Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2005
ISBN 10: 1586483129 ISBN 13: 9781586483128
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. In early 1986 Kathy Gannon sold pretty much everything she owned (which wasn't much) to pursue her dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had the world to choose from: she chose Afghanistan. She went to witness the final humiliation of a superpower in terminal decline as the Soviet Union was defeated by the mujahedeen. What she didn't know then was that Afghanistan would remain her focus for the next eighteen years. Gannon, uniquely among Western journalists, witnessed Afghanistan's tragic opera: the final collapse of communism followed by bitterly feuding warlords being driven from power by an Islamicist organization called the Taliban; the subsequent arrival of Arabs and exiles, among them Osama bin Laden; and the transformation of the country into the staging post for a global jihad.Gannon observed something else as well: the terrible, unforeseen consequences of Western intervention, the ongoing suffering of ordinary Afghans, and the ability of the most corrupt and depraved of the warlords to reinvent and reinsert themselves into successive governments. I is for Infidel is the story of a country told by a writer with a uniquely intimate knowledge of its people and recent history. It will transform readers' understanding of Afghanistan, and inspire awe at the resilience of its people in the face of the monstrous warmongers we have to some extent created there.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2011
ISBN 10: 1586488953 ISBN 13: 9781586488956
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. In the first half of the twenty-first century, giving to family and community foundations alone will be ten times in today's dollars what it was throughout the entire twentieth century. Yet despite tremendous innovation in the social sector, philanthropy's natural state is under-performance. Not since Andrew Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth has a book been written that provides practical guidance for donors to get the most impact from their giving.Almost a decade ago, Thomas J. Tierney left Bain & Company to co-found The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit focused on helping donors and nonprofit leaders to develop and execute strategies to accelerate social change. In Give Smart, Tierney pools his hands-on knowledge with philanthropy expert Joel L. Fleishman to create a much-needed primer for philanthropists and the nonprofit organizations they support. Drawing from personal experiences, testimonials, and Bridgespan's case studies, including those of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Give Smart picks up where Jim Collins' Good to Great and the Social Sectors left off and presents the first in-depth, expert guide for engaged donors and nonprofit leaders.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2003
ISBN 10: 1891620703 ISBN 13: 9781891620706
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Argues that Franklin's kite experiment never took place and that it was a scientific hoax that grew to legendary proportions and may have affected the outcome of the American Revolution.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2008
ISBN 10: 1586486195 ISBN 13: 9781586486198
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Americans have always thought their healthcare system was the best in the world. But starting in the late 1990s, shocking reports emerged that showed this was far from the truth. Treatment-related deaths or complications were found to be the fifth leading cause of death for Americans, and hundreds of thousands of patients were being harmed by botched medical procedures.Spurred by the quality crisis, a group of visionary physicians led by Donald Berwick and Paul Batalden embarked on a study of industrial quality improvement techniques, daring to apply them to the practice of medicine despite resistance from the medical community. The Best Practice tells the story of this burgeoning movement, and of how the medical landscape is being radically transformed-for the better.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 1999
ISBN 10: 1891620118 ISBN 13: 9781891620119
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 0. The author discusses his efforts to help the poor in Bangladesh with micro-loans, which led to his establishing the Grameen Bank.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2000
ISBN 10: 1891620606 ISBN 13: 9781891620607
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Introduces readers to the people and problems threatening Nigeria's existence, discussing the abject poverty despite hefty foreign aid, military coups, political corruption, and conflicts between Christians and Muslims over Islamic law.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2006
ISBN 10: 1586483323 ISBN 13: 9781586483326
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. Annotated edition. In 1957, Herbert L.Matthews of the New York Times, then considered one of the premiere foreign correspondents of his time, tracked down Fidel Castro in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains and returned with what was considered the scoop of the century. His heroic portrayal of Castro, who was then believed dead, had a powerful effect on American perceptions of Cuba, both in and out of the government, and profoundly influenced the fall of the Batista regime. When Castro emerged as a Soviet-backed dictator, Matthews became a scapegoat; his paper turned on him, his career foundered, and he was accused of betraying his country. In this fascinating book, New York Times reporter DePalma investigates the Matthews case to reveal how it contains the story not just of one newspaperman but of an age, not just how Castro came to power but how America determines who its enemies are. He re-creates the atmosphere of revolutionary Cuba and Cold War America, and clarifies the facts of Castro's ascension and political evolution from the many myths that have sprung up around them. Through a dramatic, ironic, in ways tragic story, The Man Who Invented Fidel offers provocative insights into Cuban politics, the Cuban-American relationship, and the many difficult balancing acts of responsible journalism.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 1586487531 ISBN 13: 9781586487539
