Global Politics Audiobooks | Politics

The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq Audiobook

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award, George Packer is a venerated staff writer for The New Yorker-with four tours on assignment in Iraq. With The Assassins' Gate, he offers a penetrating work of journalism on the United States' occupation of Iraq. The Assassins' Gate, dubbed so by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point? George Packer describes the players and ideas behind the Bush administration's war policy. He also provides first-hand accounts of the men and women-both civilian and military, coalition and Iraqi-who are caught in the middle of the conflict. Rich in history and political insight, this is an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over the Iraq War.

George Packer (Author), Richard Poe (Narrator)

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Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America

Chuck Norris (Author), Alan Sklar (Narrator)

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10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

Benjamin Wiker, Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D. (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

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Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio,

Here are the facts: —The United States has released 425 terrorists from Guantánamo, at least 50 of whom have returned to the battlefield to fight American troops. —Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both say they're fiscally responsible. But each has called for $1 trillion in tax increases over the next ten years—and dressed them up as tax cuts! —Mainstream Media has been given marching orders from the Society of Professional Journalists: never refer to "Islamic terrorists" or "Muslim terrorists." And they are obeying! Whenever our brave agents disrupt a terror plot, the media dismisses the culprits as a gang of idiots—lulling us into a false sense of security. —If the liberals win the 2008 election, they will cripple talk radio—forcing stations to give equal time to left-wing programs and insisting that liberals play a key role in station management. —Up to a quarter of all state pension funds in the United States are invested in companies that are helping Iran, Syria, North Korea, or the Sudan—for a total of nearly $200 billion. —The Do-Nothing Congress is still doing nothing—and the worst offenders are the presidential candidates Clinton, Obama, and McCain, who never show up for their day jobs as senators...except to pick up their $165,000 paychecks! Is it any wonder that Americans feel fleeced at every turn? As more and more critical problems develop that need national attention, the White House and Congress appear to be AWOL. Who's calling the shots instead? Big business, big government, big labor, and big lobbyists. And their self-serving agendas are doing nothing to help the ever-increasing number of American people who are losing their homes, paying credit card interest rates higher than 25 percent, and finding their jobs increasingly outsourced to foreign countries. In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American taxpayers are routinely fleeced—by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions and American public opinion; by Washington lobbying firms that are pushing the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators on Capitol Hill; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS. With their characteristic blend of sharp analysis and insider insight, Morris and McGann call offenders of all kinds on the carpet—and offer practical agendas we all can follow to help turn the tide.

Dick Morris, Eileen McGann (Author), Johnny Heller (Narrator)

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The Terminal Spy

In a page-turning narrative that reads like a thriller, an award-winning journalist exposes the troubling truth behind the world's first act of nuclear terrorism. On November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko sipped tea in London's Millennium Hotel. Hours later the Russian émigré and former intelligence officer, who was sharply critical of Russian president Vladimir Putin, fell ill and within days was rushed to the hospital. Fatally poisoned by a rare radioactive isotope slipped into his drink, Litvinenko issued a dramatic deathbed statement accusing Putin himself of engineering his murder. Alan S. Cowell, then London Bureau Chief of the New York Times, who covered the story from its inception, has written the definitive story of this assassination and of the profound international implications of this first act of nuclear terrorism. Who was Alexander Litvinenko? What had happened in Russia since the end of the cold war to make his life there untenable and in severe jeopardy even in England, the country that had granted him asylum? And how did he really die? The life of Alexander Litvinenko provides a riveting narrative in its own right, culminating in an event that rang alarm bells among western governments at the ease with which radioactive materials were deployed in a major Western capital to commit a unique crime. But it also evokes a wide range of other issues: Russia's lurch to authoritarianism, the return of the KGB to the Kremlin, the perils of a new cold war driven by Russia's oil riches and Vladimir Putin's thirst for power. Cowell provides a remarkable and detailed reconstruction both of how Litvinenko died and of the issues surrounding his murder. Drawing on exclusive reporting from Britain, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the United States, he traces in unprecedented detail the polonium trail leading from Russia's closed nuclear cities through Moscow and Hamburg to the Millenium Hotel in central London. He provides the most detailed step-by-step explanation of how and where polonium was found; how the assassins tried on several occasions to kill Litvinenko; and how they bungled a conspiracy that may have had more targets than Litvinenko himself. With a colorful cast that includes the tycoons, spies, and killers who surrounded Litvinenko in the roller-coaster Russia of the 1990s, as well as the émigrés who flocked to London in such numbers that the British capital earned the sobriquet Londongrad, this book lays out the events that allowed an accused killer to escape prosecution in a delicate diplomatic minuet that helped save face for the authorities in London and Moscow. A masterful work of investigative reporting, The Terminal Spy offers unprecedented insight into one of the most chilling true stories of our time.

Alan S. Cowell (Author), Simon Vance, Simon Vance (Narrator)

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The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Bra

George Lakoff (Author), Kent Cassella (Narrator)

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Spies for Hire: The Secret WORLD of Intelligence Outsourcing

Running spy networks overseas. Tracking down terrorists in the Middle East. Interrogating enemy prisoners. Analyzing data from spy satellites and intercepted phone calls. All of these are vital intelligence tasks that have traditionally been performed by government officials accountable to Congress and the American people. But that is no longer the case. Starting during the Clinton administration, when intelligence budgets were cut drastically and privatization of government services became national policy, and expanding dramatically in the wake of 9/11, when the CIA and other agencies were frantically looking to hire analysts and linguists, the intelligence community has been relying more and more on corporations to perform sensitive tasks heretofore considered to be exclusively the work of federal employees. This outsourcing of intelligence activities is now a $50 billion-a-year business that consumes up to 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget. And it's a business that the government has tried hard to keep under wraps. Drawing on interviews with key players in the intelligence-industrial complex, contractors' annual reports and public filings with the government, and on-the-spot reporting from intelligence industry conferences and investor briefings, Spies for Hire provides the first behind-the-scenes look at this new way of spying. Shorrock shows how corporations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, CACI International, and IBM have become full partners with the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Pentagon in their most sensitive foreign and domestic operations. He explores how this partnership has led to wasteful spending and how it threatens to erode the privacy protections and congressional oversight that is so important to American democracy. Shorrock exposes the kinds of spy work the private sector is doing, such as interrogating prisoners in Iraq, managing covert operations, and collaborating with the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mails. And he casts light on a "shadow intelligence community" made up of former top intelligence officials who are now employed by companies that do this spy work, such as former CIA directors George Tenet and James Woolsey. Shorrock also traces the rise of Michael McConnell from his days as head of the NSA, to being a top executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, to returning to government as the nation's chief spymaster. From CIA covert actions to NSA eavesdropping, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, from the Pentagon's techno-driven war in Iraq to the coming global battles over information dominance and control of cyberspace, contractors are doing it all. Spies for Hire goes behind today's headlines to highlight how private corporations are aiding the growth of a new and frightening national surveillance state.

Tim Shorrock (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

Barbara Ehrenreich (Author), Cassandra Campbell (Narrator)

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House: Humor, Blunders, and Other Oddities from the P

Charles Osgood (Author), Norman Dietz (Narrator)

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One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon. Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board. Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev-rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion-agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro-never swayed by conventional political considerations-demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator's overthrow. Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history's most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.

Michael Dobbs (Author), Bob Walter (Narrator)

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Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda

H. Keith Melton, Henry Robert Schlesinger, Robert Wallace (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

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American Fascists: The Christian Right

Veteran journalist Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society. He argues that the movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

Chris Hedges (Author), Eunice Wong (Narrator)

Audiobook

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