Benjamin's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:17:24 -0700 60 Benjamin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Thousand and One Nights: Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Volume I of III]]> 311185
The original concept is most likely derived from a pre-Islamic Persian prototype that probably relied partly on Indian elements, but the work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār Afsān. Though the oldest Arabic manuscript dates from the 14th century, scholarship generally dates the collection's genesis to around the 9th century.
Some of the best-known stories of The Nights, particularly "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", while almost certainly genuine Middle-Eastern folk tales, were not part of The Nights in Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by its early European translators. (From wikipedia)]]> 588 Anonymous 0543895289 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.99 800 The Thousand and One Nights: Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Volume I of III
author: Anonymous
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 800
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> Relato de un náufrago 283314 Basado en este hecho real, Relato de un náufrago, pertenece a la etapa periodística de Gabriel García Márquez, mucho tiempo antes de que se volviera un escritor famoso o que fuera reconocido como Premio Nobel de Literatura.]]> 156 Gabriel García Márquez 9871138032 Benjamin 5 3.68 1970 Relato de un náufrago
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2006/03/01
date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> Sven-Goran Eriksson on Soccer 594447 Excellent Book 160 Sven-Göran Eriksson 1890946664 Benjamin 4 3.57 2001 Sven-Goran Eriksson on Soccer
author: Sven-Göran Eriksson
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2002/07/01
date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> Margot 61660312

Hailed for her “intelligent and heartfelt fiction� (Kirkus Reviews), Wendell Steavenson writes with grace, precision, and great psychological perception. With Margot, she has crafted a vivid portrayal of the quiet torment of young women of its era, a comically caustic mother-daughter story, and a memorable evocation of one woman’s passion for the wonder of science.]]> 288 Wendell Steavenson 1324020857 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 3.39 2023 Margot
author: Wendell Steavenson
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors]]> 30071775 Dangerous Dossiers is as powerful and relevant today as it was when it first made worldwide headlines 25 years a chilling reminder of the dangers of unfettered government intrusion into the lives and beliefs of private citizens, whether famous or not.

This shocking account by award-winning author and former New York Times cultural reporter Herbert Mitgang provided hard evidence for the first time of the decades-long cultural war waged by the FBI and other federal intelligence-gathering agencies against scores of the world’s most renowned writers and artists. Using the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose actual surveillance files kept by the FBI, Mitgang documented that the targets of government snooping included a who’s-who of the literary and artistic worlds whom J. Edgar Hoover and his red-baiting legions suspected of communist leanings or outright disloyalty, usually with no basis whatsoever. They Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandburg, Norman Mailer, Robert Frost, and Allen Ginsburg; and artists including Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keefe, and Henry Moore.

Called “a fascinating, illuminating and above all, morally decent book� by The New York Times, and “first-class journalism� by The Associated Press, this exposé and the many “dangerous dossiers� it contains reveal no evidence of guilt on the part of the targets of the FBI witch-hunts. But Mitgang finds plenty of proof of the paranoia, political bias, and cultural illiteracy of those who controlled the nation’s most powerful investigative agencies.

]]> 432 Herbert Mitgang 1504028791 Benjamin 0 to-read 0.0 1988 Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors
author: Herbert Mitgang
name: Benjamin
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> Lost On Treasure Island 12113351 305 Steve Friedman Benjamin 0 to-read 3.27 2011 Lost On Treasure Island
author: Steve Friedman
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> <![CDATA[A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery]]> 5076583
As Samantha Power and Philip Gourevitch did for genocide, Skinner has now done for modern-day slavery. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan, India, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, and, yes, even suburban America, he has produced a vivid testament and moving reportage on one of the great evils of our time.

There are more slaves in the world today than at any time in history. After spending four years visiting a dozen countries where slavery flourishes, Skinner tells the story, in gripping narrative style, of individuals who live in slavery, those who have escaped from bondage, those who own or traffic in slaves, and the mixed political motives of those who seek to combat the crime.

Skinner infiltrates trafficking networks and slave sales on five continents, exposing a modern flesh trade never before portrayed in such proximity. From mega-harems in Dubai to illicit brothels in Bucharest, from slave quarries in India to child markets in Haiti, he explores the underside of a world we scarcely recognize as our own and lays bare a parallel universe where human beings are bought, sold, used, and discarded. He travels from the White House to war zones and immerses us in the political and flesh-and-blood battles on the front lines of the unheralded new abolitionist movement.

At the heart of the story are the slaves themselves. Their stories are heartbreaking but, in the midst of tragedy, readers discover a quiet dignity that leads some slaves to resist and aspire to freedom. Despite being abandoned by the international community, despite suffering a crime so monstrous as to strip their awareness of their own humanity, somehow, some enslaved men regain their dignity, some enslaved women learn to trust men, and some enslaved children manage to be kids. Skinner bears witness for them, and for the millions who are held in the shadows.

In so doing, he has written one of the most morally courageous books of our time, one that will long linger in the conscience of all who encounter it, and one that -- just perhaps -- may move the world to constructive action.]]> 356 E. Benjamin Skinner 1416565620 Benjamin 5 favorites 4.08 2008 A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery
author: E. Benjamin Skinner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2011/11/03
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface]]> 33799571 Engage Your Readers with Emotion

While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue this: If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.

That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. Topics covered include: emotional modes of writing beyond showing versus telling your story's emotional world moral stakes connecting the inner and outer journeys plot as emotional opportunities invoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language cascading change story as emotional mirror positive spirit and magnanimous writing the hidden current that makes stories move Readers can simply read a novel...or they can experience it. The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows you how to make that happen.]]> 226 Donald Maass 144034843X Benjamin 0 to-read 4.45 2016 The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface
author: Donald Maass
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East]]> 59937610
'Janine di Giovanni is a humane and persistent witness' HISHAM MATAR

'Profoundly moving' MARK TULLY
_______________________

The Vanishing reveals the plight and possible extinction of Christian communities across Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine after 2,000 years in their historical homeland.

Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing. We are past the tipping point, now tilted toward the end of Christianity in its historical homeland. Christians have fled the lands where their prophets wandered, where Jesus Christ preached, where the great Doctors and hierarchs of the early church established the doctrinal norms that would last millennia.

From Syria to Egypt, the cities of northern Iraq to the Gaza Strip, ancient communities, the birthplaces of prophets and saints, are losing any living connection to the religion that once was such a characteristic feature of their social and cultural lives.

In The Vanishing , Janine di Giovanni has combined astonishing journalistic work to discover the last traces of small, hardy communities where ancient rituals are quietly preserved amid 360 degree threats. Full of faith and hope, di Giovanni's riveting personal stories make a unique act of the last chance to visit the living religion before all that will be left are the stones of the past.]]> 0 Janine Di Giovanni 1526625830 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.93 The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East
author: Janine Di Giovanni
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.93
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]]> <![CDATA[Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy]]> 644434 From the author Graham Greene called "one of our best writers, not of any particular decade but of our century," comes a masterpiece about a war-ravaged city under occupation
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through on a daily basis. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war."--Will Self
]]> 191 Norman Lewis 0786714387 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.26 1978 Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy
author: Norman Lewis
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Damascus Station (Damascus Station #1)]]> 56769571
But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.]]> 432 David McCloskey 0393881040 Benjamin 2 4.08 2021 Damascus Station (Damascus Station #1)
author: David McCloskey
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/09
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]]> Cinema Speculation 55922488 The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino.

In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.]]> 391 Quentin Tarantino 0063112582 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Cinema Speculation
author: Quentin Tarantino
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)]]> 140303 420 Agatha Christie 0425200469 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.93 1937 Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/12
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]]> Paris 15786792 809 Edward Rutherfurd 0385535309 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.98 2013 Paris
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/25
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]]> The Story of a Life 1252099
Aharon Appelfeld’s childhood ended when he was seven years old. The Nazis occupied Czernowitz in 1941, penned the Jews into a ghetto, and, a few months later, sent whoever had not been shot or starved to death on a forced march across the Ukraine to a labor camp. As men, women, and children fall away around them, Aharon and his father (his mother was killed in the early days of the occupation) miraculously survive, and Aharon, even more miraculously, escapes from the camp shortly after he arrives there.

