Fascinating Non-Fiction
Explore our curated list of fascinating non-fiction books, from true crime and history to gripping biographies. Discover standout titles like *The Innocent Man* by John Grisham and *We Wish to Inform You* by Philip Gourevitch, covering murder, justice, and survival.
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Cheesemonger
by Gordon Edgar
The highly readable story of Gordon Edgar's unlikely career as a cheesemonger at San Francisco's worker-owned Rainbow Grocery Cooperative.
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The Innocent Man
by John Grisham
Presents the real-life case of Ron Williamson, a mentally ill former baseball player who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of a 21-year-old woman in his Oklahoma hometown.
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Five Years of My Life
by Murat Kurnaz
In October 2001, nineteen-year-old Murat Kurnaz traveled to Pakistan to visit a madrassa. During a security check a few weeks after his arrival, he was arrested without explanation and for a bounty of $3,000, the Pakistani police sold him to U.S. forces. He was first taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was severely mistreated, and then two months later he was flown to Guantanamo as Prisoner #61. For more than 1,600 days, he was tortured and lived through hell. He was kept in a cage and endured daily interrogations, solitary confinement, and sleep deprivation. Finally, in August 2006, Kurnaz was released, with acknowledgment of his innocence. Told with lucidity, accuracy, and wisdom, Kurnaz's story is both sobering and poignant--an important testimony about our turbulent times when innocent people get caught in the crossfire of the war on terrorism.
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Rwanda
by Philip Briggs
A new edition of the only dedicated guidebook available to Rwanda, with all you need to know about gorilla tracking plus detailed coverage of offbeat and lesser-known attractions.
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
by Philip Gourevitch
In 1994 the Rwandan government implemented a policy for the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi majority.
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Machete Season
by Jean Hatzfeld
A veteran foreign correspondent shares a collection of interviews with ten Hutu men--all tried, convicted, and sentenced for the genocidal killings of their Tutsi neighbors--as they describe their participation in the heinous crimes and their reasons for the murders, in a study that considers the roots of human morality and ethics. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.
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One Nation, Under Surveillance
by Boston T. Party
Explains precisely how to lay low from snoops of all types. Extremely thorough on computers, data, Internet, VoIP, digital gold, and prepaid cellphones. This is the huge replacement of his 1997 Bulletproof Privacy.
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Sex and the Second-best City
by Kenneth Royce Moore
Sex and the Second-Best City deals with the topics of sex and society in the Laws of Plato with recourse to historical context and modern critical theory. It examines reconstructions of ancient "sexuality" with a view to increased clarification. The text of the Laws is considered, along with many of its literary qualities, its influences and the utopian plan that it proposes.
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Under and Alone
by William Queen
In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement. Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself. During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend. Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.” From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.
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Armed and Dangerous
by William Queen
As an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, William Queen must tackle a number of challenging cases. In the winter of 1985, he faces his toughest mission to date: He must apprehend Mark Stephens, a notorious narcotics trafficker who has been terrorizing the communities around Los Angeles with frequent rampages involving machine guns and hand grenades. A recluse living in the treacherous backwoods outside the city, Stephens is a wily survivalist. Nobody has been able to catch him, but Queen is determined to take him down. Queen’s unique expertise is not taught in any police academy or ATF training seminar–he honed his outdoorsman abilities as a kid. He is adept at hunting and trapping and living for weeks in the wild. Queen will use these skills–along with surveillance, confidential informants, and intelligence gathering–as he doggedly tracks his dangerous quarry, a chase that culminates in a gripping showdown high in the San Bernardino Mountains.
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Assassination
by Lindsay Porter
Assassination - the politically motivated killing of high-profile individuals - has always been part of man's struggle for power, from the removal of tyrants in Classical civilizations to the state- sanctioned 'decapitation strikes' of the present day. Chillingly effective as a political tool, assassination is also immensely compelling as an idea. This book examines the concept of political murder, asking questions such as: What did Julius Caesar's death mean to the Romans? How can assassination be justified? Have our attitudes towards it shifted through time? And why do the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy continue to haunt our collective consciousness? From Caesar and Thomas Becket to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and beyond, this visually striking and intriguing book focuses on the most (in)famous examples of assassination through history, and uses them to explore its various meanings, myths and cults. Fully illustrated with paintings, drawings, photographs and archival documents, Assassination shows how the violent deaths of leaders and statesmen have played out in the popular and artistic imagination from earliest times to the present, illuminating both contemporary responses to assassinations and their lasting impact on our world.
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The Assassination Business: A History of State-Sponsored Murder
by Belfield, Richard
No summary available.
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Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
New York Times bestselling author of The Wordy Shipmates and contributor to NPR’s "This American Life" Sarah Vowell embarks on a road trip to sites of political violence, from Washington DC to Alaska, to better understand our nation’s ever-evolving political system and history. Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage. From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue -- it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and -- the author's favorite -- historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.
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Sense and Nonsense About Crime, Drugs, and Communities: A Policy Guide
by Samuel Walker
Samuel Walker’s SENSE AND NONSENSE ABOUT CRIME, DRUGS, AND COMMUNITIES was one of the first books to challenge common misconceptions about crime, and the new Seventh Edition remains uniquely effective at doing so. Described as a masterful critique of American policies on everything from crime control, to guns, to drugs, this incisive text cuts through popular myths and political rhetoric to confront both conservative and liberal propositions in the context of current research and proven practice. The result is a distinctly lucid, research-based work that stimulates critical thinking and enlivens class discussions. This engaging text captures the full complexity of the administration of justice while providing students with a clear sense of its key principles and general patterns. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
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The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America
by Samuel Walker
Comprehensive and balanced, THE COLOR OF JUSTICE is the definitive book on current research and theories of racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination within America’s Criminal Justice system. The authors synthesize the best and the most recent research on patterns of criminal behavior and victimization, police practices, court processing and sentencing, the death penalty, and correctional programs, giving students the facts and theoretical foundation they need to make their own informed decisions about discrimination in the system. Uniquely unbiased, THE COLOR OF JUSTICE makes every effort to incorporate discussion of all major race groups found in the United States. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
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Murder City
by Charles Bowden
From the award-winning, critically acclaimed Charles Bowden, a stunning work of reportage on Ciudad Juarez--the blood-soaked town caught in the crosshairs of Mexico's escalating drug wars
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Murder City
by Michael Lesy
Offers a portrait of Chicago during the 1920s as it became the murder capital of the United States and analyzes how some of Chicago's leaders participated in the criminal and violent activities of the period.
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The Girls of Murder City
by Douglas Perry
Documents the true stories of the women whose sensational murder trials inspired the musical characters Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, tracing the contributions of fledgling reporter Maurine Watkins against a backdrop of Chicago's Prohibition Era and Jazz Age culture.