Other books that might interest you

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  Invisible Hands - The Making of...

  Kim Phillips-Fein

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  Starting in the mid-1930s, a handful of prominent American businessmen forged alliances with the aim of rescuing America-and their profit margins-from socialism and the "nanny state." Long before the "culture wars" usually associated with the rise of conservative politics, these driven individuals funded think tanks, fought labor unions, and formed organizations to market their views. These nearly unknown, larger-than-life, and sometimes eccentric personalities-such as General Electric's zealous, silver-tongued Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and the self-described "revolutionary" Jasper Crane of DuPont-make for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes view of American history.The winner of a prestigious academic award for her original research on this book, Kim Phillips-Fein is already being heralded as an important new young American historian. Her meticulous research and narrative gifts reveal the dramatic story of a pragmatic, step-by-step, check-by-check campaign to promote an ideological revolution-one that ultimately helped propel conservative ideas to electoral triumph.

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  The United States of Paranoia -...

  Jesse Walker

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  “A superb analysis of American paranoia . . . a terrific, measured, objective study of one of American culture’s most loaded topics.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) 
   
  Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia presents a comprehensive history of conspiracy theories in American culture and politics, from the colonial era to the War on Terror. 
   
  The fear of intrigue and subversion doesn’t exist only on the fringes of society, but has always been part of our national identity. When such tales takes hold, Walker argues, they reflect the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe them, even if they say nothing true about the objects of the theories themselves. 
   
  With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor, Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real history with the punch of pulp fiction. 
   
  This edition includes primary-source documentation in the form of archival photographs, cartoons, and film stills selected by the author. 
   
  “Oddly entertaining . . . Walker quickly demolishes [Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics]. It’s all too rare to come upon a writer willing to attack the sacred cows of the right and left with equal amounts of intelligence and flair.” —Los Angeles Times 
   
  “Free-floating fear and half-baked ideas about what’s really going on have been a more significant part of American history than is generally accepted, according to Jesse Walker’s thorough, meticulously researched book.”—Vice 
   
  “A remarkably comprehensive, wide-ranging look at the way American culture, politics, religion, and social structure have been affected by conspiracy stories.” —Booklist

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  Areopagitica - Including the...

  John John

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  "Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye."  
  Areopagitica - A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parliament of England is a prose polemic against the licensing and censorship. Areopagitica is among the most influential and impassioned philosophical defenses of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. Many of the principles expressed in this polemic have formed the basis for modern justifications. 
  Contents: 
  Areopagitica 
  Biography of John Milton

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  MI5: British Security Service...

  Nigel West

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  The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy shares the history of MI5, from its beginnings in 1909 to 1945 and its role in the Second World War.   MI5 is arguably the most secret and misunderstood of all the British government departments. Its enigmatic title—much more than its proper name, the Security Service—stands in the public mind for the dark world of the secret services. In reality it has a very specific responsibility: counterintelligence. Its purpose is to combat espionage and subversion directed against the UK.   Nigel West’s book traces the history of MI5 from its modest beginnings in 1909 until 1945, focusing on the important role it played in World War II. This includes the story of the sixteen enemy agents rounded up in Britain who were either hanged or shot; the manipulation of the Axis espionage networks by the use of “turned” Abwehr agents (the famous Double Cross System) and the all-important check on its success provided by the intercepted German signals decoded at Bletchley; and the various deceptions practiced on the German High Command.   Laced with true anecdotes as bizarre and compulsively readable as any John Le Carré novel, this book is the fruit of years of painstaking research. West has traced and interviewed more than a hundred people who figure prominently in the story: German and Soviet agents, counterintelligence officers, and even more than a dozen double agents.   In this newly revised edition, Nigel West details the organizational charts which show the structure of the wartime security apparatus, in the most accurate and informative account ever written of MI5 before and during the Second World War.

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  Broken - Can the Senate Save...

  Ira Shapiro

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  While the hyper-partisanship in Washington that has stunned the world has been building for decades, Ira Shapiro argues that the U.S. Senate has suffered most acutely from the loss of its political center. In Broken, Ira Shapiro, a former senior Senate staffer and author of the critically-acclaimed book The Last Great Senate, offers an expert's account of some of the most prominent battles of the past decade and lays out what must be done to restore the Senate's lost luster. With a narrative that runs right through the first six months of the Trump presidency, Broken is a must-listen book for all concerned about the state of our politics and the future of our country.

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  Bomb Power - The Modern...

  Garry Wills

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  In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots-by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state-in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.The invention of the atomic bomb was a triumph of official secrecy and military discipline-the project was covertly funded at the behest of the president and, despite its massive scale, never discovered by Congress or the press. This concealment was perhaps to be expected in wartime, but Wills persuasively argues that the Manhattan Project then became a model for the covert operations and overt authority that have defined American government in the nuclear era. The wartime emergency put in place during World War II extended into the Cold War and finally the war on terror, leaving us in a state of continuous war alert for sixty-eight years and counting.The bomb forever changed the institution of the presidency since only the president controls "the button" and, by extension, the fate of the world. Wills underscores how radical a break this was from the division of powers established by our founding fathers and how it, in turn, has enfeebled Congress and the courts. The bomb also placed new emphasis on the president's military role, creating a cult around the commander in chief. The tendency of modern presidents to flaunt military airs, Wills points out, is entirely a postbomb phenomenon. Finally, the Manhattan Project inspired the vast secretive apparatus of the national security state, including intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA, which remain largely unaccountable to Congress and the American people.Wills recounts how, following World War II, presidential power increased decade by decade until reaching its stunning apogee with the Bush administration. Both provocative and illuminating, Bomb Power casts the history of the postwar period in a new light and sounds an alarm about the continued threat to our Constitution.

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