The next few years of Aharon’s life are both harrowing and heartrending: he hides, alone, in the Ukrainian forests from peasants who are only too happy to turn Jewish children over to the Nazis; he has the presence of mind to pass himself off as an orphaned gentile when he emerges from the forest to seek work; and, at war’s end, he joins the stream of refugees as they cross Europe on their way to displaced persons� camps that have been set up for the survivors. He observes the full range of personalities in the camps–exploitation exists side by side with compassion–until he manages to get on a ship bound for Palestine. Once there, Aharon attempts to build a new life while struggling to retain the barely remembered fragments of his old life (everyone urges him simply to forget what he had experienced), and he takes his first, tentative steps as a writer. As he begins to receive national attention, Aharon realizes his life’s calling: to bear witness to the unfathomable. In this unforgettable work of memory, Aharon Appelfeld offers personal glimpses into the experiences that resonate throughout his fiction.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> Aharon Appelfeld 0141021705 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.73 1983 The Story of a Life
author: Aharon Appelfeld
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.73
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History]]> 61089450
Schulz’s art became the currency in which he bought life. Drawing on extensive new reporting and archival research, Benjamin Balint chases the inventive murals Schulz painted on the walls of an SS villa―the last traces of his vanished world―into multiple dimensions of the artist’s life and afterlife. Sixty years after Schulz was murdered, those murals were miraculously rediscovered, only to be secretly smuggled by Israeli agents to Jerusalem. The ensuing international furor summoned broader perplexities, not just about who has the right to curate orphaned artworks and to construe their meanings, but about who can claim to stand guard over the legacy of Jews killed in the Nazi slaughter. By re-creating the artist’s milieu at a crossroads not just of Jewish and Polish culture but of art, sex, and violence, Bruno Schulz itself stands as an act of belated restitution, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a life with all its paradoxes and curtailed possibilities.

8 pages of color illustrations]]> 307 Benjamin Balint 0393866572 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
author: Benjamin Balint
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Investigative Reporting from Premise to Publication]]> 35248114
Investigative Reporting contains full stories and timely examples from both professional and student reporters. Each chapter concludes with sequential "Big Story" assignments to help readers research, write and publish their own investigative stories. Web links to online resources (including public records information, computer-assisted reporting techniques and interactive investigative story examples) will help readers move smoothly and successfully through an investigative story or team reporting project, whether for print, broadcast or the Web.]]> 400 Marcy Burstiner 0415790808 Benjamin 0 to-read 0.0 Investigative Reporting from Premise to Publication
author: Marcy Burstiner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 0.0
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]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/02
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]]> An Expensive Education 6005981 256 Nick McDonell 0802118933 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.06 2009 An Expensive Education
author: Nick McDonell
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/02
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]]> Twelve 175887 256 Nick McDonell 184354072X Benjamin 0 to-read 3.20 2002 Twelve
author: Nick McDonell
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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]]> Fire in the Blood 534158 Suite Française, a newly discovered novel, a story of passion and long-kept secrets, set against the background of a rural French village in the years before World War II.

Written in 1941, Fire in the Blood � only now assembled in its entirety � teems with the intertwined lives of an insular French village in the years before the war, when "peace" was less important as a political state than as a coveted personal condition: the untroubled pinnacle of happiness. At the center of the novel is Silvio, who has returned to this small town after years away. As his narration unfolds, we are given an intimate picture of the loves and infidelities, the scandals, the youthful ardor and regrets of age that tie Silvio to the long-guarded secrets of the past.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 137 Irène Némirovsky 0307267482 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.82 2007 Fire in the Blood
author: Irène Némirovsky
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/22
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]]> 1933 Was a Bad Year 572509
Published posthumously in 1985, 1933 Was a Bad Year offers a superb slice of American life, both funny and sad, and a pungent taste of the Italian-American experience, exploring such issues as the gulf between immigrant parents and their American-born children.]]> 127 John Fante 0876856555 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.08 1985 1933 Was a Bad Year
author: John Fante
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/17
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]]> Switching Fields 36484310
The contrast is striking. As the United States women’s national soccer team has long dominated the sport, winners of four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals, the men’s team has floundered. They failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup and the last three Olympics and have long struggled when facing the world’s best teams. How could such a global powerhouse on the women's side—and in other men's team sports—be so far behind the rest of the world?

In Switching Fields, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Dohrmann turns his investigative focus on the system that develops male soccer players in the United States, examining why the U.S. has struggled for decades to produce elite talent. But rather than just focus on the past, he turns forward, connecting with coaches and players who are changing the way talented players are unearthed and developed: an American living in Japan who devised a new way for kids under five to be introduced to the game; a coach in Los Angeles who traveled to Spain and Argentina and returned with coaching methods he used to school a team of future pros; an Arizona real estate developer whose grand experiment changed the way pro teams in the U.S. develop talent.

Following these innovators' inspiring journeys, Dohrmann gives ever-hopeful U.S. soccer fans a reason to believe that a movement is underway that is smashing the developmental status quo, and it has put the United States on the precipice of greatness.]]> 208 George Dohrmann 152479886X Benjamin 1 4.11 Switching Fields
author: George Dohrmann
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.11
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rating: 1
read at: 2023/08/12
date added: 2023/08/13
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Pay-to-play and US Soccer's neglect of non-white suburban kids is holding back soccer's progress in the U.S. Now, MLS academies, which have different incentives and are free if you are good enough for the team, are changing the game. That's basically it.
]]> A Walker in the City 1059787 ]]> 192 Alfred Kazin 0156941767 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.90 1951 A Walker in the City
author: Alfred Kazin
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Kick and Run: Memoir with Soccer Ball]]> 18193245
Football became Wilson's international passport, helping him find friends and community and solace all over the globe, from England to Israel to the US. Whether working on a kibbutz or teaching literature to young Americans, traveling through Russia or raising children, the sport remained a constant in his life.

Kick and Run is a gripping, funny, sometimes heartbreaking account of a life well lived and a game played, if not always masterfully, then certainly with the utmost passion.]]> 274 Jonathan Wilson 1448213789 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.67 2013 Kick and Run: Memoir with Soccer Ball
author: Jonathan Wilson
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> The Stolen Coast 63249845 Adrift in a sleepy coastal Massachusetts town, a man who ferries fugitives by day gets twisted up in a plot to pilfer diamonds in this Casablanca-infused heist novel.

Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving people on the run from powerful enemies. The family business--co-managed with his father, a retired spy--is smooth sailing, as they fill up Onset's holiday homes during the town's long, drowsy off-season and help clients shed their identities in preparation for fresh starts.

But when Elena, Jack's former flame--a dedicated hustler who's no stranger to the fugitive life--makes an unexpected return to town, her arrival upends Jack's routine existence. Elena, after all, doesn't go anywhere without a scheme in mind, and it isn't long before Jack finds himself enmeshed in her latest project: intercepting millions of dollars' worth of raw diamonds before they're shipped overseas.

Infusing a fast-paced plot with sharp wit and stylish prose, CrimeReads editor-in-chief Dwyer Murphy serves up an irresistible page-turner as full of heart as it is of drama.]]> 288 Dwyer Murphy 059365367X Benjamin 0 to-read 2.93 2023 The Stolen Coast
author: Dwyer Murphy
name: Benjamin
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy]]> 61480470
The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia - a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging to prominence in recent years, it has waged a fierce culture war against the Left, polarised political debate around World War II, and even secured the largest vote share in Italy's 2022 general election. Eighty years after the fall of Mussolini, his heirs, and admirers are again on the brink of taking power. So how exactly has this situation come about?

