Books with category đź“ś History
Displaying 10 books

The Color Purple

2019

by Alice Walker

Alice Walker's iconic modern classic, The Color Purple, is a powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature that depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence.

Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia and their experiences. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery.

Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

Catch and Kill

2019

by Ronan Farrow

Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power - and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.

Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost - from Hollywood to Washington and beyond. In 2017, a routine network television investigation led to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most power­ful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. 

This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.

Information Wars

2019

by Richard Stengel

Information Wars, by former Time editor and Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel, provides a first-hand account of the challenges faced by the U.S. in combating the rise of global disinformation, which played a significant role in the 2016 election.

Disinformation is not a new phenomenon, but social media has amplified its reach and effects. Stengel's narrative, both dramatic and enlightening, takes readers through the front lines of the global information war during the last three years of the Obama administration. As the single person in the U.S. government responsible for addressing ISIS's messaging and Russian disinformation, Stengel's insights are crucial for understanding the current landscape.

The book delves into regions such as Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, featuring key figures including Putin, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mohamed bin Salman. It examines how ISIS utilized social media to instill terror and how Russia's disinformation campaign during the annexation of Crimea became a template for future operations, including interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Information Wars is an urgent call to action, emphasizing the need for democratic societies to develop effective strategies to counteract the growing threat of disinformation and protect the integrity of their institutions.

Talking to Strangers

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong .

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. 

He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland---throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. 

Humankind

Humankind: A Hopeful History challenges the belief that humans are fundamentally bad—a notion that has been a common thread uniting figures across the ideological spectrum from ancient philosophers to modern thinkers. Rutger Bregman questions this assumption and offers a new perspective on our species, arguing that we are innately kind, cooperative, and trustworthy.

Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology to historical events, such as the real-life story reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and the cooperation seen in the wake of the Blitz, Bregman presents compelling evidence of humanity's capacity for generosity. The book critically examines popular social science experiments, like the Stanford prison experiment, and historical contexts, arguing for a more optimistic view of human nature and its implications for politics and economics.

Using engaging storytelling and an accessible approach, Bregman makes the case that a belief in the better aspects of humanity can create a foundation for societal change. With a balance of wit and frankness, Humankind is not just an analysis of past behavior but a hopeful vision for the future of our species.

How to Be an Antiracist

2019

by Ibram X. Kendi

At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves.

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism.

This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

Largo pétalo de mar

2019

by Isabel Allende

Largo pétalo de mar es una novela escrita por Isabel Allende. La historia se desarrolla durante la Guerra Civil Española y sigue a los personajes de Víctor Dalmau y Roser Bruguera. Juntos, huyen a Francia y luego se embarcan en el Winnipeg, un barco fletado por el poeta Pablo Neruda, para llegar a Chile. En Chile, Víctor y Roser se enfrentan a los desafíos de una nueva vida, pero también encuentran amor y amistad. A medida que el tiempo pasa, la historia se entrelaza con eventos históricos como el golpe militar de 1973 y el exilio forzado de muchos chilenos. Esta novela épica es una historia de amor, pérdida, esperanza y resistencia. Isabel Allende teje hábilmente la narrativa, explorando temas de identidad, pertenencia y el poder del amor en tiempos difíciles.

The Huntress

2019

by Kate Quinn

The Huntress, by Kate Quinn, is a historical fiction narrative that intricately weaves the paths of a battle-haunted English journalist and a fearless Russian female bomber pilot with an extensive objective: to track down a Nazi war criminal hiding in America.

Nina Markova, fueled by her dreams to fly, joins the legendary Night Witches—an all-female night bomber regiment during World War II. Her survival and courage are tested when a disastrous encounter with the Huntress, a lethal Nazi murderess, puts her life on the line. In a surprising twist of fate, the hunter becomes the hunted.

Meanwhile, Ian Graham, a journalist who has seen the horrors of war, is on a mission to seek justice. He partners with Nina to find the elusive Huntress, but to succeed in their quest, both must confront a shared secret that could derail everything.

In post-war Boston, young Jordan McBride's aspirations to become a photographer are met with a wave of skepticism when her father brings home a new German fiancée. Suspicions about her stepmother's past set Jordan on a troubling path that might unbury secrets too dangerous to confront.

Kate Quinn offers a story of grit, suspense, and the relentless pursuit of justice.

Midnight in Chernobyl

Midnight in Chernobyl is the definitive account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. Journalist Adam Higginbotham uses his extensive research, including hundreds of hours of interviews, letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives to bring the disaster to life through the eyes of those who witnessed it firsthand.

The explosion of Reactor Number Four on April 26, 1986, triggered one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters. For thirty years, Chernobyl has been a symbol of the horrors of radiation poisoning and the risks of dangerous technology. The true story of the accident, obscured by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.

This masterful nonfiction thriller is an indelible portrait of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons that, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary. Midnight in Chernobyl brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy and is a powerful investigation into how much can go wrong when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world.

The Mastermind

2019

by Evan Ratliff

The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them.

The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined. For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed.

Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux's empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age.

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