Showing titles in Freedom & Security

Warnings is the story of the future of national security, threatening technologies, the US economy, and possibly the fate of civilization. In Greek mythology Cassandra foresaw calamities, but was cursed by the gods to be ignored. Modern-day Cassandras clearly predicted the disasters of Katrina, Fukushima, the Great Recession, the rise of ISIS, and many more. Like the mythological Cassandra, they were ignored. There are others right now warning of impending disasters, but how do we know which warnings are likely to be right?

Boarding an airplane strikes at least a small sense of fear into most people. Even though we all have heard that the odds of being struck by lightning are greater than the odds of perishing in a plane crash, it still doesn't feel that way. Airplane crashes might be rare, but they do happen, and they’re usually fatal. David Soucie insists that most of these deaths could be prevented. He’s worked as a pilot, a mechanic, an FAA inspector, and an aviation executive. He’s seen death up close and personal - deaths of colleagues and friends that might have been prevented if he had approved certain safety measures in the aircrafts they were handling.

With unprecedented access to more than a dozen individuals who have made the life-and-death decisions that come with running the world’s most powerful and influential intelligence service, Chris Whipple tells the story of an agency that answers to the United States president alone, but whose activities — spying, espionage, and covert action — take place on every continent. At pivotal moments, the CIA acts as a counterforce against rogue presidents, starting in the mid-70s with DCI Richard Helms’s refusal to conceal Richard Nixon’s criminality.

American military bases encircle the globe with nearly 1,000 locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for granted or overlooked entirely. But, in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills - and actually makes the nation less safe in the long run.

Laurie Show was as compassionate as she was hardworking. The outgoing high-school junior worked part-time to pay for the home she and her divorced mother shared. Yet she always had time to tutor friends struggling in school. And she befriended a dejected classmate after his traumatic breakup with his pregnant long-time girlfriend Michelle Lambert. But soon things spiraled into jealous obsession, stalking, and a brutal attack that left Laurie murdered in her own bedroom.

In her acclaimed 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called David Irving, a prolific writer of books on World War II, "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial". The following year, after Lipstadt's book was published in the United Kingdom, Irving led a libel suit against Lipstadt and her publisher. Denial, previously published as History on Trial, is Lipstadt's riveting, blow-by-blow account of this singular legal battle.

A provocative history that reveals how guns - not abortion, race, or religion - are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Gunfight promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. Adam Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them. Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders traveled to Tehran....

The wait is over. After a two-year investigation, the results of The Mueller Report have been released to the public. Now listen to an audio version of one of the most talked about government documents in history. These are the redacted findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, which was tasked with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, including exploring any links or coordination between President Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government.

Of humankind's great achievements over the past 2,000 years, one towers above all the rest: the arduous, painstaking process of wresting liberty from tyranny's iron fist. The Triumph of Liberty chronicles this, our most inspiring story, through 65 biographical portraits.

Seasoned CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reveals how she has been electronically surveilled while digging deep into the Obama Administration and its scandals, and offers an incisive critique of her industry and the shrinking role of investigative journalism in today's media.

In The Secret Sentry, Aid provides the first-ever full history of Americas largest security apparatus, the National Security Agency.This comprehensive account traces the growth of the agency from 1945 to the present through critical moments in its history, from the cold war up to its ongoing involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before.

In 1968, a small, dilapidated American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking, ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties.

D’Souza explains that the reason Obama appears to be working to destroy America from within is found, as Obama himself admits, in The Dreams of My Father: a deeply hostile anticolonialism. Instilled in him by his father, this worldview has led President Obama to resent America and everything we stand for. D’Souza masterfully shows how Obama is working to weaken and punish America here and abroad.

Nonie Darwish lived for thirty years in a majority Muslim nation. Everything about her life was dictated by the Islamic law code known as Sharia. But Sharia isn't staying in majority Muslim nations. Darwish now lives in the West and brings a warning; the goal of radical Islam is to bring Sharia law to your country. If that happens, the fabric of Western law and liberty will be ripped in two. Weaving personal experience together with extensive documentation and research, Darwish exposes the facts and reveals the global threat posed by Sharia law.

It was the deadliest terror campaign ever mounted against a nation in modern times: the al-Aqsa, or Second, Intifada. This is the untold story of how Israel fought back with an elite force of undercover operatives drawn from the nation's diverse backgrounds and ethnicities - and united in their ability to walk among the enemy as no one else dared.

Often remembered as the president who died shortly after taking office, William Henry Harrison remains misunderstood by most Americans. Before becoming the ninth president of the United States in 1841, Harrison was instrumental in shaping the early years of westward expansion. Robert M. Owens now explores that era through the lens of Harrison’s career, providing a new synthesis of his role in the political development of Indiana Territory and in shaping Indian policy in the Old Northwest.

In Criminal (In)Justice, Rafael A. Mangual offers a more balanced understanding of American criminal justice, and cautions against discarding traditional crime control measures. A powerful combination of research, data-driven policy journalism, and the author's lived experiences, this book explains what many reform advocates get wrong, and illustrates how the misguided commitment to leniency places America's most vulnerable communities at risk.

On February 28, 2013, after pleading guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, John Kiriakou began serving a 30 month prison sentence. His crime: blowing the whistle on the CIA's use of torture on al Qaeda prisoners. Doing Time Like a Spy is Kiriakou's memoir of his 23 months in prison. Using 20 life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. It is at once a searing journal of daily prison life and an alternately funny and heartbreaking commentary on the federal prison system.