Mussolini's Grandchildrendelves into Italy's self-styled 'post-fascist' movements - rooted in historical fascism yet claiming to have 'transcended' it. David Broder highlights the reinventions of far-right politics since the Second World War and examines the interplay between a parliamentary face aimed at integrating fascists into the mainstream and militant fringe groups which, despite their extremism, play an important role in nurturing the broader far right.

Fratelli d'Italia has retained its hegemony over fascist subcultures whilst embracing a raft of more pragmatic policy positions, fusing harsh Islamophobia and anti-communism with support for the European Union and NATO. As countervailing anti-fascist forces in Italian society wane, the far-right party's mission to redeem historical fascism, legitimize its political heirs, and shift the terrain of mainstream politics is proving alarmingly successful.]]> 248 David Broder 0745348025 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.11 Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy
author: David Broder
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.11
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rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother]]> 29209 291 James McBride 1573225789 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.13 1995 The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
author: James McBride
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/13
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]]> The Postcard 128868306 Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.]]> 501 Anne Berest 178770484X Benjamin 4 4.40 2021 The Postcard
author: Anne Berest
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/08/01
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]]> Someone to Run With 60364
When awkward and painfully shy sixteen-year-old Assaf is asked to find the owner of a stray yellow lab, he begins a quest that will bring him into contact with street kids and criminals, and a talented young singer, Tamar, engaged on her own mission: to rescue a teenage drug addict.

A runaway bestseller in Israel, in the words of the Christian Science Monitor: "It's time for Americans to fall in love with Someone to Run With."]]> 343 David Grossman 031242194X Benjamin 5 4.17 2000 Someone to Run With
author: David Grossman
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2010/07/06
date added: 2023/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia]]> 58946384 The never-before-told story of the thrilling hunt for a KGB spy in the top ranks of the CIA and the fight to bring him down, from New York Times bestselling author and former CIA officer Robert Baer

In the aftermath of the Cold War, American intelligence caught three high-profiles Russian spies: Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee Howard, and Robert Hanssen. However, rumors have long swirled of another mole, one perhaps more damaging than all the others combined. Perhaps the greatest traitor in American history, perhaps a Russian ruse to tear the CIA apart, or perhaps nothing more than a bogeyman, he is often referred to as the Fourth Man.

For the first time ever, New York Times bestselling author and former CIA operative Robert Baer tells the full story. After the Ames arrest, the CIA launched another investigation to make sure there wasn't another mole in their ranks. Led by three women, pioneering counterintelligence veterans, its existence was known only to a few. As they hunted through their own, turning up loose threads, smoking guns, and a mercurial KGB source, they came to a startling conclusion that would shake American intelligence to its core. In a cat-and-mouse game worthy of a le Carré novel, the mole hunters squared off against a man who could have been the most damaging spy in US history, a thrilling chase with the profound implications for the future of America, Russia, and the rise of Vladimir Putin.]]> 295 Robert B. Baer 0306925613 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.60 2022 The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin's Russia
author: Robert B. Baer
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB]]> 212459
Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose through the ranks to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War. The clandestine operations they masterminded took them from the sewers of Moscow to the back streets of Baghdad, from Cairo and Havana to Prague and Berlin, but the action centers on Washington, starting in the infamous "Year of the Spy"—when, one by one, the CIA’s agents in Moscow began to be killed, up through to the very last man.

Behind the scenes with the CIA's covert operations in Afghanistan, Milt Bearden led America to victory in the secret war against the Soviets, and for the first time he reveals here what he did and whom America backed, and why. Bearden was called back to Washington after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and was made chief of the Soviet/East Euro-pean Division—just in time to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe, and the implosion of the Soviet Union.

Laced with startling revelations—about fail-safe top-secret back channels between the CIA and KGB, double and triple agents, covert operations in Berlin and Prague, and the fateful autumn of 1989� The Main Enemy is history at its action-packed best.]]> 592 Milton Bearden 0345472500 Benjamin 4 4.13 2003 The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
author: Milton Bearden
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/23
date added: 2023/05/23
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]]> The Basketball Diaries 682745
Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. But in this memoir of the mid-1960's, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure.]]> 224 Jim Carroll Benjamin 0 to-read 3.99 1978 The Basketball Diaries
author: Jim Carroll
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Sun to be Sewn: A Novel 88564844 Jean D'amérique Benjamin 0 to-read 0.0 2021 A Sun to be Sewn: A Novel
author: Jean D'amérique
name: Benjamin
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets]]> 55277915



Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing. We are past the tipping point, now tilted toward the end of Christianity in its historical homeland. Christians have fled the lands where their prophets wandered, where Jesus Christ preached, where the great Doctors and hierarchs of the early church established the doctrinal norms that would last millennia.




From Syria to Egypt, the cities of northern Iraq to the Gaza Strip, ancient communities, the birthplaces of prophets and saints, are losing any living connection to the religion that once was such a characteristic feature of their social and cultural lives.



In The Vanishing , Janine di Giovanni has combined astonishing journalistic work to discover the last traces of small, hardy communities that have become wisely fearful of outsiders and where ancient rituals are quietly preserved amid 360 degree threats. Di Giovanni's riveting personal stories and her conception of faith and hope are intertwined throughout the chapters. The book is a unique act of the last chance to visit the living religion before all that will be left are the stones of the past.



]]> 272 Janine Di Giovanni 1541756711 Benjamin 2 literary-journalism 4.00 The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets
author: Janine Di Giovanni
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves: literary-journalism
review:

]]> The Girl from Venice 29430869 The Girl from Venice is a suspenseful World War II love story set against the beauty, mystery, and danger of occupied Venice.

Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble.

Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand her over to the Nazis. This act of kindness leads them into the world of Partisans, random executions, the arts of forgery and high explosives, Mussolini’s broken promises, the black market and gold, and, everywhere, the enigmatic maze of the Venice Lagoon.]]> 320 Martin Cruz Smith 1439140235 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.32 2016 The Girl from Venice
author: Martin Cruz Smith
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/17
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]]> Safe Houses 36463975 In this gripping new work of suspense from the author of The Double Game, a young woman discovers a nefarious truth at the heart of the CIA's operations in postwar Berlin and goes on the run for her life; years later she's gruesomely murdered along with her husband, and her daughter begins to chase down these startling secrets from her past.

West Berlin, 1979. Helen Abell oversees the CIA's network of safe houses, rare havens for field agents and case officers amidst the dangerous milieu of a city in the grips of the Cold War. Helen's world is upended when, during her routine inspection of an agency property, she overhears a meeting between two people unfamiliar to her speaking a coded language that hints at shadowy realities far beyond her comprehension. Before the day is out, she witnesses a second unauthorized encounter, one that will place her in the sightlines of the most ruthless and powerful man at the agency. Her attempts to expose the dark truths about what she has witnessed will bring about repercussions that reach across decades and continents into the present day, when, in a farm town in Maryland, a young man is arrested for the double murder of his parents, and his sister takes it upon herself to find out why he did it.]]> 416 Dan Fesperman 0525520198 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.78 2018 Safe Houses
author: Dan Fesperman
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Homegoing 27071490 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.]]> 305 Yaa Gyasi Benjamin 0 to-read 4.48 2016 Homegoing
author: Yaa Gyasi
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> What Strange Paradise 58608472 From the widely acclaimed, best-selling author of American War, a new novel--beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving--that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.

"It is one thing to put a human face on a migrant crisis and another to do so in so compelling a way that a reader simply cannot put your book down. --Gish Jen, author of The Resisters

More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vanna. Vanna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vanna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, Vanna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy.

In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir's life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.
]]> 236 Omar El Akkad 0771050313 Benjamin 4 to-read, 2023-books 4.21 2021 What Strange Paradise
author: Omar El Akkad
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/15
date added: 2023/03/15
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> The Hungry Tide 4950 333 Amitav Ghosh 061871166X Benjamin 0 to-read 3.98 2004 The Hungry Tide
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> In the Dream House 52759167 A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.]]> 247 Carmen Maria Machado 1644451026 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.30 2019 In the Dream House
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pachinko 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Benjamin 2 to-read, 2023-books 4.35 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2023/03/09
date added: 2023/03/09
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> In the Country of Men 63657
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie?

Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television.

In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.]]> 246 Hisham Matar 0385340427 Benjamin 4 books-for-2021, favorites
I won't say anything more than that about the plot, I don't want to reveal any spoilers. The prose is beautiful, I constantly found myself highlighting discriptions. I'm just not sure what the writer was ultimately trying to say. Perhaps he was trying to show how living under dictatorship estranges people from each other because it prevents people from revealing themselves, and from revealing the truth, to each other.

I'm going to re-read this one later in the year to see if it hits me in a different way.]]> 3.73 2006 In the Country of Men
author: Hisham Matar
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/10
date added: 2023/03/08
shelves: books-for-2021, favorites
review:
This is another novel that leaves me pondering, looking around to see what went over my head. The story centers on a family, seen through the eyes of a little boy, living in Libya under Gaddafi. His father is engaged in anti-regime activity, namely writing pro-democracy tracts.

I won't say anything more than that about the plot, I don't want to reveal any spoilers. The prose is beautiful, I constantly found myself highlighting discriptions. I'm just not sure what the writer was ultimately trying to say. Perhaps he was trying to show how living under dictatorship estranges people from each other because it prevents people from revealing themselves, and from revealing the truth, to each other.

I'm going to re-read this one later in the year to see if it hits me in a different way.
]]> <![CDATA[Down the River Unto the Sea (King Oliver, #1)]]> 35173689 From trailblazing novelist Walter Mosley: a former NYPD cop once imprisoned for a crime he did not commit must solve two cases: that of a man wrongly condemned to die, and his own.

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.

A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of--and why.

Running in parallel with King's own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Joined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King's client's, and King's own.]]> 336 Walter Mosley 0316509647 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.58 2018 Down the River Unto the Sea (King Oliver, #1)
author: Walter Mosley
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/05
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World]]> 58157285 In The Age of the Strongman, Gideon Rachman finds global coherence in the chaos of the new nationalism, leadership cults and hostility to liberal democracy.

We are in a new era: authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since 2000, self-styled strongmen have risen to power in capitals as diverse as Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Budapest, Ankara, Riyadh and Washington.

These leaders are nationalists and social conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent or the interests of foreigners. At home, they claim to be standing up for ordinary people against globalist elites; abroad, they posture as the embodiments of their nations. And everywhere they go, they encourage a cult of personality. What's more, these leaders are not just operating in authoritarian political systems but have begun to emerge in the heartlands of liberal democracy.

While in the West the EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 mark a watershed, the new era started at the beginning of the new millennium, when Vladimir Putin took power in Russia. How and why did this new style of strongman leadership arrive? How likely is it to lead the world into war or economic collapse? And what liberal forces are in place not only to keep these strongmen in check but to reverse the trend?

From Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro to Erdogan, Xi and Modi, Gideon Rachman pays full attention to the strongman phenomenon around the world and uncovers the complex and often surprising interaction between these leaders. Whilst others have tried to understand the emergence of these new leaders individually, The Age of the Strongman provides the first truly global treatment of the new nationalism, underpinned by an exceptional level of access to key actors in this drama: Gideon Rachman has been in the same room with most of these strongmen and reported from their countries over a long journalistic career.]]> 288 Gideon Rachman 184792641X Benjamin 0 to-read 4.00 2022 The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World
author: Gideon Rachman
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War]]> 55532

Peter Maass went to the Balkans as a reporter at the height of the nightmarish war there, but this book is not traditional war reportage. Maass examines how an ordinary Serb could wake up one morning and shoot his neighbor, once a friend--then rape that neighbor's wife. He conveys the desperation that makes a Muslim beg the United States to bomb his own city in order to end the misery. And Maass does not falter at the spectacle of U.N. soldiers shining searchlights on fleeing refugees--who are promptly gunned down by snipers waiting in the darkness. Love Thy Neighbor gives us an unflinching vision of a late-20th-century hell that is also a scathing inquiry into the worst extremes of human nature. Like Michael Herr's Dispatches (also available in Vintage paperback), it is an utterly gripping book that will move and instruct readers for years to come.]]> 320 Peter Maass 0679763899 Benjamin 3 4.37 1996 Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
author: Peter Maass
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/09
date added: 2023/02/11
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War]]> 4362 Winner of the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A Washington Post Book World Top Five Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Seattle Times Top Ten Best Book of the Year
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

In 2003, The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid went to war in Iraq, but not as an embedded journalist. Born and raised in Oklahoma, of Lebanese descent, Shadid, a fluent Arabic speaker, has spent the last three years dividing his time between Washington, D.C., and Baghdad. The only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary coverage of Iraq, Shadid is also the only writer to describe the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the unexpected impact of America's invasion and occupation. Through the moving stories of individual Iraqis, Shadid shows how Saddam's downfall paved the way not just for hopes of democracy but also for the importation of jihad and the rise of a bloody insurgency. "A superb reporter's book," wrote Seymour Hersh; Night Draws Near is, according to Mark Danner, "essential."]]> 525 Anthony Shadid 0312426038 Benjamin 0 4.16 2005 Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
author: Anthony Shadid
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, literary-journalism, 2023-books
review:

]]> Place at the End of the World 914050 At the start of her career Janine di Giovanni was advised, 'Write about the small voices, the people who can't write about themselves.'

For over fifteen years, she has been doing exactly that. From a near-abandoned hospital in Chechnya to bombed-out Tora Bora in Afghanistan, from Saddam Hussein's derelict palace in Baghdad to the inner-city barrios of Kingston, Jamaica, di Giovanni has covered almost every embattled place in the world and the people caught in its midst. Like Myriem, who lives on the West Bank, but can no longer use her farm because it falls on the Israeli side of the security fence; and Sia, one of the child soldiers of Sierra Leone, who talks blithely of shedding her violent past; and Abdul, who was imprisoned by the Taliban at seventeen for not wearing a beard.

The pieces collected here begin with Algeria in 1998 and end with Iraq in 2005. They are vivid, raw and impassioned - and they make war terrifyingly real.

]]> 432 Janine Di Giovanni 0747580367 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 4.35 2006 Place at the End of the World
author: Janine Di Giovanni
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior]]> 32670920
Many of these smugglers carry out their activities with little regard for human rights, which has led to a manifold increase in human suffering, not only in the Mediterranean Sea, but also along the overland smuggling routes that cross the Sahara, penetrate deep into the Balkans, and through hidden corners of Europe's capitals. But some of these smugglers are revered as saviors by those they move, for it is they who deliver men, women, and children to a safer place and a better life. Disconcertingly, it is often criminals who help the most desperate among us when the international system fails to come to their aid.

This book is a measured attempt, born of years of research and reporting in the field, to better understand how human-smuggling networks function, the ways in which they have evolved, and what they mean for peace and security in the future.
]]> 331 Peter Tinti 0190668598 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 4.22 2016 Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior
author: Peter Tinti
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches]]> 28264501 312 Carlo Ancelotti Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 4.06 2016 Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches
author: Carlo Ancelotti
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
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]]> <![CDATA[The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (ALA Notable Books for Adults)]]> 16071731
A shattered Army veteran and a mischievous party girl, Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow commandeered Western Airlines Flight 701 as a vague protest against the war. Through a combination of savvy and dumb luck, the couple managed to flee across an ocean with a half-million dollars in ransom, a feat that made them notorious around the globe. Koerner spent four years chronicling this madcap tale, which involves a cast of characters ranging from exiled Black Panthers to African despots to French movie stars. He combed through over 4,000 declassified documents and interviewed scores of key figures in the drama--including one of the hijackers, whom Koerner discovered living in total obscurity. Yet "The Skies Belong to Us" is more than just an enthralling yarn about a spectacular heist and its bittersweet, decades-long aftermath. It is also a psychological portrait of America at its most turbulent, and a testament to the madness that can grip a nation when politics fail.]]> 318 Brendan I. Koerner 0307886107 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 4.02 2013 The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (ALA Notable Books for Adults)
author: Brendan I. Koerner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World and All That It Holds]]> 60784834 The World and All That It Holds--in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory--showcases Aleksandar Hemon's celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents.