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. After a lifetime's close observation of the continent, one of the world's finest Africa correspondents has penned a landmark book on life and death in modern Africa. In captivating prose, Dowden spins tales of cults and commerce in Senegal and traditional spirituality in Sierra Leone; analyzes the impact of oil and the internet on Nigeria and aid on Sudan; and examines what has gone so badly wrong in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. From the individual stories of failure and success comes a surprising portrait of a new Africa emergingan Africa that, Dowden argues, can only be developed by its own people. Dowden's master work is an attempt to explain why Africa is the way it is and calls for a re-examination of the perception of Africa as the dark continent. He reveals it as a place of inspiration and tremendous humanity.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2010
ISBN 10: 1586484087 ISBN 13: 9781586484088
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. Although Americas universities have become the envy of the world for their creative energy and their production of transformative knowledge, few understand how and why they have become preeminent. This groundbreaking book traces the origins and the evolution of our great universities. It shows how they grew out of sleepy colleges at the turn of the twentieth century into powerful institutions that continue to generate new industries and advance our standard of living. Far from inevitable, this transformation was enabled by a highly competitive system that invested public tax dollars in university research and students while granting universities substantial autonomy. Today, Americas universities face considerable threats. Even greater than foreign competition are the threats from within the United States. Under the Bush administration, government increasingly imposed ideological constraints on the freedom of academic inquiry. Restrictive visa policies instituted after 9/11 continue to discourage talented foreign graduate students from training in the United States. The international financial crisis, which has depleted university endowments and state investments in higher education, threatens the vitality of some of our greatest institutions of higher learning. In order to sustain and enhance the American tradition of excellence, we must nurture this powerful-yet underappreciated-national resource.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2006
ISBN 10: 1586483986 ISBN 13: 9781586483982
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Softcover. Condition: Good. Tenth. Fifty years ago, as Europe's colonial powers withdrew, Africa moved with enormous hope and fervor toward democracy and economic independence. Dozens of new states were launched amid much jubilation and the world's applause. African leaders, popularly elected, stepped forward to tackle the problems of development and nation-building. In the Cold War era, the new states excited the attention of the superpowers. Africa was considered too valuable a prize to lose.Today, Africa is a continent rife with disease, death, and devastation. Most African countries are effectively bankrupt, prone to civil strife, subject to dictatorial rule, and dependent on Western assistance for survival. The sum of Africa's misfortunes its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts is truly daunting.What went wrong? What happened to this vast continent, so rich in resources, culture and history, to bring it so close to destitution and despair in the space of two generations?Focusing on the key personalities, events and themes of the independence era, Martin Meredith's riveting narrative history seeks to explore and explain the myriad problems that Africa has faced in the past half-century, and faces still. From the giddy enthusiasm of the 1960s to the "coming of tyrants" and rapid decline, The Fate of Africa is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how it came to this and what, if anything, is to be done.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2006
ISBN 10: 1586483277 ISBN 13: 9781586483272
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behavior and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960sthe decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amoralityand enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster; or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2011
ISBN 10: 1610390210 ISBN 13: 9781610390217
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. In the past decade Pakistan has become a country of immense importance to its region, the United States, and the world. With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change.Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 1586488279 ISBN 13: 9781586488277
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Rare book.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2010
ISBN 10: 1586488023 ISBN 13: 9781586488024
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service.While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse.The security services have played a central and often mysteriousrole at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2008
ISBN 10: 158648298X ISBN 13: 9781586482985
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Black Americans have always relied on the oral traditionstorytelling, preaching, and speechmakingto assert their rights and preserve and pass on their history and culture. In the pulpit, courtroom, or cotton field, they have understood the power of words, distinctively delivered, to educate and inspire.Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., one of the nation's finest speakers, imbibed this tradition as a young man and has given it his own unique inflection from his work on the civil rights front lines, to the National Urban League, to positions of influence at the highest level of business and politics. A friend and confidant to presidents, Jordan has never forgotten the men and womenfrom Ruby Hurley to Wiley Branton to Gardner C. Taylor to Martin Luther King, Jr.whose oratorical skill in service to social justice deeply influenced him. Their examples and voices, reflected in Vernon's own, make this book both a history and an embodiment of black speech at its finest: Full of emotion, controlled force, righteous indignation, love of country, and awe in front of the God-given challenges ahead.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2013
