Freedom & Security Books - Page 3

Consent to Kill

Flynn Flynn

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Total reviews: 175 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Fearless counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp finds himself directly in the line of fire in the latest riveting political thriller from New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn.

For years, Mitch Rapp's bold actions have saved the lives of countless Americans. His battles for peace and freedom have made him a hero to many, and an enemy to countless more. In the tangled, duplicitous world of espionage, there are those, even among America's allies, who want to see Mitch Rapp eliminated. They have decided the time has come.

Now, the powerful father of a dead terrorist demands vengeance in its simplest form -- an eye for an eye, and Rapp instantly becomes the target of an international conspiracy. This time, he must use all of his vigilance and determination to save himself before he can turn his fury on those who have dared to betray him.

Consent to Kill takes listeners behind the headlines and catapults them to the front lines of the global war on terror. It sizzles "with inside information, military muscle, and CIA secrets" (Dan Brown). Vince Flynn mixes military technology with his exclusive knowledge of Washington politics to create a hero that Americans will wish existed outside the realm of fiction.

Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs

Robert Spencer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

With All Due Respect 3 out of 5 stars.
9 of 38 people found this review helpful.

I have come to acknowledge that although Mr. Spencer does not know how to read or write Arabic nor has he went to any Islamic schools in the Middle East, he really does know a few things about Islam and especially about jihad. I am not about to "smear Mr. Spencer as a racist and Islamophobe" nor will I "trash the book as a pack of lies." I'm just here to make my observations on what Spencer believes is a threat from all Muslims in America and the West. When he started writing this book in January of this year, I thought he would wait until another terrorist attack happened in the U.S. to release it so that he could make as much money as possible, but I guess that an Obama victory is enough to boost sales.

The message that Spencer tries to push on people is that any Muslim is a threat. They all have the intentions of doing jihad and destroying America and killing Americans. He doesn't say it out front, but it is exactly what he implies. He uses the example of civil rights group CAIR and calls them a front organization for terrorism and the "political arm" of radical Islam. While it is true that they once funded Hamas and they occasionally prevent criticism of Islam by political pundits such as Michael Savage and people such as Spencer, but they are not supported by Al-Qaeda nor have they ever had any communication with Osama Bin Laden. Yet the amount of time spent on criticizing them by Spencer would make you believe that Bin Laden engineered every building they have worked in and sends his videos straight to their offices. They supported Hamas which was an organization that was once supported by Israel and now holds a majority of seats in the elected legislative council of the Palestinian National Authority. The Israelis bombed the hell out of the British and killed civilians and those same people, such as Menachem Begin, became leaders of Israel. They are looked upon as heroes. But if an Arab does what a Jewish person does, he is never a hero but always a terrorist. I'm not condoning the killing of children and women and I think it is evil to target and kill innocent people, but I think we need to look at the larger picture before we start to make accusations.

He also uses some instances of Muslims demanding that Sharia law be implemented and said that we will soon have it in Europe and eventually the U.S. He mentions the taxi drivers who refused to pick up drivers with alcohol as an example. While there may have been some were reluctant to pick up people with booze, there were other Muslim drivers who were not so serious about Islamic law being implemented. One driver, Rasheed Gardad, said "If we want to impose our rules and our beliefs, we should stay where we came from." This is probably the opinion of most of the drivers, but Spencer will have you believe that all of those drivers want the Islamic call to prayer put on loud speakers, all women put covered from head to toe, and want every other law in Somalia implemented in the U.S. It's the same tactic used by the Bush Administration to keep their ratings high.

There are terrorists in America, Europe, and all over the globe. The majority of them might even be Muslims. Alright....99.9 % of them are Muslim and that recent bus bombing in Russia was done by Muslims, even though nobody has declared it yet, but we follow the guilty by association theme. The terrorists who call themselves Muslim are about 0.1 % or 1/10th of all Muslims in the world. There are 1.3 to 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. If you make books like this one, then you convince non-educated people to think that the 99.9 percent of Muslims who abhor terrorism are as guilty as the real terrorists in some way, shape, or form. This leads to racism, hate crimes, and the abuse of innocent Muslims. I know Americans do not want innocent people to get hurt and I also know that they want to feel safe from a terrorist attack. I don't think it would be wise to alienate those Muslims who are on the side of the good guys. Robert Spencer wants to alienate them and would be satisfied if all Muslims were eliminated off the face of this Earth because he thinks that the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist and that the Quran is a book of hate that endorses terrorism. Do you support him?

Editorial Review:

Most terrorism experts agree: it is not "if" we are attacked again, but "when." Yet the assault has already happened. A silent battle is being waged on our nation everyday. Not with guns and bombs, but via covert sources: Islamic charities, the ACLU--even presidential candidates. They are all pawns in a stealth holy war. Unwittingly advancing the jihadist agenda not by violence, but through endeavors designed to acclimate and subject us to Islamic law--just the way Osama bin Laden wants it. In Stealth Jihad, bestselling author Robert Spencer exposes how a silent but lethal movement is advancing on the U.S. and calls upon Americans to resist it--before it's too late.

