Security State

In December 2003, after one of the largest, most aggressive manhunts in history, US military forces captured Iraqi president Saddam Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit. Beset by body-double rumors and false alarms during a nine-month search, the Bush administration needed positive identification of the prisoner before it could make the announcement that would rocket around the world. At the time John Nixon was a senior CIA leadership analyst who had spent years studying the Iraqi dictator.

As heard on NPR's Fresh Air, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look, based on decades of research, at how China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history.

The author of Lincoln's Boys takes us inside Lyndon Johnson's White House to show how the legendary Great Society programs were actually put into practice: Team of Rivals for LBJ. The personalities behind every burst of 1960s liberal reform - from civil rights and immigration reform, to Medicare and Head Start - and what we'll lose if those programs are dismantled.

In The Rise of the American Corporate Security State, Beatrice Edwards examines the real reasons to be afraid in twenty-first-century America, and outlines how we can address them. Our first steps in the right direction may be small, but they are important. They are based on the principle that we have a right to know what our government is doing and to speak openly about it.

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under 12 defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

Bodyguards probably shouldn’t bake or have existential crises. Ezra Blumetti used to like being the exception to the rule. Now he’d like the rulebook back. That is, until his next job crash-lands onto his lap. Erin Miyaki. Brilliant, beautiful, on-top-of-the-world Erin. His old nemesis, always ready to call him on said BS. Not only is she in danger; she might be more of a mess than he is. Stuck together, he gets to call all the shots as her bodyguard. Which means payback. Erin should hate him all the more. Instead, they’re getting along. A little too well. As though Ezra’s existence...

Will he outwit his blackmailer or prioritize his heart’s desire? NYC billionaire, Daniel Dufort, is being blackmailed into marriage. He’ll do whatever it takes to protect his family dynasty but not that and he’s not about to be coerced into it. While in Hawaii on business, he meets Harper, and what starts as a sexy distraction soon ends with him questioning his priorities. Bestselling author Harper Kane is in Oahu where her steamy romance is being made into a movie. Nursing a broken heart, she has no interest in her own love story, especially not with the wealthy, arrogant, and—damn...

Profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-born scholar Vali Nasr has become one of America's leading commentators on current events in the Middle East, admired and welcomed by both media and government for his "concise and coherent" analysis (Wall Street Journal). In this "smart, clear and timely" book (Washington Post), Nasr brilliantly dissects the political and theological antagonisms within Islam. He provides a unique and objective understanding of the 1,400-year bitter struggle between Shias and Sunnis, and sheds crucial light on its modern-day consequences—from the nuclear posturing of Iran's President Ahmadinejad to the recent U.S.-enabled shift toward Shia power in Iraq and Hezbollah's continued dominance in Lebanon.

Luther Meyers lost everything the night a drunk driver hit the car his wife was driving. His wife and his child both gone in the blink of an eye. It changed everything. Five years later, he’s working a respectable job with Two Bears Security, protecting people where he once wouldn’t have thought twice about breaking into one of these rich people’s homes and robbing them blind. But he promised his wife once that he’d get out of the business, and that’s what he’s done. The only problem is, the job wants him back. The art-loving mob boss he once worked for is looking for him, ...

A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela’s personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader.

Clint Grooms has just been arrested for a crime he could never in a million years even contemplate committing. His only thought is that he fought for months to get visitation with his daughter, and now this was going to ruin everything. He didn’t care about his reputation or his job. Never mind his freedom. All he cared about was his daughter. If he lost her, his life wouldn’t be worth living. Parker Quinn is the lawyer assigned to Clint’s case. Everyone says he’s a good guy, but the charges against him are compelling. Can she prove Clint’s innocence before they both lose ...

Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream---a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity.

The boys from Golden Sphinx Ranch are trying to have a quiet breakfast in the local diner when one of them sees a man pulling a woman out of her car by her hair. Unable to let that pass, Westin rushes outside to defend the woman, his friends close behind. Before they can figure out what’s happening, the man jumps into the car and takes off. Lea Adams is now penniless, homeless, and stuck in the middle of nowhere. She convinces the ranch hands to take her back to their ranch and give her shelter until she can figure out what to do next. The only problem is, they think they’re helping a ...

On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, was bombed, killing four young girls. Who were the perpetrators? Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments. But as Martin Luther King, Jr., claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation.

The Pentagon, unsentimental and politically conservative, might not seem likely to be worried about climate change - still linked, for many people, with polar bears and coral reefs. Yet, of all the major institutions in American society, none take climate change as seriously as the US military. Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael Klare shows that the US military sees the climate threat as imperiling the country on several fronts at once.

Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, 44-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next 27 years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unpublished, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.

As the daughter of a billionaire business mogul, Stella Brookshire has always lived an easy life, until a suspicious accident ends her blossoming career as a professional cyclist. Determined to get back on the bike, Stella ignores her parents’ pleas to find a safer hobby to pursue. Her father, though, wants to ensure her safety, and hires a bodyguard to go out with Stella on her bike rides. The bodyguard doesn’t last long, though, and neither does the one after him. No one seems to be a match for Stella’s sharp tongue or her vicious wit. But that’s all about to change when Cole ...

To the outside world, Drew Parker appears to have it all—he’s the owner of a successful security company, he’s wealthy, and he’s devastatingly good-looking. He has an endless supply of first dates, and he even plays in a popular underground band. But what people don’t realize is how haunted Drew is after his sister’s disappearance almost two decades ago. Gwen Lillie is the niece of a charismatic religious cult leader who fled to San Francisco once she turned eighteen. She experienced a loss similar to Drew’s when she was young and has spent her entire adulthood trying to ...

Dixie Till was once a happy, go-lucky girl with her whole life in front of her. But life has a way of beating a person down. Her father’s death left her with few choices in life. She chose the Army, chose to do something honorable, but that took her into a nightmare that came very close to breaking her. She thought she was strong, thought she was well enough to help a boy who needed her, but she wasn’t. She failed him, and her entire community turned on her, accused her of unthinkable crimes against a boy she cared deeply for. When the boy’s body is found, Dixie finds herself in the ...

An acclaimed chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement, Peniel Joseph presents this sweeping overview of a key component of the struggle for racial equality: the Black Power movement. This is the story of the men and women who sacrificed so much to begin a more vocal and radical push for social change in the 1960s and 1970s.