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Like every form of love : a memoir of friendship and true crime / by Viswanathan, Padma,1968-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Padma Viswanathan was staying on a houseboat on Vancouver Island when she struck up a friendship with a warm-hearted, working-class queer man named Phillip. Their lives were so different it seemed unlikely to Padma that their relationship would last after she returned to her usual life. But, that week, Phillip told her a story from his childhood that kept them connected for more than twenty years. Phillip was the son of a severe, abusive man named Harvey, a miner, farmer and communist. After Phillip's mother left the family, Harvey advertised for a housekeeper-with-benefits. And so Del, the most glamorous and loving of stepmothers, stepped into Phillip's life. Del had hung out with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Mexico City before the Cuban revolution; she was also a convicted bank robber who had violated her parole and was suspected in her ex-husband's murder. Phillip had long since lost track of Del, but when Padma said she'd like to write about her and about his own young life, he eagerly agreed. Quickly, though, Padma's research uncovered hidden truths about these larger-than-real-life characters. Watching the effects on Phillip as these secrets, evasions and traumas came to light, she increasingly feared that when it came to the book or the friendship, only one of them would get out of this process alive. In this unforgettable memoir, Padma reflects on the joys and frictions of this strange journey with grace, humour and poetry, including original readings of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales and other stories that beautifully echo her characters' adventures and her own. Like Every Form of Love is that rare thing: an irresistible literary page-turner that twists and turns, delivering powerful revelations, right to the very end."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Viswanathan, Padma, 1968-; Family secrets.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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No escape : the true story of China's genocide of the Uyghurs / by Turkel, Nury,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China's repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In recent years, the People's Republic of China has rounded up as many as three million Uyghurs, placing them in what it calls "reeducation camps," facilities most of the world identifies as concentration camps. There, the genocide and enslavement of the Uyghur people are ongoing. The tactics employed are reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, but the results are far more insidious because of the technology used, most of it stolen from Silicon Valley. In the words of Turkel, "Communist China has created an open prison-like environment through the most intrusive surveillance state that the world has ever known while committing genocide and enslaving the Uyghurs on the world's watch." As a human rights attorney and Uyghur activist who now serves on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Turkel tells his personal story to help explain the urgency and scope of the Uyghur crisis. Born in 1970 in a reeducation camp, he was lucky enough to survive and eventually make his way to the US, where he became the first Uyghur to receive an American law degree. Since then, he has worked as a prominent lawyer, activist, and spokesperson for his people and advocated strong policy responses from the liberal democracies to address atrocity crimes against his people. The Uyghur crisis is turning into the greatest human rights crisis of the twenty-first century, a systematic cleansing of an entire race of people in the millions. Part Anne Frank and Hannah Arendt, No Escape shares Turkel's personal story while drawing back the curtain on the historically unprecedented and increasing threat from China."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Turkel, Nury.; Ethnic conflict; Internment camp inmates; Uighur (Turkic people); Uighur (Turkic people); Uighur (Turkic people);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Tiananmen Square / by Wen, Lai,author.;
As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her parents: Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai's grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances. But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works-Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others-that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love. A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party's insistence on conformity-and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Books and reading; College students; Politicians; Protest movements; Young women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Defectors [sound recording] : a novel / by Kanon, Joseph,author.; Lloyd, John Bedford,narrator.; Simon & Schuster Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by John Bedford Lloyd."From the bestselling author of Leaving Berlin and The Good German comes a fast-paced and richly imagined novel about an American spy, the Cold War's most notorious defector, who gave up his country for the safety--and prison--of Moscow, but never lost his gift for betrayal. In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB- approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It's a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation; Frank's motives suspect, the CIA hostile. But the chance to see Frank, his adored older brother, proves irresistible. And at first Frank is still Frank--the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of treachery, still actively working for "the service." He finds himself dragged into the middle of Frank's new scheme, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal cat and mouse game that only one of the brothers is likely to survive. Defectors is the gripping story of one family torn apart by the divided loyalties of the Cold War, but it's also a revealing look at the wider community of defectors, American and British, living a twilit Moscow existence, granted privileges but never trusted, spies who have escaped one prison only to find themselves trapped in another that is even more sinister. Filled with authentic period detail and moral ambiguity, Defectors takes us to the heart of a world of secrets, where no one can be trusted and murder is just collateral damage"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Spy fiction.; Audiobooks.; Defectors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Forty autumns : a family's story of courage and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall / by Willner, Nina,1961-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family--of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom--leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home--was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own. Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna's daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army intelligence officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives--grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team--a bitter political war kept them apart. In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family's story--five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love--of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family. Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Willner, Nina, 1961-; Willner, Nina, 1961-; Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989; German Americans; Intelligence officers; Women intelligence officers; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Agent Sonya : Moscow's most daring wartime spy / by Macintyre, Ben,1963-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor tells the thrilling true story of the most important female spy in history: an agent code-named "Sonya," who set the stage for the Cold War. In 1942, in a quiet village in the leafy English Cotswolds, a thin, elegant woman lived in a small cottage with her three children and her husband, who worked as a machinist nearby. Ursula Burton was friendly but reserved, and spoke English with a slight foreign accent. By all accounts, she seemed to be living a simple, unassuming life. Her neighbors in the village knew little about her. They didn't know that she was a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer. They didn't know that her husband was also a spy, or that she was running powerful agents across Europe. Behind the facade of her picturesque life, Burton was a dedicated Communist, a Soviet colonel, and a veteran agent, gathering the scientific secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the bomb. This true-life spy story is a masterpiece about the woman code-named "Sonya." Over the course of her career, she was hunted by the Chinese, the Japanese, the Nazis, MI5, MI6, and the FBI-and she evaded them all. Her story reflects the great ideological clash of the twentieth century-between Communism, Fascism, and Western democracy-and casts new light on the spy battles and shifting allegiances of our own times. With unparalleled access to Sonya's diaries and correspondence and never-before-seen information on her clandestine activities, Ben Macintyre has conjured a page-turning history of a legendary secret agent, a woman who influenced the course of the Cold War and helped plunge the world into a decades-long standoff between nuclear superpowers."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Werner, Ruth, 1907-2000.; Soviet Union. Glavnoe razvedyvatelʹnoe upravlenie.; Cold War.; Espionage, Soviet; Nuclear weapons; Spies; Spies; Spies; Women spies;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Shadow state : murder, mayhem and Russia's remaking of the West / by Harding, Luke,1968-author.;
A thrilling account of how Russia is waging a hidden war against America and the West, using espionage, corruption, fake news, and KGB-style murder. March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder - as if one were needed - of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics. Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump? Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake.
