The book provides a detailed description of the Russian crime of the twenty-first century as well as a thorough examination of the eighty sessions of the nine-month-long trial (during 2016-2017) of Boris Nemtsovs alleged killers. It directs attention to the chief obstacle in determining what precisely happened shortly before midnight on February 27, 2015, on a bridge located a mere stones throw away from the Kremlin, in an area under the active surveillance of the Russian Federal Protective Service. The glaring absence of closed circuit videos from this most heavily guarded site in Russia is underscored. Given the absence of such key evidence, those seeking to investigate the murder have been akin to blind people stumbling about in obscurity. The attempts to penetrate this man-made fog undertaken during the course of the trial by the Nemtsov family attorneys, Vadim Prokhorov and Olga Mikhailova, as well as by numerous tenacious analysts of the crime, such as former deputy Russian energy minister Vladimir Milov, former Russian presidential economics advisor Andrei Illarionov, and leading mathematician Andrei Piontkovskii, are covered in full. The uneven case mounted by the prosecution and the scrappy defense effort of the attorneys for the alleged killers, many of them ethnic Chechens, are highlighted, as is the non-unanimous verdict which was reached by the twelve jurors. The findings of this study are in agreement with those of a number of commentators who contend that the actual organizers of the crime remain at large as does the assassinations shadowy mastermind.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9783838211886 20190318

• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the
• 2019 edition
• Introduction
• Gambling with other people's money
• Did creditors expect to get rescued?
• What about equity holders?
• Heads : they win a ridiculously enormous amount : tails : they win just an enormous amount
• How creditor rescue and housing policy combined with regulation to blow up the housing market
• Fannie and Freddie
• Fannie and Freddie : cause or effect?
• Commercial banks and investment banks
• Picking up nickels
• Basel : faulty
• Where do we go from here?
• Notes
• Index
• About the author.

• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chronology of events
• Abbreviations and Archives
• 1. "Just Be Careful, Remember How Frightening Everything Is for Us" : The Problem of the Zhivago Royalties
• 2. "Moscow Has Ears Everywhere!" : From Pasternak's Death to the Arrests of Olga Ivinskaya and Irina Emelianova
• 3. "We Need to Help the Russians Save Face" : The Ivinskaya Case in the West
• Documentary Appendix
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index.

The conflict between Soviet Communists and Boris Pasternak over the publication of Doctor Zhivago did not end when he won the Nobel Prize, or even when the author died. Paolo Mancosu tells how Pasternak's expulsion from the Soviet Writers' Union left him in financial difficulty. Milan publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and Sergio d'Angelo, who had brought the typescript of Doctor Zhivago to Feltrinelli, were among those who arranged a smuggling operation to help him.After Pasternak's death, Olga Ivinskaya, his companion, literary assistant, and the inspiration for Zhivago's Lara, also received some of the Zhivago royalties. After the KGB intercepted Pasternak's will on her behalf, the Soviets arrested and sentenced her and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, to eight years and three years of labor camp, respectively. The ensuing international outrage inspired a secret campaign in the West to win their freedom.Mancosu's new book-the first to explore the post-Nobel history of Pasternak and Ivinskaya-provides extraordinary detail on these events, in a thrilling account that involves KGB interceptions, fabricated documents, smugglers, and much more. While a general reader will respond to the dramatic human story, specialists will be rewarded with a rich assemblage of new archival material, especially letters of Pasternak, Ivinskaya, Feltrinelli, and d'Angelo from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Feltrinelli Archives in Milan.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817922443 20190325

In Beyond Disruption: Technology's Challenge to Governance, George P. Shultz, Jim Hoagland, and James Timbie present views from some of the country's top experts in the sciences, humanities, and military that scrutinize the rise of post-millennium technologies in today's global society. They contemplate both the benefits and peril carried by the unprecedented speed of these innovations-from genetic editing, which enables us new ways to control infectious diseases, to social media, whose ubiquitous global connections threaten the function of democracies across the world. Some techniques, like the advent of machine learning, have enabled engineers to create systems that will make us more productive. For example, self-driving vehicles promise to make trucking safer, faster, and cheaper. However, using big data and artificial intelligence to automate complex tasks also ends up threatening to disrupt both routine professions like taxi driving and cognitive work by accountants, radiologists, lawyers, and even computer programmers themselves.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817921453 20180730

• Introduction : the choice
• Escape to Switzerland
• The beginnings of Dutch-Paris
• Extending the line through Brussels
• Allies in Paris and Toulouse
• Over the mountains
• Catastrophe in Paris
• The Gestapo knocks
• Sociaalwerk in the chaos of war
• Waiting for news
• Conclusion : the helper's courage.

Of all the resistance organizations that operated during the war, about which much has been written, one stands out for its transnational character, the diversity of the tasks its members took on, and the fact that, unlike many of the known evasion lines, it was not directed by Allied officers, but rather by group of ordinary citizens. Between 1942 and 1945, they formed a network to smuggle Dutch Jews and others targeted by the Nazis south into France, via Paris, and then to Switzerland. This network became known as the Dutch-Paris Escape Line, eventually growing to include 300 people and expanding its reach into Spain. Led by Jean Weidner, a Dutchman living in France, many lacked any experience in clandestine operations or military tactics, and yet they became one of the most effective resistance groups of the Second World War. Dutch-Paris largely improvised its operations-scrounging for food on the black market, forging documents, and raising cash. Hunted relentlessly by the Nazis, some were even captured and tortured. In addition to Jews, those it helped escape the clutches of the Nazis included resistance fighters, political foes, Allied airmen, and young men looking to get to London to enlist. As the need grew more desperate, so did the bravery of those who rose to meet it. Using recently declassified archives, The Escape Line tells the story of the Dutch-Paris and the thousands of people it saved during World War II. Koreman, who was given exclusive access to many of the archives, is herself the daughter of Dutch parents who were part of the resistance, offers the definitive account of this largely untold story.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780190662271 20181015