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman--with the occasional opiatic interlude--that keeps him going.]]> 352 Aleksandar Hemon 0374287708 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 3.81 2023 The World and All That It Holds
author: Aleksandar Hemon
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/05
shelves: to-read, 2023-books
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ten Equations That Rule the World: And How You Can Use Them Too]]> 55607293 Is there a secret formula for getting rich? For going viral? For deciding how long to stick with your current job, Netflix series, or even relationship?

This book is all about the equations that make our world go round. Ten of them, in fact. They are integral to everything from investment banking to betting companies and social media giants. And they can help you to increase your chance of success, guard against financial loss, live more healthfully, and see through scaremongering. They are known by only the privileged few - until now.

With wit and clarity, mathematician David Sumpter shows that it isn't the technical details that make these formulas so successful. It is the way they allow mathematicians to view problems from a different angle - a way of seeing the world that anyone can learn.

Empowering and illuminating, The Ten Equations That Rule the World shows how math really can change your life.]]> 248 David Sumpter 1250246970 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.67 2020 The Ten Equations That Rule the World: And How You Can Use Them Too
author: David Sumpter
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention]]> 26890870 •�Finalist for the 2015 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year �Named one ofTimemagazine’s Best Books of 2015 So Far� ANew York TimesEditors� Choice •�

“[How Music Got Free] has the clear writing and brisk reportorial acumen of a Michael Lewis book.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

What happens when an entire generation commits the same crime?

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It’s about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.

Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.

Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online—when, suddenly, all the music ever recorded was available for free. In the page-turning tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt’s deeply reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters—inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers—who revolutionized an entire artform, and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.

An irresistible never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn’t just a story of the music industry—it’s a must-read history of the Internet itself.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 320 Stephen Witt 0143109340 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.20 2015 How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention
author: Stephen Witt
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2015
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]]> <![CDATA[La mano negra - Ces forces obscures qui contrôlent le football mondial (Hors collection) (French Edition)]]> 42850274 « Jamais un petit livre n'a mieux décrit la raison d'être du football moderne. Son business, ses prédateurs, ses fables, ses légendes, sa déshumanisation, son storytelling permanent. [...] Romain Molina nous accroche avec de grandes et de petites histoires. »Denis Robert

Espionnage, politique, géopolitique, blanchiment, corruption, valises de billets, super-agents : le beautiful game n'est plus un jeu, mais une industrie.Et comme toute industrie, elle attire des hommes de l'ombre et suscite ses propres déviances, aussi créatives que troubles. De Pini Zahavi, « l'homme le plus puissant du football mondial », à Juan Figer, le doyen des agents mondiaux, en passant par Kia Joorabchian, La Mano Negra dresse le portrait de ces hommes qui ne se contentent plus d'accompagner les transferts, les clubs et les joueurs, mais redessinent la carte du football mondial au gré de leurs intérêts et de ceux de leurs amis.Dans un livre brûlant, rythmé comme un thriller et s'appuyant sur des documents explosifs et inédits tels que le contrat de Neymar, Romain Molina nous entraîne de la Russie à l'Amérique du Sud via Gibraltar, Israël et l'Albanie, entre oligarques et services secrets, faux transferts et vraies commissions, fonds d'investissement et paradis fiscaux, « agents d'or » brésiliens et plaque tournante uruguayenne, cocktails empoisonnés et accidents d'hélicoptère, charters de prostituées et rails de cocaïne.Bienvenue dans le monde fascinant de La Mano Negra. Mais attention : vous ne regarderez plus jamais le football de la même façon.]]> 279 Romain Molina Benjamin 0 to-read 3.93 La mano negra - Ces forces obscures qui contrôlent le football mondial (Hors collection) (French Edition)
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name: Benjamin
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism]]> 3823528 The Great Heroin Coup probes into the netherworld of narcotics, espionage, and international terrorism. In so doing, Krüger uncovers the alliances between the Mafia, right wing extremists, neo-Fascist OAS veterans in France, and Miami-based Cuban exiles.]]> 240 Henrik Krüger 0896080315 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.46 1980 The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism
author: Henrik Krüger
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Rotations and Interchanges: A book inspired by Marcelo Bielsa]]> 44489793 111 John Wall 1729559336 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.88 Rotations and Interchanges: A book inspired by Marcelo Bielsa
author: John Wall
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.88
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]]> Leopoldstadt 48567463 0 Tom Stoppard 0571359043 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.31 2020 Leopoldstadt
author: Tom Stoppard
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas]]> 43973405 140 Maxim D. Shrayer 1644690365 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.50 A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas
author: Maxim D. Shrayer
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.50
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]]> <![CDATA[1312: Among the Ultras, A journey with the world's most extreme fans]]> 46266510 You can see us, but you don't know us.

Ultras are football fans like no others. Fiercely loyal, organised, political and violent, they are a hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth. Their global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world, yet they remain enigmatic: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time.

1312: Among the Ultras tells the story of how the movement began, emerging from the terraces of post-war Italy, the Balkans and Brazil, and how it has become a global phenomenon that now dominates the stadiums of Madrid, Munich, Moscow and Buenos Aires. With unique insider access, the book explains how ultras have grown into a fiercely political movement that embraces extremes on both the left and right; fighting against the commercialisation of football and society, the resettlement of refugees, the rise of fascism, opposition to dictators and the attempts to control them by the authorities who both covet and fear their power.

It’s an unforgettable look at the volatile new forces in football, at a time when people power and anti-establishment voices are redefining politics � sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.]]> 400 James Montague 1785039172 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.17 1312: Among the Ultras, A journey with the world's most extreme fans
author: James Montague
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.17
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]]> <![CDATA[Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal]]> 41817495
A searing portrait of the crack epidemic and violent drug wars that once ravaged the Bronx. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx had one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country. The use of crack cocaine surged, replacing heroin as the high of choice. Drug dealers claimed territory through intimidation and murder, and families found themselves fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the most notorious gangs of its era, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough, and the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stop the tide of violence. The setting is Soundview, one of the city’s most dangerous projects, where we encounter the gangsters Suge and Pipe, and the charismatic leader of Sex Money Murder, Pistol Pete. We also meet the dedicated policemen, like rookie housing cop Pete Forcelli and seasoned Detective John O’Malley, risking their lives to make a difference. It’s a world in which dealers get their hands dirty simply by counting the hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash they make on a monthly basis, watch Scarface while smoking spliffs between shootings, and coolly assassinate rivals during a neighborhood football game; and where nothing is more important than preserving your honor and expanding your domain―with force. Breaking up the gang is a legal feat, but their murderous reputation and the expansion of their drug operation across state lines means that Sex Money Murder draws the attention of the Feds―the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms―and the persevering federal prosecutors Liz Glazer and Nicole LaBarbera, who will use RICO (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) to go after the drug crews. Drawing on years of research and extraordinary access to gang leaders, law enforcement, and federal prosecutors, Green delivers an epic character-driven narrative and an engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers a unique perspective on the violence raging in modern-day America and the battle to end it.]]> 432 Jonathan Green 0393357023 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.28 2018 Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal
author: Jonathan Green
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami]]> 34144635 The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami's cocaine cowboys heyday--and an inspiration for the blockbuster film, Scarface...]]> 352 Roben Farzad 1592409288 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.72 2017 Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami
author: Roben Farzad
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels—From the Jungles to the Streets]]> 44285788
"Toby Muse’s tautly written account of his intimate prowl through Colombia’s narco world is both compelling and unforgettable. With Kilo, cocaine now has its own Dispatches. Simply kickass.�

� Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker and author of Che A Revolutionary Life

Cocaine is glamour, sex and murder. From the badlands of Colombia, it stretches across the globe, seducing, corrupting and destroying. A product that must be produced, distributed, and protected, it is both a harbinger of violence and a source of immense wealth. Beginning in the jungles and mountains of Colombia, it filters down to countryside villages and the nightclubs of the cities, attracting money, sex, and death. Each step in the life of a kilo reveals a different criminal underworld with its own players, rules, and dangers, ranging from the bizarre to the diabolical. The killers, the drug-lords, all find themselves seduced by cocaine and trapped in her world.

