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  Whistling Dixie - Ronald Reagan...

  Jonathan Bartho

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  Jonathan Bartho's Whistling Dixie explores the interdependent political relationship between Ronald Reagan and the white conservative South—a relationship that had a profound impact on Reagan's own career, on the political landscape of the South and the entire United States, and on the identity of the modern Republican Party. Millions of southerners were attracted to the GOP by Reagan's anti-statist ideology and their affection for the man himself—an affection that had been built over decades of appearances in the region. The support of these white southern conservatives was crucial to Reagan's political success, ultimately propelling him to the White House in 1980. Conversely, by supporting Reagan's presidential campaigns, southern conservatives were able to influence the direction of the Republican Party and begin restoring their region to a position of power in Washington.Bartho deftly provides a new perspective on Reagan's political career and the Republican Party of the Reagan era while detailing the often-rancorous philosophical differences between Reaganism and southern conservatism and the resulting political conflicts. Whistling Dixie highlights a divide in the Republican Party and in American conservatism that has often been overlooked—a divide that laid the foundations for the GOP's southernization and ultimately led to the rise of Donald Trump.

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  The CIA in Hollywood - How the...

  Tricia Jenkins

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  An in-depth study of the CIA’s collaboration with Hollywood since the mid-1990s, and the important and troubling questions it creates. 
   
  What’s your impression of the CIA? A bumbling agency that can’t protect its own spies? A rogue organization prone to covert operations and assassinations? Or a dedicated public service that advances the interests of the United States? Astute TV and movie viewers may have noticed that the CIA’s image in popular media has spanned this entire range, with a decided shift to more positive portrayals in recent years. But what very few people know is that the Central Intelligence Agency has been actively engaged in shaping the content of film and television, especially since it established an entertainment industry liaison program in the mid-1990s. 
   
  The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA’s public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA’s role in Hollywood. In particular, she delves into the Agency’s and its officers’ involvement in the production of The Agency, In the Company of Spies, Alias, The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and more. Her research reveals the significant influence that the CIA now wields in Hollywood and raises important and troubling questions about the ethics and legality of a government agency using popular media to manipulate its public image. 
   
  “Fascinating, highly readable . . . Overall, Jenkins’s work is fresh and original, and demonstrates sound scholarship. The author has a passion for the topic that translates to vibrant writing. It is also a concise as well as entertaining look at an aspect of the CIA—its media relations with Hollywood—of which little is known. Enthusiastically written and incorporating effective, illustrative case studies, The CIA in Hollywood is definitely recommended to students of film, media relations, the CIA, and U.S. interagency relations.” —H-War

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  The Pinochet File - A...

  Peter Kornbluh

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  Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet’s Chilean coup—“the evidence is overwhelming” (The New Yorker).    Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts.   When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger’s attempt to undercut the book’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power.   “The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.” —Los Angeles Times

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  Spies Scouts and Secrets in the...

  Thomas J. Cryan

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  “A fascinating book, and the most detailed account you will find about intelligence operations during the Gettysburg campaign.” —Dr. Vince Houghton, Historian/Curator, International Spy Museum, Washington, DC   As intelligence experts have long asserted, “Information in regard to the enemy is the indispensable basis of all military plans.” Despite the thousands of books and articles written about Gettysburg, Tom Ryan’s groundbreaking Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign is the first to offer a unique and incisive comparative study of intelligence operations during what many consider the war’s decisive campaign.   Based upon years of indefatigable research, the author evaluates how Gen. Robert E. Lee used intelligence resources, including cavalry, civilians, newspapers, and spies to gather information about Union activities during his invasion of the North in June and July 1863, and how this information guided Lee’s decision-making. Simultaneously, Ryan explores the effectiveness of the Union Army of the Potomac’s intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Both Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker and George G. Meade relied upon cavalry, the Signal Corps, and an intelligence staff known as the Bureau of Military Information that employed innovative concepts to gather, collate, and report vital information from a variety of sources.

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  Unravelling Enigma - Winning the...

  Maurice Freedman

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  Seldom out of the news for long, code-breaking has had a bad time in the media so far, readers and viewers often finding it as perplexing as it is intriguing. As one of the greatest achievements of the century, code- breaking is a fascinating story, but all too often misunderstood and felt to be obscure. The author covers the story from the early code-breaking efforts through the rickety structure of the pre-war Government Code and Cypher School to Bletchley Park where a large powerful organisation arose, unscrambling thousands of secret enemy messages every day. Detailing how these amazing discoveries were actually used, taking us briefly into some of the battles of the Second World War, and in some detail the Battle of the Atlantic, when Britain was in danger of starving and where the war was nearly lost.For the first time, the code-breaking story with all its complexities is told in a straightforward and readable manner, whilst at the same time it will not fail to intrigue and astonish readers.

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  The Doctor and the Saint - Caste...

  Arundhati Roy

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  The little-known story of Gandhi’s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India’s downtrodden. Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy—it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi’s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit “untouchables,” and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice—a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men—one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country.Praise for Arundhati Roy “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.” —Junot Díaz “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker

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