Rigged

Rigged
Author: David Shimer
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 059308196X

The definitive history of the covert struggle between Russia and America to influence elections, why the threat to American democracy is greater than ever, and what we can do about it. This is "the first book to put the story of Russian interference into a broader context.... Extraordinary and gripping" (The New York Times Book Review). Russia's interference in the 2016 elections marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations—by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia—to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations to CIA and NSA directors to a former KGB general. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies. Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to comprehending the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion.

Summary of David Shimer's Rigged

Summary of David Shimer's Rigged
Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2022-05-23T22:59:00Z
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Oleg Kalugin, who was the KGB’s chief of counterintelligence from 1974 to 1982, said that the Soviet Union first targeted foreign elections a century ago. They would provide money and support to people they thought would be friendly and change their countries’ foreign and domestic policies. #2 Secret funding is perhaps the oldest form of covert electoral interference. It allows political campaigns to better target, turn out, and manipulate the masses. In 1919, Lenin laid the groundwork for such operations at a pivotal conference in Moscow. #3 The first Red Scare occurred in the United States in 1919, and it was followed by a similar crisis in the United Kingdom in 1924. The Comintern was funding the British Communist Party, which was covertly interfering in the affairs of another nation. #4 The Comintern, the Soviet Union’s international organization, had become Stalin’s liability. It had alienated democracies like the United Kingdom and the United States. The Soviet Union had intervened in foreign elections, and its existence was untenable.

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
Author: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324001550

What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped). Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.

The Folly and the Glory

The Folly and the Glory
Author: Tim Weiner
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1627790861

From Tim Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, an urgent and gripping account of the 75-year battle between the US and Russia that led to the election and impeachment of an American president With vivid storytelling and riveting insider accounts, Weiner traces the roots of political warfare—the conflict America and Russia have waged with espionage, sabotage, diplomacy and disinformation—from 1945 until 2020. America won the cold war, but Russia is winning today. Vladimir Putin helped to put his chosen candidate in the White House with a covert campaign that continues to this moment. Putin’s Russia has revived Soviet-era intelligence operations gaining ever more potent information from—and influence over—the American people and government. Yet the US has put little power into its defense. This has put American democracy in peril. Weiner takes us behind closed doors, illuminating Russian and American intelligence operations and their consequences. To get to the heart of what is at stake and find potential solutions, he examines long-running 20th-century CIA operations, the global political machinations of the Soviet KGB, the erosion of American political warfare after the cold war, and how 21st-century Russia has kept the cold war alive. The Folly and the Glory is an urgent call to our leaders and citizens to understand the nature of political warfare—and to change course before it’s too late.

Russia Without Putin

Russia Without Putin
Author: Tony Wood
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1788731255

How the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevents it from understanding Russia It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the world, and dominates Western media coverage. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention both for his supporters and his detractors. But, as Tony Wood argues, this focus on Russia’s president gets in the way of any real understanding of the country. The West needs to shake off its obsession with Putin and look beyond the Kremlin walls. In this timely and provocative analysis, Wood explores the profound changes Russia has undergone since 1991. In the process, he challenges several common assumptions made about contemporary Russia. Against the idea that Putin represents a return to Soviet authoritarianism, Wood argues that his rule should be seen as a continuation of Yeltsin’s in the 1990s. The core features of Putinism—a predatory elite presiding over a vastly unequal society—are in fact integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism. Wood also overturns the standard view of Russia’s foreign policy, identifying the fundamental loss of power and influence that has underpinned recent clashes with the West. Russia without Putin concludes by assessing the current regime’s prospects, and looks ahead to what the future may hold for the country.

