The true story of an untrue story-- how the murder of a DNC political staffer spawned conspiracy theories, fanned the culture wars, and pitted one family against a media empire. In the small hours of June 16th, gunshots rang out and a young man lay bleeding and fatally wounded on a downtown Washington, DC, street. But who killed Seth Rich? When he was buried in his hometown, his rabbi declared: “There are no answers for a young man gunned down in the prime of his life”. But the rabbi was wrong. There were in fact many answers, way too many.The police had a suspect but they could not find evidence to charge him, and into the void hurtled the howling mob. Within 36 hours Reddit had thrown up an explanation: “given his position & timing in politics … Seth Rich was murdered by corrupt politicians for knowing too much information on election fraud”. A month later Julian Assange hinted that Rich might have been the source for stolen DNC emails provided to Wikileaks and offered a $20,000 re
From the bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast comes the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equalityA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA #1 ABA INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE BESTSELLER Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over fifty incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground conspiracy to overthrow King Louis XVIII, and became an international symbol of liberty. Finally, as a revered elder statesman, he was instrumental in the overthr
A moving and inspiring memoir by Afghanistan's youngest female mayor and campaigner for human rights.I am one of the lucky ones.I got out of Afghanistan alive when the Taliban retook the country. Millions of others did not - they are now living under one of the world's most repressive regimes, with any progress that was made for women over the past twenty years being brutally reversed.Every day, I yearn for my motherland. Now it is my duty to make sure that the world knows what is happening to women there, and what we must do tochange things for them.Zarifa Ghafari was three years old when the Taliban banned girls from schools, and she began her education in secret. She was seven when American airstrikes began. She was twenty-six when she became mayor - the only female mayor in the country - of Maidan Wardak, Kabul. An extremist mob barred her from her office; her male staff walked out in protest; assassins tried to kill her six times. Finally, they killed their father. Ghafari stood h
A new , important and pragmatic vision on what the job of the boss is in an age of lean/flat/agile organizations, self-organizing teams, and mass collaboration, .when bosses are expected to disappear, countering conventional wisdom of the media and management gurus.People in the business world are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing economy. Beset by transformational forces, managers are bombarded with a bewildering array of schemes for how to be a boss and make an organization tick. t’s easy to be seduced by futurist fantasies where every company has the culture of a startup, where employees in wacky, whimsical office settings champion the end of old-fashioned corporate hierarchy. Autonomous employees liberated from hierarchies and bosses that oppress people, we are told, are the foundation for breakthrough performance. Be careful what you wish for say Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein. In their important rethinking of the crucial nature of hierarchy and how to be a boss today, they
The future of finance – the way Wall Street operates and how individuals manage their money - is on the verge of upheaval. And the force underlying the change comes not from usual suspects such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, but China, where finance and technology are being merged into a system with consequences that resonate far beyond China’s border. The changes of this global revolution in finance and technology - fintech - will be as powerful as those wrought in social media, retailing and advertising by giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which have overturned how we shop and communicate.China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward, antiquated cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. More powerful than anything available outside of China, they allow their billion users to pay, borrow, invest, buy goods and services, travel, chat (and far more) all fuse
In an era of deregulation when consumers have never been more vulnerable to corporate surveillance, unsafe food, and dangerously faulty products, the president and CEO of Consumer Reports gives us a playbook to put the power back in our hands.You've been getting ripped off. The rules that have protected consumers for decades are failing. Companies are spying on us. Many of the products we once trusted are dangerous and failing at alarming rates. Whether we are buying a crib, a small appliance, an iPhone app, or shopping for car insurance, it's become harder than ever to know whether the choices we make in the marketplace are putting us at risk-either from physical harm or the abuse of our personal data by hackers or corporations. This is intolerable. It's wrong. And we don't have to put up with it anymore. Marta L. Tellado, the president and CEO of Consumer Reports, has been an advocate for consumers for decades. In Buyer Aware, Tellado shows you the steps you can take to protect yours
Owen Ullmann’s intimate portrait of the heart and mind of Janet Yellen is the riveting story of one of the most remarkable careers of recent times. The ultimate glass-ceiling buster, Yellen is the first person to hold all three of America’s top economic policy positions. Currently Treasury Secretary (the first woman to hold the job), she has also been chair of the Federal Reserve and of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.As Ullmann vividly shows, empathy economics, the north star of Yellen’s work as researcher, analyst, and policymaker stems from her early family life. Yellen has pushed back against the cold, abstract quality of a male-dominated economics profession that all too often pushes policies that benefit the already well-to-do. She has strived to remake it as a tool for shaping compassionate programs that help people find remedies for financial plights that stem from a lack of economic opportunity because of poverty, unemployment or job discrimination.The trailblazi
The untold story of ever-growing wedge between the financial markets and the real economy, and the unprecedented crises it has caused. The 21st century has produced two major financial crises and many smaller ones in between. The fallout created chaos and disruption for people at all levels of the global economy. Nomi Prins examines the consequences of the unstable economy that caused what she calls the state of Permanent Distortion; a wedge between a funhouse financial realm that thrives even in times of social and political disorder, and a struggling economic one that does not adequately meet the needs of the general population. Through deep reporting and insightful analysis, Prins navigates the critical points in between the two polarities, including how the concept of "free markets" is dead, how a political power shift is bringing in a new world order, why trade wars have only just begun, and why we're in for more civil and social unrest, as a result.
