Siro

Siro
Author: David Ignatius
Publisher: WW Norton
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2013-05-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393346307

“A riveting imagined world, so real in fact that one always wonders if it is imagined at all.” —Scott Turow Made restless by the tightening restrictions of CIA bureaucracy, agent Alan Taylor oversteps moral and legal bounds in a top-secret mission to destabilize the Soviet Union. His new recruit—the beautiful Anna Barnes, who struggles with complex feelings for Taylor—receives a deeper education than she signed up for in David Ignatius’s trademark world of shifting international and domestic pressures, hidden loyalties, and secret agendas.

Agents of Innocence: A Novel

Agents of Innocence: A Novel
Author: David Ignatius
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2011-02-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393066711

A "superlative spy novel" (New York Times) by the author of the bestselling espionage thrillers Body of Lies and The Director. Agents of Innocence is the book that established David Ignatius's reputation as a master of the novel of contemporary espionage. Into the treacherous world of shifting alliances and arcane subterfuge comes idealistic CIA man Tom Rogers. Posted in Beirut to penetrate the PLO and recruit a high-level operative, he soon learns the heavy price of innocence in a time and place that has no use for it.

Falling Angels

Falling Angels
Author: Tracy Chevalier
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2002-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101174897

A New York Times bestseller From the author of the international bestseller Girl With A Pearl Earring and At the Edge of the Orchard, Tracy Chevalier once again paints a distant age with a rich and provocative palette of characters. Falling Angels follows the fortunes of two families in the emerging years of the twentieth century in England, while the Queen's death reverberates through a changing nation. Told through a variety of shifting perspectives—wives and husbands, friends and lovers, masters and their servants, and a gravedigger's son—Falling Angels is graced with the luminous imagery that distinguished Girl With a Pearl Earring, Falling Angels is another dazzling tour de force from this "master of voices" (The New York Times Book Review).

Cultish

Cultish
Author: Amanda Montell
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0062993178

The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

The Plagues of Egypt

The Plagues of Egypt
Author: Siro Igino Trevisanato
Publisher: Gorgias PressLlc
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781593332341

In The Plagues of Egypt, molecular biologist Siro Trevisanato assembles data gleaned from a variety of ancient texts and a wide range of scientific disciplines to assist in a reconsideration of the ten biblical plagues recorded in the Biblical book of Exodus. Trevisanato's reconstruction presents a view of these events that argues for their historical reality, identifying the series of disasters which befell Egypt as a chain reaction traceable to a single cataclysmic event which for the first time can be dated with certainty.

Devil's Gate

Devil's Gate
Author: Clive Cussler
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2012-07-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141957697

Clive Cussler's astounding Devil's Gate sees the return of Kurt Austin and the NUMA team. Deep beneath the Eastern Atlantic Ocean lies an extraordinary underwater burial ground of ships and planes . . . Nearby, a Japanese cargo ship blows up without warning. Racing to help, Kurt Austin and the NUMA team are beaten to the scene by heavily armed pirates. But when the ruthless gang's own boat explodes as they're making their escape, the men from NUMA are suddenly plunged from a disaster into a mystery. Soon they uncover a scheme involving the deadly ambitions of an African dictator, the creation of a weapon of terrible power, a kidnapped CERN scientist and a deep-water graveyard holding a lost aircraft and its precious cargo. As a terrifying and audacious plan to bring the world's major nations to their knees is set in motion, only Kurt Austin - the right man, in the right place, at the right time - can stop it . . . With Devil's Gate, UK number one bestseller Clive Cussler shows us once more why he is the grand master of adventure fiction. The ninth book in Clive Cussler's bestselling NUMA Files series, Devils's Gate is a novel that will have readers gripped right to the last page. Kurt Austin, hero of previous titles Medusa and The Navigator, must avert a disaster of global proportions. Praise for Clive Cussler: 'The guy I read' Tom Clancy 'The Adventure King' Sunday Express 'Nobody does it better . . . nobody!' Stephen Coonts

A Firing Offense

A Firing Offense
Author: David Ignatius
Publisher:
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1997
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780786211463

A journalist becomes a Privvy to sensitive information leaked by a maverick CIA agent, but as his ties to the CIA deepen, he begins to wonder if he has made his paper an unwitting player in a private international trade war.

The Increment: A Novel

The Increment: A Novel
Author: David Ignatius
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2010-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393071405

The New York Times bestseller: “A remarkably timely and pulse-quickening tale of deception, divided loyalty, and moral haziness.”—Raleigh News & Observer Harry Pappas, chief of the CIA’s Persia House, receives an encrypted message from a scientist in Tehran. But soon the source of secrets from the Iranian bomb program dries up: the scientist panics; he’s being followed, but he doesn’t know who’s on to him, and neither does Harry. To get his agent out, Harry turns to a secret British spy team known as “The Increment,” whose operatives carry the modern version of the double-O “license to kill.” But the real story is infinitely more complicated than Harry understands, and to get to the bottom of it he must betray his own country.

Reshaping Retail

Reshaping Retail
Author: Stefan Niemeier
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2013-06-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118698886

The modern retail system has worked to dazzling effect. From the 19th century, store owners emerged from small beginnings to set in train an industry that has seen some operators become nationally, even globally, dominant. Along the way, they turned retailing into an art, and then a science. Now retailers in emerging markets appear to be repeating the story all over again, except on a scale and at a speed beyond anything we have seen before. Given all of this, it can be hard for those who work in retailing to accept that the industry as we know it is living on borrowed time, on the brink of transformation. There is now an urgency with which conventional store-based retailers must now act and the extent of the challenges this change represents in strategic, organizational, and above all, technological terms. Reshaping Retail sets out the driving causes, current trends and consequences of a transformation in retail triggered by technology. The changes go far beyond making items available for sale on the internet. Starting by briefly setting the historical and business system contexts for retail and describe the role that technology has played in the creation of modern retail it then explains the underlying technological drivers behind the current revolution – radical changes in the capacity of both hardware and software, mobile telecommunications changes and the advances of the Internet. Ultimately, success will hinge on more than competence; it will come down to a way of thinking. Customer-centricity will need to be valued not just by the store owner, as in the past, but also by all employees in the organization. It will need to become embedded in their daily tasks. The same applies to technology, which must be at the center of the organization and recognized as such by everyone. With a combination of extensive desk and field research, interviews with leading retailers and technologists, together with the real world experience of practitioners in this area, Reshaping Retail will inspire and help store retailers to make the necessary transformation now to win in the new consumer driven world.

Bloodmoney

Bloodmoney
Author: David Ignatius
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-05-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393341798

"You emerge from its pages as if from a top-level security briefing—confident that you have been let in on the deepest secrets." —Washington Post Someone in Pakistan is killing the members of a new CIA unit trying to buy peace with America’s enemies. It falls to Sophie Marx, a young officer with a big chip on her shoulder, to figure out who’s doing the killing and why. Unfortunately for Sophie, nothing is quite what it seems. This is a theater of violence and revenge, in which the last act is one that Sophie could not have imagined.