Seasoned war correspondent Toby Muse has witnessed each level of this underworld, fueled by the appetite for cocaine in America and Europe. In this riveting chronicle, he takes the reader inside Colombia’s notorious drug cartels to offer a never before look at the drug trade. Following a kilo of cocaine from its production in a clandestine laboratory to the smugglers who ship it abroad, he reveals the human lives behind the drug’s complicated legacy. Reporting on Colombia for the world’s most prestigious networks and publications, Muse gained unprecedented access to the extraordinary people who survive on the drug trade—farmers, smugglers, assassins—and the drug lords and their lovers controlling these multi-billion dollar enterprises. Uncovering stories of violence, sex, and money, he shows the allure and the madness of cocaine. And how the War on Drugs has been no match for cocaine.

Piercing this veiled world, Kilo is a gripping portrait of a country struggling to end this deadly trade even as the riches flow. A human portrait of criminals and the shocking details of their lives, Kilo is a chilling, unforgettable story that takes you deep into the belly of the beast.

Kilo includes 16 pages of photographs.]]> 320 Toby Muse 0062905317 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.19 2020 Kilo: Inside the Deadliest Cocaine Cartels—From the Jungles to the Streets
author: Toby Muse
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2020
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]]> The Sixth Family 19801704
On May 5, 1981, three rebellious members of New York’s Bonanno crime family were gunned down in a Brooklyn social club. One of the gunmen was Vito Rizzuto, a man who would rise to the top of the underworld in Canada and then expand his reign across continents to become a global superboss.

The Sixth Family, now revised and updated, reveals the hidden history of the rise of the Rizzuto clan, the alliances it forged around the world and the bloody events that led to charges against Vito Rizzuto in the United States and Italy for racketeering and corruption. As police in the United States, Italy and Canada meticulously pieced together the puzzle that is Vito Rizzuto, established notions about the nature of authority within the Mafia were called into question. Who was this so-called “John Gotti of Canada�? How did he become one of the biggest names in global crime? And how did he survive the deadly assault from gangland rivals that almost destroyed his family?]]> 648 Adrian Humphreys Benjamin 0 to-read 4.45 2014 The Sixth Family
author: Adrian Humphreys
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Wilful Blindness: How a Criminal Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West]]> 57427971
Decades of bad policy allowed drug cartels, first and foremost the Big Circle Boys - powerful transnational narco-kingpins with ties to corrupt Chinese officials, real estate tycoons, and industrialists - to gain influence over significant portions of Canada’s economy. Many looked the other way while B.C.'s primary industry, real estate, ballooned with dirty cash. But the unintended social consequences are now clear: a fentanyl overdose crisis raging in major cities throughout North America and life spans falling for the first time in modern Canada, and a runaway housing market that has devastated middle-class income earners. This story isn’t just about real estate and fentanyl overdoses, though. Sam Cooper has uncovered evidence that shows the primary actors in so-called “Vancouver Model� money laundering have effectively made Canada’s west coast a headquarters for corporate and industrial espionage by the CCP. And these ruthless entrepreneurs have used Vancouver and Canada to export their criminal model to other countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Cooper finds that the RCMP’s 2019 arrest of its top intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, raises many frightening questions. Could Chinese transnational criminals and state actors targeting Canada’s industrial and technological crown jewels have gained protection from the Mounties? Could China and Iran have insight into Canada's deepest national security secrets and influence on investigations? Ortis had oversight of many investigations into transnational money laundering networks and insight into sensitive probes of suspects seeking to undermine Canada’s democracy and infiltrate the United States, according to the evidence Cooper has found.

Wilful Blindness is a powerful narrative that follows the investigators who refused to go along with institutionalized negligence and corruption that enabled the Vancouver Model, with Cooper drawing on extensive interviews with the whistle-blowers; thousands of pages of government and court documents obtained through legal applications; and large caches of confidential material available exclusively to Cooper.

The book culminates with a shocking revelation showing how deeply Canada has been compromised, and what needs to happen, to get the nation back on track with its “Five Eyes� allies.

“I’m astonished that some Hollywood production company hasn't already signed him for a big-screen treatment of this story. It's a huge story.� - Terry Glavin, National Post]]> 472 Sam Cooper Benjamin 0 to-read 4.08 2021 Wilful Blindness: How a Criminal Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West
author: Sam Cooper
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
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]]> <![CDATA[Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal]]> 116501 318 John Follain 1559705353 Benjamin 0 to-read, 2023-books 3.55 1998 Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal
author: John Follain
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, 2023-books
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]]> <![CDATA[Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)]]> 256008 Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.]]> 960 Larry McMurtry 067168390X Benjamin 0 to-read 4.54 1985 Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> The Secret World of Oil 18339942
The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers—that's tripled during the past decade—moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public.

Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.]]> 288 Ken Silverstein 1781681376 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.52 2014 The Secret World of Oil
author: Ken Silverstein
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> The Monster of Florence 2198274 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) and Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City), New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence, Italy.

In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more.

This is the true story of their search for—and identification of—the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide—and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.]]> 322 Douglas Preston 0446581194 Benjamin 3 to-read, literary-journalism 3.73 2008 The Monster of Florence
author: Douglas Preston
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/01
date added: 2023/02/02
shelves: to-read, literary-journalism
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]]> הביתה הלוך חזור 59604472
כשאבא של ליאורה הודיע לה בוקר אחד שסבתא מרסל מתה, היא לא חשבה שמותה של סבתה הזקנה יהפוך את כל עולמה. אבל בהלוויה היא מבחינה באישה זרה שקוראת מול הקבר "אני סולחת לך, מרסל", ולמרות שבקלות יכלה לחשוב שמדובר באיזו תמהונית או מטורפת בלתי מזיקה, סקרנותה של ליאורה מתעוררת. היא ניגשת לאישה הזרה, ומהר מאוד מבינה שפתחה תיבת פנדורה גדושת סודות ושקרים. החיים של ליאורה � משפחתה, חיי הנישואים שלה ומה שידעה על עצמה � הכול מתערער.
הביתה הלוך חזור הוא רומן היסטורי המשתרע על פני שלושה דורות. מאלכסנדריה שבמצרים, דרך המעברה, ההתנחלות שבחבל בנימין, ירושלים ותל אביב נפרש סיפור משפחתי סבוך מאוד, ישראלי מאוד, מותח ומרגש. זה סיפור על משפחה, על נאמנות ועל מה קודם למה. סיפור על שייכות ועל אהבה, על הכמיהה לחופש וביטוי עצמי, ועל אין־ספור הפרטים הקטנים שהופכים אותנו למי שאנחנו.
הביתה הלוך חזור הוא ספרה הראשון של אילה דקל, מרצה ומנחה בנושאי יהדות, זהות ומגדר, נשואה ואם לשלושה, שהלכה לפני כשנתיים להלוויה משפחתית, ושמעה שם, לגמרי במקרה, סיפור שטלטל את עולמה.]]> 206 Ayala Deckel Benjamin 0 to-read 3.91 הביתה הלוך חזור
author: Ayala Deckel
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.91
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sixth Family: The Collapse Of The New York Mafia And The Rise Of Vito Rizzuto]]> 832777 386 Lee Lamothe 0470837535 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.83 2006 The Sixth Family: The Collapse Of The New York Mafia And The Rise Of Vito Rizzuto
author: Lee Lamothe
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2006
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]]> Mystic River 21671
Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.]]> 416 Dennis Lehane 0060584750 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.17 2001 Mystic River
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> Cinzano: Two Plays 1902038 Re-issue of two Soviet-era plays by "The Female Chekhov."



