"At the FBI, the "Sex Deviates" program covered a lot of ground, literally; at its peak, J. Edgar Hoover's notorious "Sex Deviates" file encompassed nearly 99 cubic feet or more than 330,000 pages of information. In 1977-1978 these files were destroyed--and it would seem that four decades of the FBI's dirty secrets went up in smoke. But in a remarkable feat of investigative research, synthesis, and scholarly detective work, Douglas M. Charles manages to fill in the yawning blanks in the bureau's history of systematic (some would say obsessive) interest in the lives of gay and lesbian Americans in the twentieth century. His book, Hoover's War on Gays, is the first to fully expose the extraordinary invasion of US citizens' privacy perpetrated on a historicscale by an institution tasked with protecting American life. For much of the twentieth century, when exposure might mean nothing short of ruin, gay American men and women had much to fear from law enforcement of every kind--but none so much as the FBI,with its inexhaustible federal resources, connections, and its carefully crafted reputation for ethical, by-the-book operations. What Hoover's War on Gays reveals, rather, is the FBI's distinctly unethical, off-the-books long-term targeting of gay men and women and their organizations under cover of "official" rationale--such as suspicion of criminal activity or vulnerability to blackmail and influence. The book offers a wide-scale view of this policy and practice, from a notorious child kidnapping and murder of the 1930s (ostensibly by a sexual predator with homosexual tendencies), educating the public about the threat of "deviates," through WWII's security concerns about homosexuals who might be compromised by the enemy, to the Cold War's "Lavender Scare" when any and all gays working for the US government shared the fate of suspected Communist sympathizers. Charles's work also details paradoxical ways in which these incursions conjured counterefforts--like the Mattachine Society; ONE, Inc.; and the Daughters of Bilitis--aimed at protecting and serving the interests of postwar gay culture. With its painstaking recovery of a dark chapter in American history and its new insights into seemingly familiar episodes of that story--involving noted journalists, politicians, and celebrities--this thorough and deeply engaging book reveals the perils of authority run amok and stands as a reminder of damage done in the name of decency"--

Product Description: Providing the first global cultural context for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, this investigation into how United States intelligence agencies and other entities manipulated liberal religious groups and educational institutions for ideological, political, and economic gain during the Cold War exposes numerous previously misunderstood political operations...read more

Product Description: On May 12, 1975, just days after the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, the American merchant cargo ship SS Mayaguez was seized by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge in international waters. President Gerald Ford—the first (and only) non-elected president of the United States—found himself in the midst of an intense four-day international crisis with significant historical ramifications...read more

Bridge of Spies is a gripping, entertaining, hair-raising and comical story, which moves effortlessly from the hardware of high-flying planes and new missiles to the geopolitics of the nuclear stand-off and through the poignant personal stories of its central protagonists: Powers, the all-American hero, blacklisted for not having killed himself on his descent to earth; a KGB spy who has spent aimless and lonely years achieving nothing in the US; and the opposing leaders Khrushchev and Eisenhower, both trapped in a spiral of confrontation neither wants. Telling the true story that inspired Le Carre's famous scene, Bridge of Spies is a brilliant take on the absurdity and heroism of the Cold War days that will appeal to a new generation of readers unfamiliar with the history but drawn in by the compelling and vividly recreated narrative.

Reveals Kennedy's plans for Vietnam, Kennedy's intentions to 'shatter the CIA,' President Johnson's reversal of Kennedy's orders concerning Vietnam immediately following the assassination, and more

This jungle tale reads as a long joke, furnished with a punch line. Designed for young readers, a simple scenario is established, and the repetitive text builds up to the end twist. The story features a great big bullfrog who manages to keep his self-respect.

A great big bullfrog realizes he is not so big compared to most of the other animals he meets in the jungle