"In Revolution and Aftermath: Forging a New Strategy toward Iran, Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh examine one of the most underappreciated forces that has shaped modern US foreign policy: American-Iranian relations. They argue that America's flawed reading of Iran's domestic politics has hamstrung decades of US diplomacy, resulting in humiliations and setbacks ranging from the 1979-81 hostage crisis to Barack Obama's concession-laden nuclear weapons deal. What presidents and diplomats have repeatedly failed to grasp, they write, is that 'the Islamic Republic is a revolutionary state whose entire identity is invested in its hostility toward the West.' To illuminate a path forward for American-Iranian relations, the authors address some of the most persistent myths about Iran, its ruling elite, and its people. They discuss the ways Iran played a vital role in US grand strategy after World War II. They discuss the Ayatollah Khomeini's worldview--including his view of the United States as 'the Great Satan'--and his remarkably durable legacy, which has animated decades of Iranian policies even when such policies are detrimental to the country's other stated national interests. Finally, they highlight lessons leaders can learn from America's many missteps since the 1979 Islamic Revolution." -- publisher.

• Foreword. The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection: possibilities and limitations / by Eiichiro Azuma
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection / by Kaoru "Kay" Ueda
• Essay. Roots of the Issei: exploring early Japanese American Newspapers / by Andrew Way Leong
• References
• About the author.

Roots of the Issei presents a complex and nuanced picture of the Japanese American community in the early twentieth century: a people challenged by racial prejudice and anti-Japanese immigration laws trying to gain a foothold in a new land while remaining connected to Japan. Against this backdrop, Andrew Way Leong examines the emergence of generational terms that have long been used to organize Japanese American narratives: issei (first generation), nisei (second generation), and sansei (third generation). In the process, he suggests these widely-used generational concepts are in fact a recent construct. Leong's illuminating research is made possible by the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection, the world's largest open-access, full-image, and searchable online digital collection of Japanese American newspapers. With this technology, Leong is able to analyze materials that until recently were regarded as beyond computer-aided analysis, due to difficulties presented by the complexity of Japanese language. With access to these primary sources, Leong is able to upend several scholarly assumptions and beliefs and present a never-before-seen picture of Japanese American struggles-both with an adversarial host country and among themselves-backed by the authority of primary sources.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817922054 20181210

• Global news networks and state power
• Western global news networks and state power
• 1: diplomacy
• Western global news networks and state power
• 2: intelligence
• Non-western global news networks: diplomacy and intelligence gathering
• Conclusion
• Interview with Terry Phillips
• Methodology.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Compliance and resistance under autocracy
• State- and nation-building in Iraq, 1973-1979
• War burden and coalitional politics, 1980-1991
• Political implications of economic embargo, 1991-2003
• Collaboration and resistance in Iraqi Kurdistan
• Political orientation and Ba'th Party participation
• Rumors as resistance
• Religion, identity, and contentious politics
• Military service, militias, and coup attempts
• Conclusion.

A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisions How did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations. Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party in the wake of the 2003 US invasion, Blaydes illuminates the complexities of political life in Iraq, including why certain Iraqis chose to collaborate with the regime while others worked to undermine it. She demonstrates that, despite the Ba'thist regime's pretensions to political hegemony, its frequent reliance on collective punishment of various groups reinforced and cemented identity divisions. At the same time, a series of costly external shocks to the economy--resulting from fluctuations in oil prices and Iraq's war with Iran--weakened the capacity of the regime to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and control factions of Iraqi society. In addition to calling into question the common story of modern Iraqi politics, State of Repression offers a new explanation of why and how dictators repress their people in ways that can inadvertently strengthen regime opponents.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780691180274 20190318

Throughout the world today there are obvious trouble spots that have the potential to explode into serious conflicts at any time in the immediate or distant future. This study examines what history suggests about the future possibilities and characteristics of war and the place that thinking about conflict deserves in the formation of American strategy in coming decades. The author offers a historical perspective to show that armed conflict between organized political groups has been mankind's constant companion and that America must remain prepared to use its military power to deal with an unstable, uncertain, and fractious world. Williamson Murray shows that while there are aspects of human conflict that will not change no matter what advances in technology or computing power may occur, the character of war appears to be changing at an increasingly rapid pace with scientific advances providing new and more complex weapons, means of production, communications, and sensors, and myriad other inventions, all capable of altering the character of the battle space in unexpected fashions. He explains why the past is crucial to understanding many of the possibilities that lie in wait, as well as for any examination of the course of American strategy and military performance in the future-and warns that the moral and human results of the failure of American politicians and military leaders to recognize the implications of the past are already apparent.
(source: Nielsen Book Data) 9780817920043 20190206

• Is America still the “hope of Earth”? : origins and underpinnings of American exceptionalism / Paul E. Peterson
• Legal origins of American exceptionalism / Michael McConnell
• American exceptionalism : due principally to secure private property rights / Gary Libecap
• Intellectual property as a pillar of American exceptionalism / Stephen Haber
• The exceptional economy / Edward P. Lazear
• Law and the regulatory state / John Cochrane
• Whither American exceptionalism? / Niall Ferguson
• What makes America great? : entrepreneurship / Lee Ohanian
• American dominance of the international order / Kori Schake
• The foundations of America’s exceptional role in the world / Victor Davis Hanson
• Herbert Hoover and American exceptionalism / George H. Nash
• Ronald Reagan and American exceptionalism / Annelise Anderson
• The American dream is alive in the minds of young Americans / William Damon.