Showing titles in Freedom & Security

Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.

Brought to you by Penguin. A fresh and exciting approach to one of the most controversial subjects of our time ‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as dangerous: in China, India, and across the...

A lush tapestry of poetry and prose, Here to Stay is an invitation to engage with a new field of contemporary American poetry. “I cannot separate my work from my undocumented identity.” —Aline Mello From the indomitable writers and activists Janine Joseph, Esther Lin, and Marcelo Hernandez...

Best Books of 2024, The Economist From the codebreakers and problem solvers, to the engineers, mathematicians and other problem-solvers – what the secret world can teach us about performance and creativity How do you hire smart people who can work together to prevent terrorist attacks and...

Twenty year-old ‘Melodie’, a recent convert to Islam, meets the leader of an Islamist brigade on Facebook. In 48 hours he has ‘fallen in love’ with her, calls her day and night, urges her to marry him, join him in Syria to enjoy a life of paradise – and join his jihad. Discover how...

From the host of The Rest is Classified podcast, this is the secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day. 'The history of MI6 in the words of real spies' Mail on Sunday 'The best post-1949 account of British intelligence I have read' Spectator 'As gripping as any novel'...

Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives.

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

As Mark Zuckerberg once put it, "the Age of Privacy is over." But Zuckerberg and others who say "privacy is dead" are wrong. In Why Privacy Matters, Neil Richards explains that privacy isn't dead, but rather up for grabs. Richards shows how the fight for privacy is a fight for power. If we want to preserve our commitments to these precious yet fragile values, we will need privacy rules. Pithy and forceful, this is a must-listen for anyone interested in a topic that sits at the center of so many current problems. 

Vivimos en la edad del algoritmo. Cada vez más, las decisiones que afectan nuestras vidas no están hechas por humanos, sino por modelos matemáticos. En teoría, esto debería conducir a una mayor equidad: todos son juzgados de acuerdo con las mismas reglas y se elimina el sesgo. Pero como revela Cathy O'Neil en Armas de destrucción matemática, ocurre exactamente lo contrario. Los modelos que se utilizan en la actualidad son opacos, no regulados e incontestables, incluso cuando están equivocados.

In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?

Bringing with him the practical experience that comes from having owned a high-end gun store—catering largely to law enforcement—and as a competitive shooter and self-defense trainer, Correia blasts apart the emotion-laden, logic-free rhetoric of the gun-control fanatics who turn every "mass shooting" into a crazed call for violating your rights, abusing the Constitution—and doing absolutely nothing to really fight crime.

As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA to analyse foreign intelligence. But within a few years, the Agency was engaged in other operations: bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling anti-imperial dissenters in the US. The Cold War was an obvious reason for this transformation - but not the only one. In The CIA, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford draws on decades of research to show the Agency as part of a larger picture.

From the acclaimed author of JFK and Vietnam comes a book that uncovers the government's role in the Kennedy assassination more clearly than any previous inquiry. What was the extent of the CIA's involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald? Why was Oswald's file tampered with before the assassination of John F. Kennedy? And why did significant documents from that file mysteriously disappear? Oswald and the CIA answers these questions, not with theories, but with information from the primary sources themselves.

“A fast-burning fuse of a book, every page bursting with revelatory detail.”—ERIK LARSON A sweeping account of the anarchists who terrorized the streets of New York and the detective duo who transformed policing to meet the threat—a tale of fanaticism, forensic science, and dynamite from...

Released by the Freedom of Information Act. This document is a thorough description of how the CIA recommends interrogating a subject. To get the information that is needed there is nothing withheld short of torture. For example in "Threats and Fears," the CIA authors note that "the threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain, for example, can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain."

America's decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 is arguably the most important foreign policy choice of the entire post-Cold War era. Nearly two decades after the event, it remains central to understanding current international politics and US foreign relations. In Confronting Saddam Hussein, the eminent historian of US foreign policy Melvyn P. Leffler analyzes why the US chose war and who was most responsible for the decision.

This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read: Donald Trump, Jr., exposes all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to rampant "political correctness." ​ In Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr...

In August 2014, Farida Abbas was just a normal Yazidi girl living in a village high in the mountains of Northern Iraq. Then her village was attacked and swiftly taken by ISIS fighters, and her whole world changed. The jihadists murdered the men and the boys of her village, including her father and brothers, before taking Farida prisoner along with the rest of the women. This is the story of what happened to Farida after she was captured: the beatings, the rapes, the markets where ISIS sold their female prisoners like cattle.

Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author's efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early 21st century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.