The First Commandment

Brad Thor

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Editorial Review:

A master assassin. A vendetta years in the making. And a counterterrorism operative who will risk everything -- even treason -- to keep the people he loves alive.

Six months ago: In the dead of night, five of the most dangerous detainees in the war on terror are pulled from their isolation cells in Guantanamo Bay, held at gunpoint, and told to strip off their orange jumpsuits. Issued civilian clothes and driven to the base airfield, they are loaded aboard a Boeing 727 and set free.

Present day: Covert counterterrorism agent Scot Harvath awakens to discover that his world has changed violently -- and forever. A sadistic assassin with a personal vendetta is wreaking havoc of biblical proportions. Unleashing nightmarish horrors on those closest to Harvath, the attacker thrusts everything Harvath holds dear -- including his life -- into absolute peril.

Ordered by the president to stay out of the investigation, Harvath is forced to mount his own operation to uncover the conspiracy and to exact revenge. When he discovers a connection between the attacks and a group of prisoners secretly released from Guantanamo, Harvath must ask himself previously unthinkable questions about the organizations and the nation he has spent his life serving.

A renegade from his own government, Harvath will place his life on the line as his search for the truth draws him into a showdown with one of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth. Brad Thor roars through this nonstop adventure full of international intrigue, twisted betrayals, and ultimate revenge.

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (P.S.)

Lucette Lagnado

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Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lucette Lagnado's father, Leon, is a successful Egyptian businessman and boulevardier who, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit, makes deals and trades at Shepherd's Hotel and at the dark bar of the Nile Hilton. After the fall of King Farouk and the rise of the Nasser dictatorship, Leon loses everything and his family is forced to flee, abandoning a life once marked by beauty and luxury to plunge into hardship and poverty, as they take flight for any country that would have them.

A vivid, heartbreaking, and powerful inversion of the American dream, Lucette Lagnado's unforgettable memoir is a sweeping story of family, faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph set against the stunning backdrop of Cairo, Paris, and New York.

Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century

George Friedman

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Editorial Review:

“Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term shifts taking place in full view of the world.” —George Friedman

In his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future—offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.
The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era—with changes in store, including:

• The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude—replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.
• China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
• A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.
• Technology will focus on space—both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
• The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.

Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.

For continual, updated analysis and supplemental material, go to www.Stratfor.com

Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit

Eric Haney

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Total reviews: 154 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now the inspiration for the CBS Television drama, "The Unit."

Delta Force. They are the U.S. Army's most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).

Inside Delta Forece
The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit

He is a master of espionage, trained to take on hijackers, terrorists, hostage takers, and enemy armies. He can deploy by parachute or arrive by commercial aircraft. Survive alone in hostile cities. Speak foreign languages fluently. Strike at enemy targets with stunning swiftness and extraordinary teamwork. He is the ultimate modern warrior: the Delta Force Operator.

In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary counterterrorist unit. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process—designed to break the strongest of men—that singles out the best of the best: the Delta Force Operator.

With heart-stopping immediacy, Haney tells what it's really like to enter a hostage-held airplane. And from his days in Beirut, Haney tells an unforgettable tale of bodyguards and bombs, of a day-to-day life of madness and beauty, and of how he and a teammate are called on to kill two gunmen targeting U.S. Marines at the Beirut airport. As part of the team sent to rescue American hostages in Tehran, Haney offers a first-person description of that failed mission that is a chilling, compelling account of a bold maneuver undone by chance—and a few fatal mistakes.

From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to rescuing missionaries in Sudan and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force brings honor to these singular men while it puts us in the middle of action that is sudden, frightening, and nonstop around the world.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)

Lawrence Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 287 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Looming Tower 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a must read for every American who needs to understand the history of Al-Qaida and its present threat!
I bought several to pass along!

Editorial Review:

National Book Award Finalist

A Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

A gripping narrative that spans five decades, The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follows FBI counterterrorism chief John O’Neill as he uncovers the emerging danger from al-Qaeda in the 1990s and struggles to track this new threat. Packed with new information and a deep historical perspective, The Looming Tower is the definitive history of the long road to September 11.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman

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Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Willful myopia 1 out of 5 stars.
21 of 46 people found this review helpful.

Dr. Friedman is plainly an educated and articulate man and his arguments have a seductive veneer of logic to them. The tragedy is that his interpretations are extremely selective: he focuses exclusively on what he perceives to be the strengths of the free market, while completely disregarding its costs. In this respect, he shares the mentality of the fundamentalist. Anything that ever goes well, he attributes to the free market; anything that ever goes wrong, he dismisses as either an aberation, a reflection of inadequate adherence to his core belief system. He has thus created a logical closed loop, which admits no possibility of his starting assumptions being flawed.

