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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
by Steve Coll
ISBN 0-14-303466-9 Penguin
$16.00
For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies--invisible wars that sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and that provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan's ISI, and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan.
Ghost Wars answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail? |
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The Cross and the Crescent
by Richard Fletcher
ISBN 0-14-303481-2 Penguin
$15.00
In this immensely readable history that couldn't be more timely, award-winning historian Richard Fletcher chronicles the relationship between Islam and Christianity from the time of Muhammad to the Reformation. With lucidity and sound scholarship, Fletcher demonstrates that though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when the Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other's religion from the beginning as fundamentally different and suspect. Eschewing moral judgements and easy generalizations, The Cross and the Crescent allows readers to draw their own conclusions and explore the implications for the present day. |
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God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life
by Paul Kengor
ISBN 0-06-057142-X Harper Collins
$15.95
Ronald Reagan is hailed today for a presidency that restored optimism to America, engendered years of economic prosperity, and helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet until now little attention has been paid to the role of Reagan's personal spirituality played in his political career, shaping his ideas, bolstering his resolve, and ultimately compelling him to confront the brutal--and, not coincidentally, atheistic--Soviet empire. In this groundbreaking book, political historian Paul Kengor draws upon Reagan's legacy of speeches and correspondence, and the memories of those who knew him well, to reveal a man whose Christian faith remained deep and consistent throughout his more than six decades in public life. |
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The Coming Generational Storm
by Laurence J. Kotlikoff
ISBN 0-262-61208-9 MIT Press
$16.95
In 2030, as 77 million baby boomers hobble into old age, walkers will outnumber strollers; there will be twice as many retirees as there are today but only 18 percent more workers. How will America handle this demographic overload? How will Social Security and Medicare function with fewer working taxpayers to support these programs? According to Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, if our government continues on the course it has set, we'll see skyrocketing tax rates, drastically lower retirement and health benefits, high inflation, a rapidly depreciating dollar, unemployment, and political instability. The government has lost its compass, say Kotlikoff and Burns, and the current administration is heading straight into the coming generational storm. |
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Leonardo Da Vinci
by Sherwin B. Nuland
ISBN 0-14-303510-X Penguin
$13.00
The life and work of the great Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) have proved endlessly fascinating for generations. In Leonardo da Vinci, Sherwin Nuland completes his twenty-year quest to understand an unlettered man who was a painter, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. What was it that propelled Leonardo's unsatiable curiosity? Nuland finds clues in his subject's art, relationships, and scientific studies--as well as in a vast quantity of notes that became widely known in the twentieth century. Scholarly and passionate, Nuland's Leonardo da Vinci takes us deep into the first truly modern, empirical mind, one that was centuries ahead of its time. |
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University Inc.
by Jennifer Washburn
ISBN 0-465-09051-6
Basic Books
Drawing on extensive interviews and original research, Jennifer Washburn paints an alarming picture of how one of America's most prized institutions--and the nation's last refuge for independent thought--is being colonized by a market ideology that is fundamentally at odds with the university's core academic values. At a time when universities try to convert professors into "content providers" and students into "consumers", when scientists neglect the long-term interests of their field in favor of short-term personal gain, and professors paid by drug manufacturers dole out lavish endosements for new medicines, Univeristy Inc. offers a rigorous and important analysis of the deteriorating state of our higher education system today. |