Rosewater: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival

Rosewater: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival
Maziar Bahari (Author), Aimee Molloy (Author), Jon Meacham (Foreword)
(85)

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Human Rights

The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI (Vintage)

The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI (Vintage)
Betty L. Medsger (Author)
(160)

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Human Rights

The never-before-told full story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists—quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans—that made clear the shocking truth and confirmed what some had long suspected, that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation.

It begins in 1971 in an America being split apart by the Vietnam War . . . A small group of activists—eight men and women—the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, inspired by Daniel Berrigan’s rebellious Catholic peace movement, set out to use a more active, but nonviolent, method of civil disobedience to provide hard evidence once and for all that the government was operating outside the laws of the land.
           
The would-be burglars—nonpro’s—were ordinary people leading lives of purpose: a professor of religion and former freedom rider; a day-care director; a physicist; a cab driver; an antiwar activist, a lock picker; a graduate student haunted by members of her family lost to the Holocaust and the passivity of German civilians under Nazi rule.

Betty Medsger's extraordinary book re-creates in resonant detail how this group of unknowing thieves, in their meticulous planning of the burglary, scouted out the low-security FBI building in a small town just west of Philadelphia, taking into consideration every possible factor, and how they planned the break-in for the night of the long-anticipated boxing match between Joe Frazier (war supporter and friend to President Nixon) and Muhammad Ali (convicted for refusing to serve in the military), knowing that all would be fixated on their televisions and radios.

Medsger writes that the burglars removed all of the FBI files and, with the utmost deliberation, released them to various journalists and members of Congress, soon upending the public’s perception of the inviolate head of the Bureau and paving the way for the first overhaul of the FBI since Hoover became its director in 1924.  And we see how the release of the FBI files to the press set the stage for the sensational release three months later, by Daniel Ellsberg, of the top-secret, seven-thousand-page Pentagon study on U.S. decision-making regarding the Vietnam War, which became known as the Pentagon Papers.
           
At the heart of the heist—and the book—the contents of the FBI files revealing J. Edgar Hoover’s “secret counterintelligence program” COINTELPRO, set up in 1956 to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the United States in order “to enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles,” to make clear to all Americans that an FBI agent was “behind every mailbox,” a plan that would discredit, destabilize, and demoralize groups, many of them legal civil rights organizations and antiwar groups that Hoover found offensive—as well as black power groups, student activists, antidraft protestors, conscientious objectors.

The author, the first reporter to receive the FBI files, began to cover this story during the three years she worked for The Washington Post and continued her investigation long after she'd left the paper, figuring out who the burglars were, and convincing them, after decades of silence, to come forward and tell their extraordinary story. 

The Burglary is an important and riveting book, a portrait of the potential power of non­violent resistance and the destructive power of excessive government secrecy and spying.

• Rank: #124585 in Books
• Published on: 2014-11-04
• Released on: 2014-11-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .81 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Author)
(54)

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Human Rights

Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam are threatened with death, and Muslim women who escape the virgins' cage are branded whores. So asserts Ayaan Hirsi Ali's profound meditation on Islam and the role of women, the rights of the individual, the roots of fanaticism, and Western policies toward Islamic countries and immigrant communities. Hard-hitting, outspoken, and controversial, The Caged Virgin is a call to arms for the emancipation of women from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from an outdated cult of virginity. It is a defiant call for clear thinking and for an Islamic Enlightenment. But it is also the courageous story of how Hirsi Ali herself fought back against everyone who tried to force her to submit to a traditional Muslim woman's life and how she became a voice of reform.

Born in Somalia and raised Muslim, but outraged by her religion's hostility toward women, Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage to a distant relative and fled to the Netherlands. There, she learned Dutch, worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women, earned a college degree, and started a career in politics as a Dutch parliamentarian. In November 2004, the violent murder on an Amsterdam street of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, with whom Hirsi Ali had written a film about women and Islam called Submission, changed her life. Threatened by the same group that slew van Gogh, Hirsi Ali now has round-the-clock protection, but has not allowed these circumstances to compromise her fierce criticism of the treatment of Muslim women, of Islamic governments' attempts to silence any questioning of their traditions, and of Western governments' blind tolerance of practices such as genital mutilation and forced marriages of female minors occurring in their countries.

Hirsi Ali relates her experiences as a Muslim woman so that oppressed Muslim women can take heart and seek their own liberation. Drawing on her love of reason and the Enlightenment philosophers on whose principles democracy was founded, she presents her firsthand knowledge of the Islamic worldview and advises Westerners how best to address the great divide that currently exists between the West and Islamic nations and between Muslim immigrants and their adopted countries.

An international bestseller -- with updated information for American readers and two new essays added for this edition -- The Caged Virgin is a compelling, courageous, eye-opening work.

• Rank: #109071 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Released on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .52" h x 5.74" w x 8.38" l, .43 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

• ISBN13: 9780743288347
• Condition: New
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Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man

Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man
Richard Stengel (Author)

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Human Rights

How Obama Betrayed America....And No One Is Holding HIm Accountable

How Obama Betrayed America....And No One Is Holding HIm Accountable
David Horowitz (Author)
(1)

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Human Rights

Lying about the reasons that an ambassador and three other Americans were murdered in Benghazi on 9/11/12—jihadi terror, not some trivial internet video was to blame—is only one of many indications that Barack Obama does not take the threats facing America seriously, and indeed, may think that the U.S. is so guilty for past transgressions that it deserves to be chastened on the world stage. As David Horowitz shows in this no holds barred pamphlet, minimizing the Islamist threat to the United States is not an oversight of the Obama administration; it is policy. The most dangerous Islamist regime, Iran, is being allowed to acquire nuclear weapons while Washington dithers over pointless negotiations and stands by as the mullahs fill the vacuum in Iraq created by the withdrawal of all American forces, against the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In Afghanistan, supposedly the "good war," victory is not an option; the Taliban licks its chops and waits for American troops to leave in ignominy. Meanwhile, this White House has facilitated the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, helping it come to power in Cairo, bankrolling it and giving it F-16s that are likely someday to be used against Israel, and displayed weakness in Syria by ignoring "red lines" it said would never be crossed. It is a low point for America, as David Horowitz shows, with Republicans, traditionally the party of strong national security, offering only an echo, not a choice in American foreign policy, watching in a state of policy paralysis as Obama appeases our enemies and enables their evil ambitions.

• Rank: #16579 in eBooks
• Published on: 2013-05-29
• Released on: 2013-05-29
• Format: Kindle eBook
• Number of items: 1

The Playground (Kindle Single)

The Playground (Kindle Single)
Terrence M. McCoy (Author)
(25)

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Human Rights

Selected by the Washington Post as one of 2012's best works of non-fiction. "Showcasing the work of an unknown author of exceptional ability. ... an ire-inspiring account."

• Rank: #21825 in eBooks
• Published on: 2012-04-23
• Released on: 2012-04-23
• Format: Kindle eBook
• Number of items: 1