ISBN 10: 1610393317 ISBN 13: 9781610393317
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Antonia Fraser's Perilous Question is a dazzling re-creation of the tempestuous two-year period in Britain's history leading up to the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, a narrative which at times reads like a political thriller.The era, beginning with the accession of William IV, is evoked in the novels of Trollope and Thackeray, and described by the young Charles Dickens as a cub reporter. It is lit with notable characters. The reforming heroes are the Whig aristocrats led by Lord Grey, members of the richest and most landed cabinet in history yet determined to bring liberty, which would whittle away their own power, to the country. The all-too-conservative opposition was headed by the Duke of Wellington, supported by the intransigent Queen Adelaide, with hereditary memories of the French Revolution. Finally, there were revolutionaries, like William Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides, the radical tailor Francis Place, and Thomas Attwood of Birmingham, the charismatic orator. The contest often grew violent. There were urban riots put down by soldiers and agricultural riots led by the mythical Captain Swing.The underlying grievance was the fate of the many disfranchised people. They were ignored by a medieval system of electoral representation that gave, for example, no votes to those who lived in the new industrial cities of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham, while allocating two parliamentary representatives to a village long since fallen into the sea and, most notoriously, Old Sarum, a green mound in a field. Lord John Russell, a Whig minister, said long afterwards that it was the only period when he genuinely felt popular revolution threatened the country. The Duke of Wellington declared intractably in November 1830 that The beginning of reform is the beginning of revolution. So it seemed that disaster must fall on the British Parliament, or the monarchy, or both.The question was: Could a rotten system reform itself in time? On June 7, 1832, the date of the extremely reluctant royal assent by William IV to the Great Reform Bill, it did. These events led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, and set the stage for its growth as the world's most successful industrial power; admired, among other things, for its traditions of good governancea two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings to vivid dramatic life.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2008
ISBN 10: 1586485180 ISBN 13: 9781586485184
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. It is in the Middle East that the U.S. has been made to confront its attitudes on the use of force, the role of allies, and international law. The history of the U.S. in the Middle East, then, becomes an especially revealing mirror on America's view of its role in the wider world.In this wise, objective, and illuminating history, Lawrence Freedman shows how three key events in 197879 helped establish the foundations for U.S. involvement in the Middle East that would last for thirty years, without offering any straightforward or bloodless exit options: the Camp David summit leading to the Israel-Egypt Treaty; the Iranian Islamic revolution leading to the Shah's departure followed by the hostage crisis; and the socialist revolution in Afghanistan, resulting in the doomed Soviet intervention.Freedman makes clear how America's strategic choices in those and subsequent crises led us to where we are today. A Choice of Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with the complex politics of the region or with the future of American foreign policy.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 1586487523 ISBN 13: 9781586487522
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker. Though their experiences and styles varyBuffett is the canny stock market investor; Soros is the reader of shifting global tides in trade and currencies; and Volcker is the regulator and governor, sheriff and clean-up crewthey have very much in common.All three men have more than fifty years of deep involvement in markets. All are skeptical of Wall Street frenzies. They believe that markets tend to be right, but usually only over the medium term. They have seen too many cycles of herd-driven, emotion-riding booms and busts to make their views hostage to the sweeping and simplistic assumptions of efficient-markets models.With the benefit of his own deep understanding of markets and finance, Morris brilliantly analyzes the records of these men, distilling their wisdom and experienceand argues for the importance of consistent values in navigating the treacherous terrain of today's globalized world.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2006
ISBN 10: 1586483021 ISBN 13: 9781586483029
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. In an era when American artists didn't count and women were expected to stay home, Edith Gregor Halpert burst onto the fledgling New York gallery scene, defying all cultural and societal rules. In 1926, Halpert, just twenty-six years old, opened one of the first art galleries in Greenwich Village and set about turning the art world upside down. Her Downtown Gallery, which she ran for forty-four years, laid the groundwork for the art market's modern era, and its aggressive promotion and sales tactics. Halpert cultivated the most illustrious art collectors of the day, invented the market for folk art, and pushed the first group of American artists working in a modern vernacular into the history books, including Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Arthur Dove. Despite all this, Edith Halpert herself has been lost to history. Until now.In The Girl with the Gallery, journalist Lindsay Pollock brings Halpert and her era vividly back to life, tracing the story of how this remarkable woman, who started out a penniless Jewish immigrant, made it her mission to fight for American art and artists. Illlustrated with eight pages of full color photographs, this is biography at its finest, an unforgettable story of class, money, vanity, jealousy, and tragic loss.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 158648317X ISBN 13: 9781586483173
