Other books that might interest you

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  Soldier in the Sand - A Personal...

  Simon Mayall

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  Insight into the Middle East from a general with long experience in the region: “His analysis of the revolution in Iran is particularly enlightening.” —John Simpson, BBC journalist 
   
  With the Middle East in a state of persistent change and upheaval, there has long been a need for a comprehensive yet readable study that can give the intelligent and interested layperson a greater understanding of this diverse, complex region. 
   
  Simon Mayall, whose links with the area are deep and longstanding, provides just that in Soldier in the Sand. As well as analyzing the Middle East’s history and religions, which strongly influence people’s actions, attitudes, and relationships, Mayall draws on his own experiences and impressions based on his many years in key military and diplomatic appointments in numerous countries. In addition to knowing many of the key players personally, he has studied, at leading universities, British policy and engagement in the area and he understands the effects of this long-term engagement. 
   
  This invaluable book’s unique mixture of history, politics, academic study, and first-hand experience affords the reader an invaluable insight into a fascinating, fractured, and frustrating area of the world. General Mayall explains complex situations in a thoroughly accessible and human manner, as lecture audiences worldwide already know, and now his knowledge and common sense approach is also available in this important, entertaining book.

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  Night Thoughts

  Wallace Shawn

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  This “acerbic yet compassionate” meditation on humanity by the acclaimed actor and playwright offers “curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).   Beloved actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn has been an incisive commentator on civilization and its discontents for decades. Now, having recently passed the age of seventy and watched Donald Trump claim the presidency, he offers a late-stage critique of his species, which he sees as being divided between the lucky and the unlucky.   In Night Thoughts, Shawn takes the lucky—himself included—to task for their complacency while offering fascinating reflections on “civilization, morality, Beethoven, 11th-century Japanese court poetry, and his hopes for a better world, among other topics” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

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  You Shall Be as Gods - Pagans...

  Erick son

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  Our country doesn't have a partisan problem, a political problem, a social problem, or an economic problem. We have a spiritual problem. 
   
   
   
  As Christianity has been pushed aside, the Progressive Left has developed a new pagan religion. But the radical roots of the new secular religion are ancient. We've seen it all before. In You Shall Be as Gods, Erick Erickson traces the religion's roots from Paganism and Gnosticism through the Age of Enlightenment all the way into the Postmodernism of the twenty-first century. At the heart of the ancient religion is a self-centered culture. 
   
   
   
  The Christian church today has been weakened by compromising with the neo-pagan religion, leaving the faithful ill-prepared to counter the claims of society's present-day doctrine. Yet there remains a significant remnant in America that refuses to bow to the rising belief system. 
   
   
   
  Just as in Rome and countless societies throughout history, the religions present two opposing stories of reality which necessitates conflict. In an era where the "Christian thing" to do seems to be to go along and get along, Erickson makes clear that the two cultures cannot peacefully coexist and calls the listener to speak the truth in love.

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  Cooperation and Coercion - How...

  Antony Davies, James R. Harrigan

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  There are only two ways that humans work together: they cooperate with one another, or they coerce one another. And once you realize this fundamental fact, it will change how you see the world.
  
  In this myth-busting book, Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan display their wisdom and talent for explaining complex topics, which have attracted a devoted audience to their weekly podcast, Words & Numbers, and made them popular speakers around the country.
  
  By looking for cooperation and coercion in everyday life, they help make sense of a wide range of issues that dominate the public debate. You’ll come away from this book with a clear understanding of everything from the minimum wage to taxes, from gun control to government regulations, from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs to the War on Poverty.
  
  It turns out that coercion is necessary...sometimes. Even in a democracy, we all abide by rules, including plenty that we don’t agree with, in the name of getting along.
  
  But in the end, Davies and Harrigan show that cooperation, without question, is the key to human happiness and progress. The more we encourage it, the better off we all are.

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  The Red Line - A Railway Journey...

  Christopher Knowles

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  The Red Line is the story of a train journey from London to Hong Kong. It is set in 1981, the year Christopher made the first of twenty-four such journeys as a tour guide, when the Cold War was still very much a fact of life. Although China appeared to be on the brink of significant change, no one could know for certain; Poland was stirring but the prospect of change in the USSR and its other allies seemed remote. This made a journey by train across that landscape particularly fascinating, because by using standard, scheduled services that together created one of the longest possible railway routes, one was necessarily immersed in the various countries in ways that otherwise would have been impossible. Equally fascinating were the reactions of Western travelers to finding themselves incarcerated for weeks on end in the eccentric world behind the Iron Curtain.In order to give the journey some coherence, the most memorable events over those years have been condensed into a single journey and the most notable personalities, plucked from various times and places, have been thrown together. To emphasize the fact that these events took place in the recent past, and to be able to show how extraordinarily quickly the world has changed in the few intervening years, the story is told by a narrator. Everything that occurs is true, although some circumstances have been slightly adapted for the sake of fluency and names of individuals have been changed.

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  Party of One - Stephen Harper...

  Michael Puttonen

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  A timely indictment of a prime minister determined to remake Canada.In Party of One, Investigative journalist Michael Harris gives us an intimate look at Stephen Harper, and draws a portrait of a Prime Minister whose policies and instincts, Harris believes, are a clear and present danger to Canada’s democracy. Fueled by the election victory of May 2011, unchecked by the opposition, the staggering gap between Stephen Harper’s stated political principles and his practices starkly drive Harris’ arguments home.Harper, an acknowledged master at controlling information is, Harris argues, profoundly anti-democratic. The Harper Government’s sins include keeping facts from Canadians and an inclination to invent them (as it did in the F-35 debacle). Since coming to power, Harper has made war on every independent source of information in Canada. Harris recounts Stephen Harper’s well-defined and growing list of enemies, whose perspectives are unwelcome, and whose voices are to be suppressed: scientists, diplomats, union members, environmentalists, First Nations peoples, and journalists.Counter to the backdrop of a Conservative commitment to transparency and accountability, Harris exposes a regime of ultra-secrecy, non-compliance, and dismissiveness. With this Conservative majority in Parliament, the law is simple: what one man, Stephen Harper, says, goes.

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