain’s leading antifascist organisation, HOPE not hate, this is an urgent call to resist the forces of extremism on the march in Western societies – and how to go about it. If you’re shocked and disconcerted by the...

As one of al-Qaeda's most respected bomb-makers, Aimen Dean rubbed shoulders with the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden himself. As a double agent at the heart of al-Qaeda's chemical weapons program, he foiled attacks on civilians and saved countless lives, brushing with death so often that his handlers began to call him their spy with nine lives. This is the story of how a young Muslim, determined to defend his faith, found himself fighting on the wrong side - and his fateful decision to work undercover for his sworn enemy. 

From one of the world's foremost experts on the subject, a powerful argument that the greatest damage from drugs flows from their being illegal, and a hopeful reckoning with the possibility of their use as part of a responsible and happy life Dr. Carl L. Hart, Ziff Professor at Columbia...

Written with a thrilling narrative pull, The Butcher's Trail chronicles the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Borger recounts how Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic - both now on trial in The Hague - were finally tracked down and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international tribunal for crimes perpetrated in a time of war.

Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law. In ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain.

Los Angeles in the '60s was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.

In this razor-sharp analysis of one of the most important issues facing us today, leading Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt draw on their combined expertise of over 40 years to offer a dire warning about right-wing efforts to undermine multiracial democracy. Exploring the 2024 American election and the Capitol riots, as well as global examples from history including post-1945 Germany and Brazil and Chile during the '60s and '70s, the authors show how ossified political conventions can be pernicious enablers of minority rule.

This audiobook will introduce you to ten people. In a way, you already know them. Only you don't - not really. In a sense, they are you. Only they're not entirely. They inform and shape the most important decisions in your life. But you're almost certainly unaware of their intervention. They are the Ten Types of Human. Who are they? What are they for? How did they get into your head? We want to believe that there are some things we would never do. We want to believe that there are others we always would. But how can we be sure?