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: New. 1. In the mid-1970s, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, and several hundred other shameless showoffs and incorrigible cutups from across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelotbut it couldn't last.William Knoedelseder was then a cub reporter covering the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of several of the future stars. And he was there when the comedianswho were not paid by the clubs where they performed tried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In I'm Dying Up Here he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there. As comedy clubs and cable TV began to boom, many would achieve stardom. but success had its price.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2008
ISBN 10: 158648561X ISBN 13: 9781586485610
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. What is America? Is it a hegemonic superpower, composed of ruthlessly selfish capitalists? Or is it a land of hope and glory, a shelter for the huddled masses, and a beacon of freedom and enlightenment? The definition of this complex nation has been debated substantially, yet all seem to agree on one thing: it is unique. The idea of an exceptional America can be traced all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century observations of a newly formed democracy that seemed determined to distinguish itself from the rest. Little, it seems, has changed.Building on de Tocqueville's concept of American exceptionalism, this collection of essays, contributed by some of the nation's top scholars and thinkers, takes on the weighty task of sizing up America in a way its people and others can comprehend. Far more than simple history, they outline the current state of American institutions and policiesfrom the legal system to marriage to the military to the Drug Warand anticipate where these are headed in the future.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2004
ISBN 10: 1586482637 ISBN 13: 9781586482633
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Softcover. Condition: Good. Slp. Boxed Set Includes the following paperback editions:GOVERNOR REAGAN: HIS RISE TO POWER"The campaign scenes in Cannon's smart, savvy book play like the original production of a farce whose modern-dress revival we've all, willingly or not, just sat through?it's amazing how much fresh detail he breathes into a story that many Californians probably think they know by heart?What lifts Cannon's work on Reagan leagues above Edmund Morris's semi-authorized Dutch is Cannon's authoritative grasp of the material--the likelihood that, when he narrates what went on in a meeting, he's talked about it more than once to almost all the people in the room?Ultimately, and with all the precincts reporting in, Governor Reagan stands above all others as the book that Gov.-elect Schwarzenegger needs to read right now." --San Francisco ChroniclePRESIDENT REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIMEHailed by The New York Times as "the best study of that enigmatic presidency," Lou Cannon's President Reagan remains the definitive account of our most significant presidency in the last fifty years. Only veteran journalist Lou Cannon can take us deep behind the scenes of the oval office. Cannon reveals the true nature of the man behind the performer, the life behind the legend.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 1586483900 ISBN 13: 9781586483906
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West, and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.Compelling, lyrical, and ominous, his new collection finds a different drama rising out of each confounding landscape. The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzman has been praised as a stunningly intimate portrait of one immigrant family from Oaxaca, through harrowing border crossings and brutal raisin harvests. Down the road in the Home Front, right-wing Christians and Jews form a strange pact that tries to silence debate on the War on Terror, and a conflicted father loses not one but two sons in Iraq. The Last Okie in Lamont, the inspiration for the town in the Grapes of Wrath, has but one Okie left, who tells Arax his life story as he drives to a funeral to bury one more Dust Bowl migrant. The Highlands of Humboldt is a journey to marijuana growing capital of the U.S., where the old hippies are battling the new hippies over pollution pot and the local bank collects a mountain of cash each day, much of it redolent of cannabis. Arax pieces together the murder-suicide at the heart of a rotisserie chicken empire in The Legend of Zankou, a story included in the Best American Crime Reporting 2009. And, in the end, he provides a moving epilogue to the murder of his own father, a crime in the California heartland finally solved after thirty years.In the finest tradition of Joan Didion, Arax combines journalism, essay, and memoir to capture social upheaval as well as the sense of being rooted in a community. Piece by piece, the stories become a whole, a stunning panorama of California, and America, in a new century.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2003
ISBN 10: 1586481290 ISBN 13: 9781586481292
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Chronicles the short life and quick demise of the "Business Week of the Internet economy," the publishing phenomenon founded in 1998 that generated more than $200 million in revenue but was gone, along with the dot-com boom, by 2001.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2012
ISBN 10: 1610391799 ISBN 13: 9781610391795