Cinzano and Smirnova's Birthday, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.

]]> 96 Ludmilla Petrushevskaya 1854598120 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.35 1992 Cinzano: Two Plays
author: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia]]> 30267611 A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles—Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up in a family of Bolshevik intellectuals who were reduced in the wake of the Russian Revolution to waiting in bread lines. In The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivation—of wandering the streets like a young Edith Piaf, singing for alms, and living by her wits like Oliver Twist, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer. As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringing—of feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the dining tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of food—we see, both in her remarkable lack of self-pity and in the two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged.]]> 181 Ludmilla Petrushevskaya 014312997X Benjamin 0 to-read 3.37 2006 The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia
author: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2006
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]]> Afterlives 52744975
Another young man returns at the same time. Hamza was not stolen for the war, but sold into it; he has grown up at the right hand of an officer whose protection has marked him life. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he seeks only work and security � and the love of the beautiful Afiya.

As fate knots these young people together, as they live and work and fall in love, the shadow of a new war on another continent lengthens and darkens, ready to snatch them up and carry them away…]]> 288 Abdulrazak Gurnah Benjamin 0 to-read 3.72 2020 Afterlives
author: Abdulrazak Gurnah
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/01
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]]> <![CDATA[American Spy: Wry Reflections on My Life in the CIA]]> 43809436
Written by a former CIA operations officer, this candid and often witty memoir recounts a life of intrigue, adventure, and a few close brushes with death. H. K. Roy describes, with remarkable sangfroid and a humorist's eye for absurdity, his many strange and risky exploits. Whether he was pursuing Soviet and Cuban spies, running "denied area" operations in Eastern Europe, hunting Bosnian war criminals, or providing actionable intelligence to US government and coalition forces in Iraq, Roy usually found himself at the right place at the right time.

Except when he didn't--like the time he stumbled into a life-threatening ambush by Iranian terrorists while dodging Serb snipers and shelling in Sarajevo. Eight summers later, caught in a blinding sandstorm between Amman and Baghdad, he learned his fate was in the hands of an Iraqi tribal chief who had just lost his entire family to a US airstrike in Ramadi, in a failed attempt to kill Saddam Hussein that had tragic consequences.

Combining dedication to duty with a maverick's disdain for bureaucracy, Roy makes it clear that he prefers foreign locales to Washington and thrives on the adrenaline rush that comes with danger. He also sheds much light on why intelligence is an essential component of national defense, even our very survival as a nation.]]> 320 H.K. Roy 1633885887 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.00 2019 American Spy: Wry Reflections on My Life in the CIA
author: H.K. Roy
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/24
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]]> Dgse: The French Spy Machine 51604091 Courrier international published the last words of ex-French President Francois Mitterrand, and between others he avowed for the first time, "France does not know it, but we are at war against the United States. A permanent economic war; a war without dead."

Dominique Poirier who worked for more than twenty years for the DGSE takes us behind the closed curtain of the French intelligence community, to reveals for the first time shocking realities on mass surveillance and domestic influence in France, assassinations, and secret operations against the United States laced with startling revelations. And he tells us how the discreet cooperation between French and Russian spies evolved since Time magazine at last reported it in April 1968 with the scandal of the Martel Affair, two years after France and the Soviet Union had signed a decisive agreement on science and technology sharing.

DGSE; The French Spy Machine is the biggest and richest book published to date on an intelligence service, detailing its current organization, methods, techniques and objectives.]]> 822 Dominique Poirier 1687670536 Benjamin 0 to-read 0.0 Dgse: The French Spy Machine
author: Dominique Poirier
name: Benjamin
average rating: 0.0
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]]> <![CDATA[Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg]]> 27160924

The affair, impassioned as it is, is not part of the Mossad plan and so the agency must hatch a dark scheme to drive the two apart. What began as a quiet, solitary mission has become a perilous exercise in survival, and Ben-Ari has no time to discover the truth about Anna’s real identity before the Mossad resolves the issue for him. Amid the shadowy manipulations of the secret services, the anguished agent finds himself at an impossible crossroads.


Written with the masterful skill of a seasoned novelist, and bringing to bear his years of experience as a Mossad agent himself, Ben-David once again delivers a powerful look into the mysterious Israeli intelligence agency in this action-packed page-turner.]]> 432 Mishka Ben-David 1468310216 Benjamin 1 predictable. cheesy. 3.95 2005 Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg
author: Mishka Ben-David
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2005
rating: 1
read at: 2022/10/27
date added: 2022/10/27
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predictable. cheesy.
]]> Duet in Beirut 22571825 In this riveting thriller by an ex-Mossad agent, an Israeli spy risks his life to save a Hezbollah leader

For over a decade, Mishka Ben-David was a profes­sional spy, taking part in secret operations on be­half of the Mossad, Israel’s legendary intelligence agency. But after twelve years of service, Ben-David quit the Mossad and became an acclaimed novelist, describing life as a spy from within. A major best­seller in Israel, Duet in Beirut is Ben-David’s first book to appear in English.
Ronen, an expelled Mossad agent, has disap­peared following a failed assassination attempt against the Hezbollah operative responsible for suicide bombings in Israel. Feared to be on an un­authorized mission, it is up to his former command­er, Gadi, to track Ronen down and stop him from causing harm both to himself and to his country. The physical and intellectual scuffle between the two men becomes one of deeper, moral inquiry.
Written with a master novelist’s terse convic­tion, Duet in Beirut takes us inside a much-dis­cussed but little understood world. As revealing in its psychological acuity as it is in its portrait of life in the Mossad, Duet in Beirut is an essential thriller of espionage and political intrigue.]]> 336 Mishka Ben-David 1468310208 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.42 2002 Duet in Beirut
author: Mishka Ben-David
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Ghosts by Daylight Love, War, and Redemption]]> 11518576 304 Janine Di Giovanni 0307701360 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.91 2011 Ghosts by Daylight Love, War, and Redemption
author: Janine Di Giovanni
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football]]> 281299 246 David Winner 0747547084 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.05 2000 Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football
author: David Winner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them]]> 15808832
He offers advice on what he calls "not-writing-badly," which consists of the ability, first, to craft sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction (word choice), punctuation, and grammar, and that also display clarity, precision, and grace. Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention tocadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length.

In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can alltake to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.]]> 192 Ben Yagoda 1594488487 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.86 2013 How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them
author: Ben Yagoda
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> IBM and the Holocaust 48838 IBM & the Holocaust tells of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany--beginning in 1933 in the 1st weeks that Hitler came to power & continuing well into WWII. As the 3rd Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest & genocide, IBM & its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification & cataloging programs of the 30s to the selections of the 40s. Only after Jews were identified--a massively complex task Hitler wanted done immediately--could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor & annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation & organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 30s no computer existed. But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed & constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate the persecution of the Jews.

