Other books that might interest you

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  All the Shah's Men - An American...

  Stephen Kinzer

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  Half a century ago, the United States overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran,  Mohammad Mossadegh, whose "crime" was nationalizing the country's oil industry.  In a cloak-and-dagger story of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, Kinzer reveals the involvement of Eisenhower, Churchill, Kermit Roosevelt, and the CIA in Operation Ajax,  which restored Mohammad Reza Shah to power. Reza imposed a tyranny that ultimately sparked the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which, in turn, inspired fundamentalists throughout the Muslim world, including the Taliban and terrorists who thrived under its protection."It is not far-fetched," Kinzer asserts, "to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."

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  Friendly Fascism - The New Face...

  Bertram Gross

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  A look at corporate authoritarianism that William Shirer called “the best thing I’ve ever seen on how America might go fascist democratically.” In 1980, US capitalist politics wore a “nice-guy mask,” a troubling disguise to cover up a creeping despotism in which the ultra-rich and corporate overseers were merging with a centralized state power in order to manage the populace. This immanent corporate authoritarianism threatened to subvert constitutional democracy. But unlike the violent and sudden usurpations that led to fascism in the days of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese empire builders, this new “smiling” American breed of fascism was gaining ground through gradual and silent infringements on the freedoms of the American people.   First published over three decades ago, Friendly Fascism is uncannily predictive of the threats and realities of current political and economic power trends. Author Bertram Gross, a presidential adviser during the New Deal era, traces the history and logic of declining democracy in First World countries and pinpoints capitalist transnational growth and inappropriate responses to global crises as the sources of late twentieth-century despotism in America. Gross issues ever-urgent warnings about what happens when big business and big government become bedfellows—chronic inflation, recurring recession, overt and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of the environment—and simultaneously proffers a practical shift of perspective that could help US citizens build a truer democracy. He imagines an America in which heroes are no longer needed and the leadership is a group of non-elitists who “recognize the ignorance of the wise as well as the wisdom of the ignorant.”  

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  The Loud Minority - Why Protests...

  Daniel Q. Gillion

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  The "silent majority"—a phrase coined by Richard Nixon in 1969 in response to Vietnam War protests and later used by Donald Trump as a campaign slogan—refers to the supposed wedge that exists between protesters in the street and the voters at home. 
   
  The Loud Minority upends this view by demonstrating that voters are in fact directly informed and influenced by protest activism. Consequently, as protests grow in America, every facet of the electoral process is touched by this loud minority, benefiting the political party perceived to be the most supportive of the protesters' messaging.
   
  Drawing on historical evidence, statistical data, and detailed interviews about protest activity since the 1960s, Daniel Gillion shows that electoral districts with protest activity are more likely to see increased voter turnout at the polls. Surprisingly, protest activities are also moneymaking endeavors for electoral politics, as voters donate more to political candidates who share the ideological leanings of activists. Finally, protests are a signal of political problems, encouraging experienced political challengers to run for office and hurting incumbents' chances of winning reelection.
   
  An exploration of how protests affect voter behavior and warn of future electoral changes, The Loud Minority looks at the many ways that activism can shape democracy.

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  The Secret Genesis of Area 51

  TD Barnes

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  The man “who has done more than anyone to lift the veil of secrecy . . . about what’s unfolded out there in the desert” reveals the origins of Area 51 (KLAS 8 News Now).   In 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency established a clandestine base of operations in the Nevada desert with a mission to protect the United States from a growing communist threat. Special projects at Area 51 were shrouded in mystery, and the first was one of the world’s most famous spy planes, the U-2. It fueled half-truths, rumors and legends for more than half a century. Now with many details of that endeavor declassified, the real story can finally be told. Author and Area 51 veteran TD Barnes sifts fact from fiction in one of America’s most protected origin stories.

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  The Bodies Keep Coming -...

  Dr. Brian H. Williams

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  Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories more than hard truths, he came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like. Now, in raw, intimate detail, he narrates not only the events of that night, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care. Working in the physician-writer tradition of Gawande and Tweedy, he diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, training his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills manifesting themselves in his patients' bodies. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it's designed to do? Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until we transform policy and law with compassion and care.

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  The Nazis' Nuremberg Rallies

  James Wilson

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  “An amazing collection of original photographs and postcards relating to the Nuremberg rallies of the Nazis . . . the book is dazzling.” —War History Online This book describes the background to and the development of the Nazi Party Rallies held at Nuremberg each September from 1933 to 1939. These Reichsparteitage (National Party Days) were vast and meticulously staged managed extravaganzas in which ritual and ceremony played an important part. The Rallies had two key objectives. The first was to focus public attention on the successes of the Nazi Party and connect with the public conscience and build a close bond between Party and people. Even more important was the Rallies’ role in presenting Adolf Hitler as the savior of the German nation sent to restore national pride, power and prosperity after the shame and economic disaster of the post war years and the deeply resented Versailles Treaty. The Hitler Cult was blatantly promoted with revolutionary use of propaganda by the latest technology and iron control of the media. The author’s superb collection of postcards and images takes the reader on a visual journey through each year’s Reichsparteitage. The Nazis’ Nuremberg Rallies, which also includes character studies of the principal Nazi figures, is a truly fascinating way to understand this uniquely successful and threatening phenomena.“Excellent . . . The book really does bring each and every rally to life, the book also has some rare photos that I haven’t seen before and it also displays posters and postcards designed for the events. So you get to see the propaganda on multiple levels.” —UK Historian

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