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- The Mesopotamian riddle : an archaeologist, a soldier, a clergyman, and the race to decipher the world's oldest writing / by Hammer, Joshua,1957-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."It was one of history's great vanishing acts. As early as 3500 BCE, scribes in the mud-walled city-state of Sumer used a reed stylus to press tiny wedge-shaped symbols into clay. For three thousand years, the script chronicled the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the grand kingdoms of Mesopotamia-Assyria, Babylon, the mighty Achaemenid Empire -- along with precious minutia about everyday life so long ago. But as the palaces of these once great kingdoms sank beneath the desert sands, the meaning of these characters was lost. London, 1857. Colossal sculptures of winged bulls and alabaster bas-reliefs depicting cities under siege and vassals bearing tributes to Biblical kings lined the halls of the British Museum. In the Victorian era's obsession with the triumph of human progress, the mysterious kingdoms of ancient Mesopotamia -- the very cradle of civilization -- had captured the public imagination. Yet Europe's best philologists struggled to decipher the strange characters. Cuneiform seemed to have thousands of symbols -- with some scholars claiming each could be pronounced in up to eight, nine, even ten different ways. Others insisted they'd cracked the code and deciphered inscriptions that corresponded precisely to the Old Testament -- proving the veracity of the Word of God. Was it all a hoax? A delusion? A rollicking adventure through the golden age of archaeology, The Writing on the Wall tracks the decades-long race to decipher the oldest script in the world. It's the story of a swashbuckling young archaeologist, a suave British military officer, and a curmudgeonly Irish rector, all vying for glory -- from the ruins of Persepolis to the opulence of Ottoman-era Baghdad -- in a quest to unearth the relics of lost civilizations and unlock the secrets of humanity's past"--- Subjects: Assyriology; Cuneiform inscriptions.; Cuneiform writing.;
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- Den of spies : Reagan, Carter, and the secret history of the treason that stole the White House / by Unger, Craig,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Argo meets Spotlight, as journalist Craig Unger, New York Times bestselling author of American Kompromat and House of Bush, House of Saud, reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in our elections goes unpunished and what gets remembered when the political price for treason is victory. It was a tinderbox of an accusation. In April 1991, the New York Times ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign had conspired with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election. The Iranian hostage crisis was President Jimmy Carter's largest political vulnerability, and his lack of success freeing them ultimately sealed his fate at the ballot box. In return for keeping Americans in captivity until Reagan assumed the oath of office, the Republicans had secretly funneled arms to Iran. Treasonous and illegal, the operation - planned and executed by Reagan's campaign manager Bill Casey - amounted to a shadow foreign policy run by private citizens that ensured Reagan's victory. Investigative journalist Craig Unger was one of the first reporters covering the October Surprise - initially for Esquire and then Newsweek - and while attempting to unravel the mystery, he was fired, sued, and ostracized by the Washington press corps, as a counter narrative took hold: The October Surprise was a hoax. Though Unger later recovered his name and became a bestselling author on Republican abuses of power, the October Surprise remained his white whale, the project he - as well as legendary investigative journalist, the late Robert Parry - worked on late at night and between assignments. In Den of spies, Unger reveals the definitive story of the October Surprise, going inside his three-decade reporting odyssey, along with Parry's never-before-seen archives, and sharing startling truths about what really happened in 1980. The result is a real-life political thriller filled with double agents, CIA operatives, slippery politicians, KGB documents, wealthy Republicans, and dogged journalists. A timely and provocative history that presages our Trump-era political scandals, Den of spies demonstrates the stakes of allowing the politics of the moment to obscure the writing of our history"--- Subjects: Foreign interference in elections; Foreign interference in elections; Intelligence service; Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981.; Military assistance, American; Political corruption; Presidents;
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Results 31 to 32 of 32 | « previous