Which is highly unfortunate, as he makes a great many assumptions, such as costless mobility of labor, perfect information, and the eventual trickle down of wealth, which are empirically unsound. If a worker loses his or her job, Dr. Friedman assumes that, somehow, that person will be able to find a bigger and better job elsewhere. How? Where? How is that person going to find the wherewithal to pay for the additional training and/or education needed for that real or imaginary bigger and better job? How will s/he pay for rent, food, transportation, health insurance, childcare, etc., while looking for this bigger and better job? Such trifles are plainly not Dr. Friedman's problem; nevertheless, they do pose a whopper of a problem if you're the person who's lost your job.

Likewise, Dr. Friedman simply takes it for granted that companies will behave honorably, will have access to perfect information, and consumers will never be misled or swindled, but will unfailingly shape the market based upon sound decisions. Wow. Must be a nice planet Dr. Friedman lives on. On this planet, companies make rash and/or unethical decisions on a daily basis which are based upon poor information and/or immediate short term gains, for which the general public bears the cost.

Because Dr. Friedman ignores such inconvenient realities, he views the world through rose-colored lenses and is blind to the dismal performance of his ideas whenever they have been implemented as policies. In every instance around the globe, the inevitable result of Friedman's radical ideology has been a tiny handful of predatory capitalists becoming richer than kings while the rest of the country sinks into abject poverty. Dr. Friedman's ideas, in every instance where they have been applied, from Chile to Argentina to Russia to Poland to South Africa to SE Asia - the list goes on - have unfailingly produced huge surges in unemployment and poverty, wholesale selloffs of the country's natural resources and other assets, and, of course, the adoption of repressive measures by governent to force the unpopular policies upon the unwilling populations. How ironic that Dr. Friedman describes himself as an advocate of free choice, when he has personally advised governments around the world to coerce their citizens into accepting his disasterous economic "reform" programs. Not surprisingly, Dr. Friedman doesn't wish to discuss the victims of his ideas, or, insofar as he recognizes them at all, he condescendingly dismisses them as the tragic cost of "progress." Progress for whom? Again, Dr. Friedman doesn't concern himself with such details.

The central flaw in Dr. Friedman's ideology is that he takes no account of wealth distribution. If an economy increases in efficiency, Dr. Friedman claims vindication. But if the benefits of any such increase go exclusively to a tiny minority while the vast majority of the population experiences a sharp reducation in quality of life, how has any overall increase in efficiency improved matters? Dr. Friedman seems to assume that the billionaires his policies create will reinvest their wealth into their local economies. Yet, empirically, we find once again that such is not the case. Billionaires invest their wealth where they can gain the greatest return on their investment. Why then would they want to invest in their own countries? The people who live there, thanks to them and Dr. Friedman, are unemployed and too poor to be able to afford to buy anything. The country's natural resources have already been privatized and sold off, what's left in the smoldering husk Dr. Friedman leaves behind to entice investment?

In sum, what Dr. Friedman describes as freedom of choice is an attempt to legitimize and apply a palatable facade to a wild west approach to economics, in the which the strongest and most ruthless rise at the expense of the weak, a kind of economic Darwinism. It's not without logic, but the cold, cruel, heartless world Dr. Friedman has to offer is a pretty terrifying place.

Editorial Review:

The international bestseller on the extent to which personal freedom has been eroded by government regulations and agencies while personal prosperity has been undermined by government spending and economic controls. New Foreword by the Authors; Index.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Sam Harris

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Total reviews: 836 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith.

This important and timely book delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes-heinous crimes. He asserts that in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer tolerate views that pit one true god against another. Most controversially, he argues that we cannot afford moderate lip service to religion—an accommodation that only blinds us to the real perils of fundamentalism. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris also draws on new evidence from neuroscience and insights from philosophy to explore spirituality as a biological, brain-based need. He calls on us to invoke that need in taking a secular humanistic approach to solving the problems of this world.

Natalie Angier wrote in the New York Times: "The End of Faith articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated….Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say."

They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It

Brigitte Gabriel

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

They Must Be Stopped is New York Times bestselling author Brigitte Gabriel’s warning to the world: We can no longer ignore the growth of radical Islam--we must act soon, and powerfully. Gabriel challenges our western and politically-correct notions about Islam, demonstrating why radical Islam is so deadly and how we can halt its progress.

Brigitte Gabriel speaks her mind:

*Fundamentalist Islam is a religion rooted in 7th century teachings that are fundamentally opposed to democracy and equality.

*Radical Islamists are utterly contemptuous of all “infidels” (non-Muslims) and regard them as enemies worthy of death.

*Madrassas in America are increasing in number, and they are just one part of a growing radical Islamic army on US soil.

*Radical Islam exploits the US legal system and America’s protection of religion to spread its hatred for western values.

*America must organize a unified voice that says “enough” to political correctness, and demands that government officials and elected representatives do whatever is necessary to protect us.

Brigitte Gabriel has fearlessly faced down critics, death threats, and political correctness, and is one of the most sought after terrorism experts in the world. They Must Be Stopped is her clarion call to action. Gabriel thoroughly addresses the historical and religious basis of radical Islam, its frightening encroachment into societies around the world, and its abuses of democracy in the name of religion.