Other books that might interest you

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  A Kidnapped West - The Tragedy...

  Milan Kundera

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  “We should welcome the context Kundera gives for the struggles between Russia and Europe, and the plight of those caught between them. His defense of small languages, small cultures, and small nations feels pressing.”—Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine 
  “Kundera focuses on the relationship of Europe’s central ‘small nations’ like Czechoslovakia and Ukraine to Western culture and argues that their cultural identities were increasingly threatened.”—New York Book Review  
  A short collection of brilliant early essays that offers a fascinating context for Milan Kundera’s subsequent career and holds a mirror to much recent European history.  It is also remarkably prescient with regard to Russia’s current aggression in Ukraine and its threat to the rest of Europe. 
  Milan Kundera’s early nonfiction work feels especially resonant in our own time. In these pieces, Kundera pleads the case of the “small nations” of Europe who, by culture, are Western with deep roots in Europe, despite Russia imposing its own Communist political regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Kundera warns that the real tragedy here is not Russia but Europe, whose own identity and culture are directly challenged and threatened in a way that could lead to their destruction. He is sounding the alarm, which chimes loud and clear in our own twenty-first century. 
  The 1983 essay translated by Edmund White (“The Tragedy of Central Europe”), and the 1967 lecture delivered to the Czech Writers’ Union in the middle of the Prague Spring by the young Milan Kundera (“Literature and the Small Nations”), translated for the first time by Linda Asher, are both written in a voice that is at once personal, vehement, and anguished. Here, Kundera appears already as one of our great European writers and truly our contemporary. Each piece is prefaced by a short presentation by French historian Pierre Nora and Czech-born French political scientist Jacques Rupnik.

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  Secret Agenda - Watergate Deep...

  Jim Hougan

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  The exposé that reveals “a prostitution ring, heavy CIA involvement, spying on the White House as well as on the Democrats, and plots within plots” (The Washington Post) Ten years after the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, Jim Hougan—then the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine—set out to write a profile of Lou Russell, a boozy private-eye who plied his trade in the vice-driven underbelly of the nation’s capital. Hougan soon discovered that Russell was “the sixth man, the one who got away” when his boss, veteran CIA officer Jim McCord, led a break-in team into a trap at the Watergate. Using the Freedom of Information Act to win the release of the FBI’s Watergate investigation—some thirty-thousand pages of documents that neither the Washington Post nor the Senate had seen—Hougan refuted the orthodox narrative of the affair. Armed with evidence hidden from the public for more than a decade, Hougan proves that McCord deliberately sabotaged the June 17, 1972, burglary. None of the Democrats’ phones had been bugged, and the spy-team’s ostensible leader, Gordon Liddy, was himself a pawn—at once, guilty and oblivious. The power struggle that unfolded saw E. Howard Hunt and Jim McCord using the White House as a cover for an illicit domestic intelligence operation involving call-girls at the nearby Columbia Plaza Apartments. A New York Times Notable Book, Secret Agenda “present[s] some valuable new evidence and explored many murky corners of our recent past . . . The questions [Hougan] has posed here—and some he hasn’t—certainly deserve an answer” (The New York Times Book Review). Kirkus Reviews declared the book “a fascinating series of puzzles—with all the detective work laid out.”

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  Swing Hard in Case You Hit It -...

  Tim Murtaugh

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  When he woke up in jail in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2015, Tim Murtaugh had no way of knowing he'd be a senior leader on the reelection campaign for the president of the United States less than four years later. 
   
   
   
  What began as a form of high school amusement quickly became an addiction, which over decades would lead Murtaugh to the edge of ruin. Able to beat the disease of alcoholism only under the threat of losing everything, and with the support of a loving wife and family, Murtaugh managed to recover, revive his career, and make it to the top of the political world. 
   
   
   
  Travel along on the 2020 Trump campaign as Murtaugh shares stories—never published before—from his two years as communications director, navigating a hostile media, the COVID-19 pandemic, highly anticipated debates, Election Day 2020, January 6, and life on the most-watched political campaign in world history. 
   
   
   
  Swing Hard in Case You Hit It is a redemption story unlike any other—from being on the verge of complete self-destruction to flying on Air Force One with President Donald J. Trump—that doesn't come with a happy Hollywood ending.

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  1980 Nomination Acceptance Address

  Ronald Reagan

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  Cover Art Photo: Ronald Reagan giving his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention at Joe Louis Arena, Detroit, Michigan. July 17, 1980. 
  In his acceptance speech, Reagan envisioned “a new consensus with all those across the land who share a community of values embodied in these words: family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom.” Reagan’s acceptance focuses on “three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.” 
  Reagan places responsibility on the “Democratic party leadership-in the White House and in Congress-for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us.” He says his first act will be “to impose an immediate and thorough freeze on federal hiring” and “to conduct a detailed review of every department, bureau and agency that lives by federal appropriation.” Reagan calls for “a 30 percent reduction in income tax rates over a period of three years” and reminds us that “every major tax cut in this century has strengthened the economy, generated renewed productivity and ended up yielding new revenues for the government”. 
  On the issue of national defense, Reagan asserts that we “know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.” While calling for a strong military, Reagan reiterates his long-held belief that government is too big and the “time is now to limit federal spending; to insist on a stable monetary reform and to free ourselves from imported oil.” 
  Search online for “Ronald Reagan major speeches” to see both a text version and a video version of this speech. Audio recording courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. AspenLeafMedia.com

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  Two Treatises of Government The:...

  Briefly Summaries

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  This is a concise summary and analysis of The Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke.
  It is not the original book and is not affiliated with or endorsed by 
  John Locke.
  Ideal those seeking a quick and insightful overview.
   
  The Two Treatises of Government is a foundational work of political philosophy that challenges the concept of absolute monarchy and lays the groundwork for modern democracy. Divided into two parts, the first treatise critiques the idea of divine-right monarchy, dismantling its theological and philosophical arguments. The second treatise presents a compelling vision of government based on natural rights, consent, and the social contract. Addressing themes of liberty, property, and governance, this timeless text continues to influence debates on freedom and justice in contemporary society.

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  The Pursuit of Dominance - 2000...

  Christopher J. Fettweis

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  The United States is the most powerful actor in the international system, but it is facing a set of challenges that might lead to its decline as this century unfolds. 
   
   
   
  In The Pursuit of Dominance, Christopher J. Fettweis examines the grand strategy of previous superpowers to see how they maintained, or failed to maintain, their status. Over the course of six cases, from Ancient Rome to the British Empire, he seeks guidance from the past for present US policymakers. Like the United States, the examples Fettweis uses were the world's strongest powers at particularly moments in time, and they were hoping to stay that way. Rather than focusing on those powers' rise or how they ruled, however, Fettweis looks at how they sought to maintain their power. From these cases, one paramount lesson becomes clear: Dominant powers usually survive even the most incompetent leaders. Fettweis is most interested in how these superpowers defined their interests, the grand strategies these regimes followed to maintain superiority over their rivals, and how the practice of that strategy worked. 
   
   
   
  A sweeping history of grand strategy, The Pursuit of Dominance looks at the past 2,000 years to highlight what—if anything—current US strategists can learn from the experience of earlier superpowers.

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