Subjects: Espionage, Russian; Political corruption; Political campaigns;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Shadow state [sound recording] : murder, mayhem and Russia's remaking of the West / by Harding, Luke,1968-author.; Smith, Nicholas Guy,narrator.; Blackstone Publishing,publisher.; Harper Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Nicholas Guy Smith.A thrilling account of how Russia is waging a hidden war against America and the West, using espionage, corruption, fake news, and KGB-style murder. March 2018. Two Russian assassins arrive in a provincial English city to kill a former officer from Russia's GRU intelligence agency. His crime? Passing secrets to British spies. The poison? A lethal nerve agent, novichok. The attempted execution was a reminder - as if one were needed - of Russia's contempt for international norms. The Soviet Union and its doctrine are long gone, but the playbook used by the Kremlin's spies during that long confrontation with the West is back. And the underlying goal remains the same: to undermine democracy and exploit divisions within American and European society and politics. Moscow's support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election has grown into the biggest political scandal of modern times. Its American players are well-known. In Shadow State, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Luke Harding reveals the Russians behind the story: the spies, hackers and internet trolls. Harding charts how the Kremlin has updated Communist-era methods of influence and propaganda for the age of Facebook and Twitter, and considers the compelling question of our age: what exactly does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump? Similar to those of the Cold War, Putin's ambitions are truly global. His emissaries include oligarchs, bankers, lawyers, mercenaries, and agents of influence. They roam from Salisbury to Helsinki, Ukraine to Central Africa, London to Washington, D.C. Shadow State is the singular account of how the Kremlin seeks to reshape the world, to divide the US from its European friends, and to remake America in its own dark and kleptocratic image. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand how our politics came to be so chaotic and divided. Nothing less than the future of Western democracy is at stake.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Espionage, Russian; Political campaigns; Political corruption;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The CIA book club : the secret mission to win the Cold War with forbidden literature / by English, Charlie,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."For almost five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, standing as the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. With the risk of nuclear annihilation too high for physical combat, conflict was reserved for the psychological sphere. No one understood this battle of hearts, minds, and intellects more clearly than Bucharest-born George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the "CIA books program." This initiative aimed to win the Cold War with literature: to undermine the censorship of the Soviet bloc and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture to the people. From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden's global CIA "book club" would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors. Volumes were smuggled on trucks and aboard yachts, dropped from balloons, and hidden in the luggage of hundreds of thousands of individual travelers. Once inside Soviet bloc, each book would circulate secretly among dozens of like-minded readers, quietly turning them into dissidents. Soon, underground print shops began to reproduce the books, too. By the late 1980s, illicit literature in Poland was so pervasive that the system of communist censorship broke down, and the Iron Curtain soon followed. Former head of international news at the Guardian, Charlie English is the first to uncover this true story of Cold War spy craft, smuggling and secret printing operations, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. People like Miroslaw Chojecki, an underground Polish publisher who endured beatings, force-feeding and exile in service of this mission and Minden, the CIA's mastermind, who didn't waver in his belief that truth, culture, and diversity of thought could help free the "captive nations" of Eastern Europe. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free"--
Subjects: United States. Central Intelligence Agency; Books and reading; Cold War; Information warfare; Information warfare; Publishers and publishing;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Today Hong Kong, tomorrow the world : what China's crackdown reveals about its plans to end freedom everywhere / by Clifford, Mark,1957-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world. For 150 years as a British colony, Hong Kong was a beacon of prosperity where people, money, and technology flowed freely, and residents enjoyed many civil liberties. In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China-one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion. But as the halfway mark of the SAR's lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong's freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications-as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower's control. Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city's society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time"--
Subjects: Civil rights;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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