Showing titles in Politics & Social Sciences

In 2005, Joseph O'Callaghan's testimony helped convict two drug-dealing gangsters for murder, and he became the youngest person ever to enter the Witness Protection Programme in Ireland.Now, as the men he put away agitate for release, he tells his extraordinary life story in his own words for the first time.Following the publication of Nicola Tallant’s best-selling book The Witness, The Witness: In His Own Words is an ambitious and powerful documentary podcast series produced by the team behind The Stand with Eamon Dunphy.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where can a tin of tuna buy you clean clothes? Which British education system struggles with 50 percent illiteracy? Where do teetotal Muslims attend AA meetings? Where is it easier to get 'spice' than paracetamol? Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Service, a creaking and surreal world that has been left to rot for decades in the shadows of polite society. Like most people, documentary-maker Chris Atkins didn't spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years.

The early 1980s were the most dramatic, colourful and controversial in our modern history. Margaret Thatcher had come to power with a daring plan to reverse Britain's decline into shabbiness and chaos. But as factories closed their doors, dole queues lengthened and the inner cities exploded in flames, would her harsh medicine rescue the Sick Man of Europe - or kill it off? Evocative, surprising and gloriously entertaining, Dominic Sandbrook's new book recreates the great turning point in Britain's modern history.

Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for 40 years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again. Between them they made such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window.

Cocaine Cowboys tells the story of Ireland's love affair with cocaine since it first washed ashore on Cork's rugged coast to the billion-euro trade it has become. From Ireland's first cocaine lord and his attempts to establish a direct route from Miami to Dublin to the modern-day violence that led to the brutal dismemberment of teenager Keane Mulready Woods, the book will follow the stories and the increasing chaos that has engulfed those desperate for a slice of this modern day gold rush.

One of the world's most famous intellectual ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting tale of suspected supernatural possession. A governess at a country house claims that Miles and Flora, two orphaned children in her care, are being controlled by spirits for some evil purpose. No one else can see the ghosts, and the children themselves are silent. Are they being dominated by spectral forces, or are they hiding something? Is the governess simply paranoid, or is something else going on?

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker—an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious.

The Cold War dominated international life from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But how did the conflict begin? Why did it move from its initial origins in Postwar Europe to encompass virtually every corner of the globe? And why, after lasting so long, did the war end so suddenly and unexpectedly? Robert McMahon considers these questions and more, as well as looking at the legacy of the Cold War and its impact on international relations today.

A journey across time, from our most refined understanding of the universe's beginning, to the closest science can take us to the very end. Explore how life and mind emerged from the initial chaos and how our minds, in coming to understand their own impermanence, seek in different ways to give meaning to experience: in story, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth and our longing for the timeless or eternal.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches.

This book is a three-part journey into the rabbit hole we call the nature of reality. Its ultimate destination is a plausible, living validation of transcendence. Each of its three parts is like a turn of a spiral, exploring recurring ideas through the prisms of religious myth, truth, and belief, respectively. With each turn, the book seeks to convey a more nuanced and complete understanding of the many facets of transcendence. 

Meet Dr Ben Cave. For over thirty years he has worked in prisons and secure hospitals diagnosing and treating some of the most troubled men and women in society. A lifetime of care takes us from delusional disorders to schizophrenia, steroid abuse to drug dependency, personality disorders to paedophilia, and depression so severe a mother can kill her own baby. These are the human stories behind the headlines. The reality of a life spent working with patients with the severest mental health disorders. The tragic and often frightening truth about what happens behind closed doors.

With Fire and Fury, Wolff defined the first phase of the Trump administration; in Siege, he wrote an explosive account of a presidency under fire. In Landslide, Wolff closes the story of Trump's four years in office and his tumultuous last months at the helm of the country, based on Wolff's extraordinary access to White House aides and to the former president himself, yielding a wealth of new information and insights about what really happened inside the highest office in the land, and the world.

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures.

What does it really mean to be a man? What are some of the landmarks along the road to mature masculinity? And what of the feminine components of a man's personality? Women have developed, over the centuries, considerable expertise in the technique of adapting to men, and for good reason, but that is not the same as truly understanding them. The transition from male childhood to real manhood is a complicated struggle, and explored in this book. As timely today as when it was first published, He provides a fascinating look into male identity and how female dynamics influence men.

The Tudors are England's most notorious royal family. But, as Leanda de Lisle's gripping new history reveals, they are a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins and the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a queen's lap - and later her bed.

Now leader of the UK himself, Boris Johnson explores what makes up the 'Churchill Factor' - the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of multiple contradictions, contagious bravery, breath-taking eloquence, matchless strategizing and deep humanity.

1968 was an unprecedented year in terms of upheaval on numerous scales: political, military, economic, social, cultural. In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Global networks have formed "anti-gender ideology movements" dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization -- and even "man" himself. But what, exactly, is so scary about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Judith Butler, the ground-breaking philosopher whose influential work has redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, carefully examines how "gender" has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists.