political science / political freedom & security / general

The Iranian government tried everything to silence Shirin Ebadi: They arrested her, bugged her phones, attacked her home, shadowed her everywhere she went, seized her office, and nailed a death threat to her front door. But stopped Ebadi from her work as a human rights lawyer defending women, children, and the persecuted in Iran. After several years of harrassment and intimidation, the Iranian spy services turned their sights onto Ebadi's only weakness: those she loved the most, her family. First the authorities detained her daughter, then they laid a trap for her husband straight out of a spy novel. The Iranian government took everything from Shirin Ebadi--her marriage, her home, her property, her bank accounts, they even seized her Nobel Prize--but the one thing they could not take was her spirit and her desire for a better future for her country.

Author Stephen Coss brings to life an amazing cast of characters in a year that changed the course of medical history, American journalism, and colonial politics. Featured players were Cotton Mather, the great Puritan preacher and son of the president of Harvard College; Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor whose name is on one of Boston's grand avenues; James Franklin and his younger brother Benjamin Franklin; and Elisha Cooke and his protege, Samuel Adams. In 1721, during the worst smallpox epidemic in Boston history, Mather convinced Doctor Boylston to try a procedure that he believed would prevent death--by making an incision in the arm of a healthy person and implanting it with smallpox. "Inoculation" led to vaccination, one of the most profound medical discoveries in history. But the public did not understand this. Outrage forced Boylston into hiding and Mather's house was firebombed. In the meantime, the colonies were chafing under the control of the English Crown and began thinking about independence, aided by Benjamin Franklin's skills as a journalist and printer. Between medicine and politics, the atmosphere in Boston in 1721 simmered for years and ultimately boiled over, leading to the full drama of the American Revolution many years later.

"Strategic nonviolent action has reasserted itself as a potent force in shaping public debate and forcing political change. Whether it is an explosive surge of protest calling for racial justice in the United States, a demand for democratic reform in Hong Kong or Mexico, a wave of uprisings against dictatorship in the Middle East, or a tent city on Wall Street that spreads throughout the country, when mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media portrays them as being as spontaneous and unpredictable. In 'This is an Uprising,' political analysts Mark and Paul Engler uncover the organization and well-planned strategies behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest"--Provided by publisher.

One morning in April 2012, China's most famous political activist--a blind, self-taught lawyer--climbed over the wall of his heavily guarded home and escaped. Days later, he turned up at the American embassy in Beijing, and only a furious round of high-level negotiations made it possible for him to leave China and begin a new life in the United States. Chen Guangcheng is a unique figure on the world stage, but his story is even more remarkable than anyone knew. The son of a poor farmer in rural China, blinded by illness when he was an infant, Chen was fortunate to survive a difficult childhood. But despite his disability, he was determined to educate himself and fight for the rights of his country's poor, especially a legion of women who had endured forced sterilizations and abortions under the hated 'one child' policy. Repeatedly harassed, beaten, and imprisoned by Chinese authorities, Chen was ultimately placed under house arrest. After nearly two years of increasing danger, he evaded his captors and fled to freedom. Both a riveting memoir and a revealing portrait of modern China.

"... historian Mary Elise Sarotte shows that the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was not, as is commonly believed, the East German government's deliberate concession to outside influence ... Drawing on evidence from archives in multiple countries and languages, along with dozens of interviews with key actors, 'The Collapse' is [an] ... account of the event that brought down the East German Politburo and came to represent the final collapse of the Cold War order"--Provided by publisher.

"For the first time in our military history, how we wage war is being built around a single strategy: the tracking and elimination of "high value targets"--in other words, assassination by military drone. Kill Chain is the story of how this new paradigm came to be, from WWII to the present; revealing the inner workings of these military technologies; introducing the key figures behind the transformation as well as the people on whom these deadly technologies have been tested; and illuminating the effects of drone warfare on our global image. This book will shed new light on the subject, from drone development in WWII and their use in the Vietnam War, to their embrace by the Bush administration and their controversial use by President Obama today. Cockburn will detail the corporate and political agendas that have effectively legitimized the once-banned practice of assassination, and the devastating effects of drone strikes gone awry"--.