In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them―if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source be
The Civil War may have ended on the battlefield, but the fight over democracy never did.In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively militarily defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the victory was squandered. Old white supremacist habits returned, more ferocious than before.In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point. What emerges is a vivid, and at times unsettling, p
A professor of law and technology at the University of San Diego offers a contrarian and optimistic argument that AI, robotics, and digital platforms can be used as a tool to help achieve equality. The Equality Machine ignites a deeply informed, aggressively researched conversation about the path to digital era equality. From closing the gender pay gap to exposing and correcting biases in hiring and marketing, tracking and preventing workplace harassment and diversifying the cultural images and voices we see and hear online, to increasing the privacy and safety of women and girls, artificial intelligence, big data, and digital platforms can offer a positive path towards a better future. This book presents a vision, a blueprint, and a call to action: despite its risks and flaws, digitization can and must become a powerful force for good -- for fairness, inclusion, and equality. Through wise implementation of new technology, we can implement a more equal market. This book offers new insi
The future of the American economy is hiding in an unlikely place: a new, reinvented manufacturing sector.It's easy to name the companies that have dominated the stock market over the past ten years. Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook--these are all among the best-performing stocks over a decade or more. But here's a company that has performed just as well: HEICO. Or what about Trex? Ever heard of Casella? Or Graco?These lesser known companies are all part of a sector known as industrial tech, and together they offer a surprisingly bright future not just to investors but to workers as well as our broader communities. Their products include aerospace parts, color enamels, and recycled plastic lumber; things consumers don't necessarily buy but which we all rely on for the functioning of our economy. And it turns out it's a booming business.In The Titanium Economy, McKinsey partners Asutosh Padhi, Gaurav Batra, and Nick Santhanam reveal this little-understood, under-appreciated and
A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of
A creative and fun smorgasbord of economics through the lens of food from one of today’s foremost thinkerWhat can the anchovy tell us about industrialization? How can we understand inequality through chicken or the welfare state through rye? In Edible Economics, leading economist Ha-Joon Chang uses everyday food and ingredients to teach us about the most important economic issues of our time. Through familiar foods, from pasta to Coca-Cola to coffee, Chang weaves together impressive arguments and adds needed clarity to describe how our economies function and falter. With each ingredient, condiment or beverage, he constructs a vivid narrative that grapples with the most pressing concerns of our global markets, supply systems, and more. Through rich anecdotes and surprising histories, Chang shows us how acorns can prove that culture is not as important as we think in determining economic outcomes or how milk contradicts the notion that competition is the only way to ensure economic
The beloved author of The Revenge of Analog lays out a case for a human future--not the false technological utopia we've been living.For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered.When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great. It turns out that leaving the house is underrated, instant communication spreads anger better than joy, and convenience takes away time rather than giving it to us. Oops.But as David Sax argues in this insightful book, we've also had our eyes opened. There is nothing about the future that has to be digital, and embracing the reality of human experience doesn't mean resisting change. In chapters explor
The first investigative look into the medical miracle that has also become an unregulated, lucrative industry patronized by desperate would-be parents--by a journalist who has experienced first-hand b
David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman
Delivers a gripping history of the world's most pilfered masterpiece--Jan van Eyck's "Ghent Alterpiece," treasured for its central panel, "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb"--which has been looted in t
Alzheimer's Disease is the second most-feared illness in America, following cancer. It affects as many as 5 million Americans, a number that could soar to 16 million by 2050. It is estimated that, unl
The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of a transport revolution that would forever transform the way we live. Blood, Iron, and Gold takes us on a journey en
