No subject is more hotly debated than the extreme measures that our government has taken after 9/11 in the name of national security. Torture, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations, secret detention centers (or black sites”), massive surveillance of citizens. But while the press occasionally exposes the dark side of the war on terror and congressional investigators sometimes raise alarms about the abuses committed by U.S. intelligence agencies and armed forces, no high U.S. official has been prosecuted for these violations which many legal observers around the world consider war crimes. The United States helped establish the international principles guiding the prosecution of war crimes starting with the Nuremberg tribunal following World War II, when Nazi officials were held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But the American government and legal system have consistently refused to apply these same principles to our own officials. Now Rebecca Gordon takes on the explosive task of indicting” the officials who in a just society should be put on trial for war crimes. Some might dismiss this as a symbolic exercise. But what is at stake here is the very soul of the nation.

American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes

History

Gordon, Rebecca

Americas

Hot Books

From the New York Times bestselling author Dick Russell, edited and introduced by New York Times bestselling author Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.! "A must read for anyone concerned with climate and energy issues." --Leonardo DiCaprio, Academy Award winning actor and environmental activist <div>The science is overwhelming; the facts are in. The planet is heating up at an alarming rate and the results are everywhere to be seen. Yet, as time runs out, climate progress is blocked by the men who are profiting from the burning of the planet: energy moguls like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Powerful politicians like Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe, who receive massive contributions from the oil and coal industries. Most of these men are too intelligent to truly believe that climate change is not a growing crisis. And yet they have put their profits and careers ahead of the health and welfare of the world's population--and even their own children and grandchildren. How do they explain themselves to their offspring, to the next generations that must deal with the environmental havoc that these men have wreaked? Horsemen of the Apocalypse takes a personal look at this global crisis, literally bringing it home.</div>

Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who Are Destroying the Planet--and How They Explain Themselves to Their Own Children

Politics & Social Sciences

Russell, Dick

Kennedy, Jr., Robert F.

Social Sciences

A New York Times Best Seller! Searing Dispatches from the Urban Zones Where African American Men Have Become an Endangered Species To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in going beyond race,” putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: African Americansparticularly young black menare an endangered species. Now the country’s urban war zone is brought powerfully to life by a rising young literary talent, D. Watkins. The author fought his way up on the east side (the beast side”) of Baltimore, Marylandor Bodymore, Murderland,” as his friends call itsurviving murderous business rivals in the drug trade and equally predatory lawmen. Throughout it all, he pursued his education, earning a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, while staying rooted in his community. When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enoughafter the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custodyWatkins was on the streets when the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding hometown with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.

The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America

Biographies & Memoirs

Watkins, D.

Arts & Literature

The American people depend on a free press to keep a close and impartial watch on the national security operations that are carried out in our name. But in many cases, this trust is sadly misplaced, as leading journalists are seduced and manipulated by the secretive agencies they cover. While the press remains silent about its corrupting relationship with the intelligence communitya relationship that dates back to the Cold WarSpooking the News will blow the lid off this unseemly arrangement. Schou will name names and shine a spotlight on flagrant examples of collusion, when respected reporters have crossed the line and sold out to powerful agencies. The book will also document how the CIA has embedded itself in liberal” Hollywood to ensure that its fictional spies get the hero treatment on screen. Among the revelations in Spooking the News: The CIA created a special public affairs unit to influence the production of Hollywood films and TV shows, allowing celebrities involved in pro-CIA projectsincluding Harrison Ford and Ben Affleckunique access inside the agency's headquarters. The CIA vets articles on controversial topics like the drone assassination program and grants friendly reporters background briefings on classified material, while simultaneously prosecuting ex-officers who spill the beans on damaging information.

Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood

Humor & Entertainment

Nick Schou

Television

Whistleblowers pay with their lives to save ours. When insiders like former NSA analyst Edward Snowden or ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley or Big Tobacco truth-teller Jeffrey Wigand blow the whistle on high-level lying, lawbreaking or other wrongdoing—whether it's government spying, corporate murder or scientific scandal—the public benefits enormously. Wars are ended, deadly products are taken off the market, white-collar criminals are sent to jail. The whistleblowers themselves, however, generally end up ruined. Nearly all of them lose their jobs—and in many cases their marriages and their health—as they refuse to back down in the face of increasingly ferocious official retaliation. That moral stubbornness despite terrible personal cost is the defining DNA of whistleblowers. The public owes them more than we know. In Bravehearts, Hertsgaard tells the gripping, sometimes darkly comic and ultimately inspiring stories of the unsung heroes of our time. A deeply reported, impassioned polemic, Bravehearts is a book for citizens everywhere—especially students, teachers, activists and anyone who wants to make a difference in the world around them.

Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden

Hertsgaard, Mark

True Crime

“There’s a whole chapter on my son Beau… He was co-located [twice] near these burn pits.” –Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States of America The Agent Orange of the 21st Century… Thousands of American soldiers are returning from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds from chemical war. They are not the victims of ruthless enemy warfare, but of their own military commanders. These soldiers, afflicted with rare cancers and respiratory diseases, were sickened from the smoke and ash swirling out of the “burn pits” where military contractors incinerated mountains of trash, including old stockpiles of mustard and sarin gas, medical waste, and other toxic material. This shocking work includes: <li> Illustration of the devastation in one soldier’s intimate story 
</li>
<li> A plea for help 
</li>
<li> Connection between the burn pits and Major Biden’s unfortunate suffering and death 
</li>
<li> The burn pits’ effects on native citizens of Iraq: mothers, fathers, and children 
</li>
<li> Denial from the Department of Defense and others 
</li>
<li> Warning signs that were ignored 
</li>
<li> and much more Based on thousands of government documents, over five hundred in-depth medical case studies, and interviews with more than one thousand veterans and active-duty GIs, The Burn Pits will shock the nation. The book is more than an explosive work of investigative journalism—it is the deeply moving chronicle of the many young men and women who signed up to serve their country in the wake of 9/11, only to return home permanently damaged, the victims of their own armed forces’ criminal negligence.</li>

The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America's Soldiers

Hickman, Joseph

Military

The debate over sexual violence on campus is reaching fever pitch, from headlines about outof-control fraternities, to the ”mattress protests” by female students at Columbia University and other colleges. The Hunting Ground, the new documentary by award-winning filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, has taken this debate to a new level, becoming a galvanizing catalyst for discussion at the hundreds of campuses where the documentary is being screened each month. The film has sparked calls for legislation by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and other prominent public figures and sparked a backlash from university administrators, fraternities, and conservative groups. Now, in a new companion volume to the film, all those concerned about the rape culture” on campus will be offered an inside perspective on the controversy, as well as reactions to the film from a range of leading writers and guidance on how to learn more and get active. As in the film, it’s the gripping personal stories told by female studentsand the obstinate refusal of college administrators and law enforcement authorities to recognize the severity of the problemthat will rivet readers.

The Hunting Ground: The Inside Story of Sexual Assault on American College Campuses

Dick, Kirby

Ziering, Amy

President Jimmy Carter called Scapegoats "an important book that shows Islamophobia must be addressed urgently." Because when a murderous psychopath goes on a killing spree, law enforcement officials and the media never make his religion the central issue--unless he happens to be a Muslim. Then it sets off another frenzied wave of commentary about the inherent evils that lurk within the Muslim faith. From Fox News talking heads, who regularly smear Muslim leaders as secret terrorists, to Bill Maher, who has made Islam a routine target, it has become widely acceptable to libel a religion with a following of over 1.5 billion people--nearly one-quarter of the world's population. Now popular commentator Arsalan Iftikhar--better known as "The Muslim Guy"--offers a spirited defense of his faith that is certain to win him wide acclaim--and yes, another round of overheated scolding from the usual media quarters. Arsalan Iftikhar's spirited defense of his faith is certain to hit a chord during the 2016 campaign season, as politicians and pundits vie to be the toughest on the block when it comes to escalating the hostilities in the Middle East, often demonizing Islam in the process. With his witty and levelheaded demeanor, the author will cut through all the sound and fury as a voice of sanity and reason.

Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

Iftikhar, Arsalan

Seeds of Resistance is a wake-up call. With vivid and memorable stories, Mark Schapiro tells us how seeds are at the frontlines of our epic battle for healthy food.” —Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard Sun. Soil. Water. Seed. These are the primordial ingredients for the most essential activity of all on earth: growing food. All of these elements are being changed dramatically under the pressures of corporate consolidation of the food chain, which has been accelerating just as climate change is profoundly altering the conditions for growing food. In the midst of this global crisis, the fate of our food has slipped into a handful of the world’s largest companies. Seeds of Resistance will bring home what this corporate stranglehold is doing to our daily diet, from the explosion of genetically modified foods to the rapid disappearance of plant varieties to the elimination of independent farmers who have long been the bedrock of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will touch many nerves for readers, including concerns about climate change, chronic drought in essential farm states like California, the proliferation of GMOs, government interference (or purposeful ignorance), and the alarming domination of the seed market and our very life cycle by global giants like Monsanto. But not all is bleak when it comes to the future of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will also present hopeful stories about farmers, consumer groups, and government agencies around the world that are resisting the tightening corporate squeeze on our food chain. “The latest science suggests that plants, including those of our major food crops, are engaged in a continuous interplay of responses with the environment in which they’re planted. That environment is changing; climatic disruptions are accelerating. The number of seed companies is declining, and the spectrum of seeds shrinking. The group of people involved in fighting for their seeds, and a more just and healthy food system, is expanding. Old assumptions of how we grow food are falling. New paradigms are emerging. It’s a time of profound vitality and volatility in the seed realm, with high stakes for all of us who care about our health, the planet’s health, and the food we eat. As powerful forces circle round the ground-zero ingredient of our food, one thing is becoming clear: a seed is never just a seed. Seeds are the canaries on our climate disrupted planet. They’re emitting strong signals. Let’s read them.”

Seeds of Resistance: The Fight to Save Our Food Supply

Business & Money

Schapiro, Mark

Economics

In The Skorzeny Papers, the author reveals the details of the post-World War II activities of former SS Commando Otto Skorzeny. Considered by British and American Allied forces as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” Skorzeny planned and led numerous daring missions throughout the war. The story in this book was extracted by Major Ganis from Skorzeny’s personal papers. The evidence reveals that Skorzeny gradually and methodically became involved in US intelligence and covert operations during the Cold War. But Skorzeny’s network had a greater point of destiny in November 1963, when it was utilized to carry out the most tragic mission in history. This story would have been lost had Skorzeny not kept meticulous records of his businesses and contacts, which were fronts for US covert activity. In the end, The Skorzeny Papers reveal the intriguing web of secret organizations and people linked to the events culminating in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The Skorzeny Papers: Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK

Ganis, Ralph P.

Historical

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