Historians were amazed at the speed & accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify & locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany & then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations & ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads & organizing of concentration camp slave labor. IBM & its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, anticipating the Reich's needs. They didn't merely sell the machines & walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees & became the sole source of the billions of punch cards needed. IBM & the Holocaust details the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the 3rd Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters & the Geneva intermediaries--all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution & destruction. Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit. Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews: how Hitler got the names.]]> 710 Edwin Black 0751531995 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.03 1999 IBM and the Holocaust
author: Edwin Black
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service]]> 13623874
Through intensive research and exclusive interviews with Israeli leaders and Mossad agents, authors Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal re-create these missions in riveting detail, vividly bringing to life the heroic operatives who risked everything in the face of unimaginable danger. In the words of Shimon Peres, president of Israel, this gripping, white-knuckle read "tells what should have been known and isn't--that Israel's hidden force is as formidable as its recognized physical strength."]]> 388 Michael Bar-Zohar 0062123408 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.15 2010 Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service
author: Michael Bar-Zohar
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Spies Against Armageddon 15756654 455 Dan Raviv Benjamin 4 4.06 1992 Spies Against Armageddon
author: Dan Raviv
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/19
date added: 2022/10/19
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]]> Paris Metro 40180036 Paris Metro is a story of East meets West. Kit, a reporter, has spent several years after 9/11 living in the Middle East, working as a correspondent for an American newspaper. Along the way she falls in love and marries a charismatic Iraqi diplomat named Ahmed, before their separation leaves Kit raising their teenage son alone in Paris. But after the Charlie Hebdo attack occurs and, a few months later, terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit’s core beliefs are shattered. The violence she had spent years covering abroad is now on her doorstep. As Kit struggles with her grief and confusion, she begins to mistrust those closest to her: her friends, her husband, even her own son.]]> 384 Wendell Steavenson 0393356795 Benjamin 2 3.56 2018 Paris Metro
author: Wendell Steavenson
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/18
date added: 2022/10/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin]]> 58484191 This riveting graphic novel biography chronicles Vladimir Putin's rise from a mid-level KGB officer to the autocratic leader of Russia and reveals the truth behind the strongman persona he has spent his career cultivating.

In the West’s collective imagination, Vladimir Putin is a devious cartoon villain, constantly plotting and scheming to destroy his enemies around the globe. But how did an undistinguished mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? And how much of Putin’s tough-guy persona is a calculated performance?

In Accidental Czar, Andrew S. Weiss, a former White House Russia expert, and Brian “Box� Brown show how Putin has successfully cast himself as a cunning, larger-than-life political mastermind—and how the rest of the world has played into the Kremlin’s hands by treating him as one. They shatter all of these myths and expose the man behind the façade.]]> 272 Andrew S. Weiss 1250760755 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.87 2022 Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin
author: Andrew S. Weiss
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Invisible Hand: The Marijuana Business]]> 681590 288 Roger Warner 0688050956 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.33 1986 Invisible Hand: The Marijuana Business
author: Roger Warner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Boss of Brighton: Boris "Biba" Nayfeld and the Rise of the Russian Mob in America]]> 59314682 416 Douglas Century 0063014955 Benjamin 2
I was hoping this would be a book in the style of Patrick Radden Keefe's "The Snakehead," which follows a main character but puts the events in a larger context, painting a portrait of the people in a particular time and place. Instead, the book reads as if the writer interviewed the protagonist and no one else. ]]> 4.03 The Last Boss of Brighton: Boris "Biba" Nayfeld and the Rise of the Russian Mob in America
author: Douglas Century
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2022/09/02
date added: 2022/09/02
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This is the story of a Russian Jewish gangster, born shortly after World War II, who left what was then the USSR in the late 1970s and became a major player in the underworld of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a Russian enclave.

I was hoping this would be a book in the style of Patrick Radden Keefe's "The Snakehead," which follows a main character but puts the events in a larger context, painting a portrait of the people in a particular time and place. Instead, the book reads as if the writer interviewed the protagonist and no one else.
]]> <![CDATA[Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy]]> 58395055
"Truly one of the most nail-biting, page-turning, terrifying true-crime books I've ever read." —Nick Bilton, New York Times bestselling author of American Kingpin

From award-winning journalists Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, the gripping, true-crime story of a notorious maritime hijacking at the heart of a massive conspiracy—and the unsolved murder that threatened to unravel it all.

In July 2011, the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of Somali pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. But when David Mockett, a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd’s of London, inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers. How had the pirates gotten aboard so easily? And if they wanted to steal the ship and bargain for its return, then why did they destroy it? The questions didn’t add up—and Mockett would never answer them. Soon after his inspection, David Mockett was murdered.

Dead in the Water is a shocking expose of the criminal inner-workings of international shipping, told through the lens of the Brillante hijacking and its aftermath. Through first-hand accounts of those who lived it—from members of the ship’s crew and witnesses to the attacks, to the ex-London detectives turned private investigators seeking to solve Mockett’s murder and bring justice to his family—award-winning Bloomberg reporters Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel piece together the astounding truth behind one of the most brazen financial frauds in history.

The ambitious culmination of more than four years of reporting, Dead in the Water uncovers an intricate web of conspiracy amidst the lawless, old-world industry at the backbone of our new global economy.]]> 288 Matthew Campbell 0593329236 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.19 2022 Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy
author: Matthew Campbell
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Quick And The Dead: Under Siege in Sarajevo]]> 1999845 192 Janine Di Giovanni 1857993330 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.91 The Quick And The Dead: Under Siege in Sarajevo
author: Janine Di Giovanni
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life]]> 29662443
From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels.

Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, visiting Rwanda's museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide, celebrating New Year's Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command, interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev, listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, meeting with two former heads of the KGB, watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations, or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.

Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.]]> 310 John Le Carré 0241976871 Benjamin 2 4.03 2016 The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
author: John Le Carré
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2022/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America]]> 27209433 In her groundbreaking history of the class system in America, extending from colonial times to the present, Nancy Isenberg takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing––if occasionally entertaining–�"poor white trash."

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as “waste people,� “offals,� “rubbish,� “lazy lubbers,� and “crackers.� By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters� and “sandhillers,� known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery.

Reconstruction pitted "poor white trash" against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics�-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, "white trash" have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.]]> 460 Nancy Isenberg 0670785970 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.75 2016 White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
author: Nancy Isenberg
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries of Real Events]]> 14482 368 Barry Hampe 0805044515 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.68 1997 Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries of Real Events
author: Barry Hampe
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Netanyahus 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 Benjamin 2 3.81 2021 The Netanyahus
author: Joshua Cohen
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/05/29
date added: 2022/05/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family]]> 2884914 272 Joaquín "Jack" García 1416551638 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.80 2008 Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family
author: Joaquín "Jack" García
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948]]> 1248756 604 Bertil Lintner 9747100789 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.22 1994 Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948
author: Bertil Lintner
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia]]> 36125264
Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western readers can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone , a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment.

The vory —as the Russian mafia is also known—was born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves� code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti’s captivating study details the vory ’s journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia’s free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.]]> 344 Mark Galeotti 0300186827 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.78 2018 The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia
author: Mark Galeotti
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Nemesis: One Man and the Battle For Rio]]> 25329735 360 Misha Glenny 1770893857 Benjamin 0 to-read 4.05 2015 Nemesis: One Man and the Battle For Rio
author: Misha Glenny
name: Benjamin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink]]> 23492692 Detroit: An American Autopsy and Maximum City comes a deeply reported and beautifully written biography of the seductive and chaotic city of Rio de Janeiro from prizewinning journalist and Brazilian native Juliana Barbassa.

Juliana Barbassa moved a great deal throughout her life, but Rio was always home. After twenty-one years abroad, she returned to find the city that once ravaged by inflation, drug wars, corrupt leaders, and dying neighborhoods was now on the precipice of a major change.

Rio has always aspired to the pantheon of global capitals, and under the spotlight of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games it seems that its moment has come. But in order to prepare itself for the world stage, Rio must vanquish the entrenched problems that Barbassa recalls from her childhood. Turning this beautiful but deeply flawed place into a predictable, pristine showcase of the best that Brazil has to offer in just a few years is a tall order—and with the whole world watching, the stakes couldn't be higher.

With a cast of larger-than-life characters who are driving this fast-moving juggernaut or who risk getting caught in its gears, this kaleidoscopic portrait of Rio introduces the reader to the people who make up this city of extremes, revealing their aspirations and their grit, their violence, their hungers and their splendor, and shedding light on the future of this city they are building together.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God is an insider perspective into a city on the brink from a native daughter whose life, hopes, and fortunes are entwined with those of the city she portrays.]]> 336 Juliana Barbassa 1476756252 Benjamin 0 to-read 3.90 2015 Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink
author: Juliana Barbassa
name: Benjamin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]>