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line--the first American railroad--in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europes, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for Americas rise to world-power status.Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them.In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2006
ISBN 10: 1586484028 ISBN 13: 9781586484026
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. The story begins, as stories do in all good thrillers, with a botched robbery and a police chase. Eight Apuleian vases of the fourth century B.C. are discovered in the swimming pool of a German-based art smuggler. More valuable than the recovery of the vases, however, is the discovery of the smuggler's card index detailing his deals and dealers. It reveals the existence of a web of tombarolitomb raiders who steal classical artifacts, and a network of dealers and smugglers who spirit them out of Italy and into the hands of wealthy collectors and museums. Peter Watson, a former investigative journalist for the London Sunday Times and author of two previous exposés of art world scandals, names the key figures in this network that has depleted Europe's classical artifacts. Among the loot are the irreplaceable and highly collectable vases of Euphronius, the equivalent in their field of the sculpture of Bernini or the painting of Michelangelo. The narrative leads to the doors of some major institutions: Sothebys, the Getty Museum in L.A., the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among them. Filled with great characters and human drama, The Medici Conspiracy authoritatively exposes another shameful round in one of the oldest games in the world: theft, smuggling and duplicitous dealing, all in the name of art.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2007
ISBN 10: 1586485210 ISBN 13: 9781586485214
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Softcover. Condition: Good. This book, like a major archaeological dig, unearths a littleknown, now vanished civilization and changes how we understand history. In the 1940s, when FDR opened up the defense industry to black workers, it inspired a massive wave of black migration to a small area of Los Angeles along Central Avenue-and cultural ferment in the arts, culture, and politics. In a neighborhood densely packed with black musicians, independent labels and after hours spots, rhythm and blues was spawned. Chester Himes fathered the black detective novel and a noir sensibility. Black comics took off minstrel blackface for the first time and addressed audiences directly with socially-tinged humor. And, Smith suggests, the civil rights movement helped get its start, as the strategy of building mass movements and giving power to ghetto dwellers gained favor in opposition to the top-down strategies of the NAACP and the Urban League. Harlem's Renaissance had been driven by the intellectual elite. In L.A., a new sense of black identity arose from street level. But when the moment was over, many hopes and lives were swept away with it. Based on original research and interviews, told through an engaging narrative, this book shows convincingly that much that we take for granted today, from hip hop and slang to modern-day street fashion, all flowed from the 1940s scene along the Great Black Way.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2013
ISBN 10: 161039156X ISBN 13: 9781610391566
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Good. In 1945, after his capture at the end of the Second World War, Hermann Gring arrived at an American-run detention center in war-torn Luxembourg, accompanied by sixteen suitcases and a red hatbox. The suitcases contained all manner of paraphernalia: medals, gems, two cigar cutters, silk underwear, a hot water bottle, and the equivalent of 1 million in cash. Hidden in a coffee can, a set of brass vials housed glass capsules containing a clear liquid and a white precipitate: potassium cyanide. Joining Gring in the detention center were the elite of the captured Nazi regimeGrand Admiral Dnitz; armed forces commander Wilhelm Keitel and his deputy Alfred Jodl; the mentally unstable Robert Ley; the suicidal Hans Frank; the pornographic propagandist Julius Streicherfifty-two senior Nazis in all, of whom the dominant figure was Gring.To ensure that the villainous captives were fit for trial at Nuremberg, the US army sent an ambitious army psychiatrist, Captain Douglas M. Kelley, to supervise their mental well-being during their detention. Kelley realized he was being offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime: to discover a distinguishing trait among these arch-criminals that would mark them as psychologically different from the rest of humanity. So began a remarkable relationship between Kelley and his captors, told here for the first time with unique access to Kelley's long-hidden papers and medical records.Kelley's was a hazardous quest, dangerous because against all his expectations he began to appreciate and understand some of the Nazi captives, none more so than the former Reichsmarshall, Hermann Gring. Evil had its charms.
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Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2009
ISBN 10: 1586486934 ISBN 13: 9781586486938
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Softcover. Condition: New. 1. Roger Mudd joined CBS in 1961, and as the congressional correspondent, became a star covering the historic Senate filibuster debate over the 1964 Civil Right Act. Mudd was one of half a dozen major figures in the stable of CBS News broadcasters at time when the network's standing as a provider of news was at its peak. In The Place to Be, Mudd tells of how the bureau worked: the rivalries, the egos, the pride, the competition, the ambitions and the gathering frustrations of conveying the world to a national television audience in thirty minutes minus commercials. It is the story of a unique TV news bureau, unmatched in its quality, dedication, and professionalism, that will highlight what TV journalism was once like and what it's missing today.
Published by Brand: PublicAffairs, 2001
ISBN 10: 1586480383 ISBN 13: 9781586480387
Seller: Ergodebooks, Houston, TX, U.S.A.
Softcover. Condition: Good. "Paulina Borsook has been stirring up a ruckus in Silicon Valley since her days as a regular contributor to Wired magazine."