The Pale King

The Pale King
Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2011-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316175293

The "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions -- questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society -- through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. "The Pale King is by turns funny, shrewd, suspenseful, piercing, smart, terrifying, and rousing." --Laura Miller, Salon

True Story

True Story
Author: Danielle J. Lindemann, PhD
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0374720967

Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 by Esquire A sociological study of reality TV that explores its rise as a culture-dominating medium—and what the genre reveals about our attitudes toward race, gender, class, and sexuality What do we see when we watch reality television? In True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, the sociologist and TV-lover Danielle J. Lindemann takes a long, hard look in the “funhouse mirror” of this genre. From the first episodes of The Real World to countless rose ceremonies to the White House, reality TV has not just remade our entertainment and cultural landscape (which it undeniably has). Reality TV, Lindemann argues, uniquely reflects our everyday experiences and social topography back to us. Applying scholarly research—including studies of inequality, culture, and deviance—to specific shows, Lindemann layers sharp insights with social theory, humor, pop cultural references, and anecdotes from her own life to show us who we really are. By taking reality TV seriously, True Story argues, we can better understand key institutions (like families, schools, and prisons) and broad social constructs (such as gender, race, class, and sexuality). From The Bachelor to Real Housewives to COPS and more (so much more!), reality programming unveils the major circuits of power that organize our lives—and the extent to which our own realities are, in fact, socially constructed. Whether we’re watching conniving Survivor contestants or three-year-old beauty queens, these “guilty pleasures” underscore how conservative our society remains, and how steadfastly we cling to our notions about who or what counts as legitimate or “real.” At once an entertaining chronicle of reality TV obsession and a pioneering work of sociology, True Story holds up a mirror to our society: the reflection may not always be pretty—but we can’t look away.

Rigged

Rigged
Author: Mollie Hemingway
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1684512638

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER JUSTICE ON TRIAL Stunned by the turbulence of the 2020 election, millions of Americans are asking the forbidden question: what really happened? It was a devastating triple punch. Capping their four-year campaign to destroy the Trump presidency, the media portrayed a Democratic victory as necessary and inevitable. Big Tech, wielding unprecedented powers, vaporized dissent and erased damning reports about the Biden family's corruption. And Democratic operatives, exploiting a public health crisis, shamelessly manipulated the voting process itself. Silenced and subjected, the American people lost their faith in the system. RIGGED is the definitive account of the 2020 election. Based on Mollie Hemingway's exclusive interviews with campaign officials, reporters, Supreme Court justices, and President Trump himself, it exposes the fraud and cynicism behind the Democrats' historic power-grab. Rewriting history is a specialty of the radical left, now in control of America's political and cultural heights. But they will have to contend with the determination, insight, and eloquence of Mollie Hemingway. RIGGED is a reminder for weary patriots that truth is still the most powerful weapon. The stakes for our democracy have never been higher.

The Fifth Profession

The Fifth Profession
Author: David Morrell
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2008-12-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0446553298

From the bestselling author of First Blood comes a spectacular thriller, in which a former Navy SEAL and a Japanese samurai master are bound together in a terrifying past that never happened.

Divided Soul - Spanish Edition

Divided Soul - Spanish Edition
Author: David Alan Harvey
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2003-07-01
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9780714843131

Divided Soul represents photographer David Alan Harvey's thirty-year journey through the Spanish and Portuguese diaspora in the Americas. In this selection of over a hundred colour photographs, Harvey explores the exuberance and incongruities of a life and culture that hold for him an endless fascination. The photographs are presented within thematic chapters, each of which is introduced by Harvey's own commentary. The passionate and divided soul of the Hispanic world, where tradition and ritual are inherent to everyday life, is revealed in Harvey's evocative, and often contradictory, images: a pulsating carnival in Cuba's Trinidad, a fervent African tribal ceremony in Brazil, an erotic disco in Lisbon, a Whitsuntide procession in Andalucia and a first Communion in Mexico. Adopting an approach that combines intuition, patience and persistent curiosity - together with a rejection of cumbersome equipment - Harvey succeeds in minimizing the distance between himself and his subjects, producing images that capture the natural choreography of people within places and that resonate with magic.