CONSIDER THIS SHOCKING FACT: while China’s number one export to the United States is $46 billion of computer equipment, the number one export from the U.S. to China is waste—$7.6 billion of waste paper and scrap metal. Bestselling author Clyde Prestowitz reveals the astonishing extent of the erosion of the fundamental pillars of American economic might—beginning well before the 2008 financial crisis—and the great challenge we face for the future in competing with the economic juggernaut of China and the other fast-rising economies. As the arresting facts he introduces show, the U.S. is rapidly losing the basis of its wealth and power, as well as its freedom of action and independence. If we do not make dramatic changes quickly, we will confront a painful permanent slide in our standard of living; the dollar will no longer be the world’s currency; our military strength will be whittled away; and we will be increasingly subject to the will of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and various malcontents. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As Prestowitz shows in a masterful account of how we’ve come to this fateful juncture, we have inflicted our economic decline on ourselves—we abandoned the extraordinary approach to growth that drove the country’s remarkable rise to superpower status from the early days of the republic up through World War II. For most of our history, we supported our home industries, protected our market against unfair trade, made the world’s finest products—leading the way in technological innovation—and we were strong savers. But in the post-WWII era, we reversed course as our leadership embraced a set of simplistically attractive but disastrously false ideas—that consumption rather than production should drive our economy; that free trade is always a win-win; that all globalization is good; that the market is always right and government regulation or intervention in the economy always causes more harm than good; and that it didn’t matter that our factories were fleeing overseas because we were moving to the "higher ground" of services. In a devastating account, Prestowitz shows just how flawed this orthodoxy is and how it has gutted the American economy. The 2008 financial crisis was only its most blatant and recent consequence. It is time to abandon these false doctrines and to get back to the American way of growth that brought us to world leadership; Prestowitz presents a deeply researched and powerful set of highly practical steps that we can begin implementing immediately to reverse course and restore our economic leadership and excellence. The Betrayal of American Prosperity is vital reading for all Americans concerned about the future of the economy and of our power in the coming era.

On August 7, 1998, three years before President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror, the radical Islamist group al-Qaeda bombed the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where Prudence Bushnell was serving as U.S. ambassador. Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience is her account of what happened, how it happened, and its impact twenty years later. When the bombs went off in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania that day, Congress was in recess and the White House, along with the entire country, was focused on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Congress held no hearings about the bombings, the national security community held no after-action reviews, and the mandatory Accountability Review Board focused on narrow security issues. Then on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. homeland and the East Africa bombings became little more than an historical footnote. Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience is Bushnell’s account of her quest to understand how these bombings could have happened given the scrutiny bin Laden and his cell in Nairobi had been getting since 1996 from special groups in the National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA. Bushnell tracks national security strategies and assumptions about terrorism and the Muslim world that failed to keep us safe in 1998 and continue unchallenged today. In this hard-hitting, no-holds-barred account she reveals what led to poor decisions in Washington and demonstrates how diplomacy and leadership going forward will be our country’s most potent defense. Purchase the audio edition.

There is a thought that has been attributed to the Haitian Molire, or Alcibiade: All countries are developing while Haiti is enveloping. When one reads the following 1903 letter written by the nationalist physician Dr. Rosalvo Bobo, it could be easy to swear it was just written a minute ago. It is hard to believe since its independence was officially declared on January 1, 1804, that not much has changed in Haiti. Indeed, not much has changed. The following letter is a vibrant testimony to our societal stagnation and to our national degradation, both of which are symptomatic of the sum of our individual failures as citizens. Nations do not fail. Their citizens fail them. Personal successes are irrelevant to concerned citizens. Haiti has sadly become a country without elites. Most, alas, have become pitiful racketeers.

Manhattan, 2002: Mark Wallace has it all—he’s married to Claire, the love of his life; they have two bright, beautiful children, and his is a high-powered Wall Street job. Until one night while on a neighborhood errand by himself, his twelve-year-old son, Kyle, vanishes, brutally snatched off the streets of New York. Seven years later, Kyle has never been found. The loss, guilt, and mystery surrounding their son’s disappearance have almost destroyed the Wallaces’ marriage, leaving their daughter alienated and distant. Mark has thrown himself into his work—he is now an energy markets consultant for a private hedge fund run by the father of a friend—and, though successful, is living on emotional autopilot. Now, on the same day that a natural gas pipeline in remote western Russia is blown up by suspected terrorists, a new lead opens in Kyle’s case. When the very next day a colleague slips Mark classified information on Saudi oil production and then suddenly turns up dead, apparently a suicide, it remains for Mark, with the help of his technophile daughter and still-grieving wife, to find the sinister connections among everything that’s going on. Their personal struggle is equally compelling—three people who must once again learn how to be a family. Politically savvy, emotionally complex, and frighteningly believable, The Garden of Betrayal is a tense and timely imagining of the casualties of recession-era Wall Street gaming and the backroom global oil wars, a riveting, compulsive read that will grip you from first page to last. It also places Lee Vance on the level of today’s best and best-selling thriller writers—Richard North Patterson, Christopher Reich—who not only thrill us but make us think.

The incredible solution to the crime of the twentieth century! Here's what we now know: John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Mafia contract killers hired by Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello. Kennedy was killed in that city because it was the only place in the country where a crime of that magnitude could be committed without fear of punishment. Long-time local district attorney Henry Wade, an LBJ crony who would have sole jurisdiction over the prosecution of those responsible, had been corrupted by the local Civello crime family. Lyndon B. Johnson, while a U.S. senator during the 1950s, had accepted bribes from the same mobsters so that they could avoid deportation. With incredible detail and documentation, Mark North pieces the puzzle together to reveal how in late 1961, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his brother John, who hated LBJ, initiated a covert Organized Crime Task Force investigation of the Civello mob in Dallas. They understood that destroying the Dallas Mafia would also destroy LBJ. Johnson, through Wade and local federal officials he had placed in power, learned of the plan and cooperated with the Civello mob to have JFK killed. Johnson did this, in part, because he had the power to control any subsequent federal investigation via FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson had leverage over Hoover because he had learned that the director and his assistant Clyde Tolson were lovers. After the Mafia killed JFK, Johnson stopped Robert Kennedy's prosecution of the Dallas Mafia. Betrayal in Dallas is unlike any book written on the JFK assassination. Because its conclusions are based on classified federal documents unknown to the public and research community, it will startle and convince all those who read it. It is inevitable that, at some point, any great historical truth becomes known. Betrayal in Dallas is nothing less than the vehicle for that moment. It is what the American people have been waiting for since November 22, 1963.

Author Robert Wood Darby was born and raised in Georgia. This memoir is about the anti-racism advocate growing up in the fifties and sixties and coming of age in the segregated South during the Civil Rights Movement. Darby became an antiwar activist during the Vietnam War. He studied at Emory University, then at Tufts and Harvard in the late sixties - a time of upheaval for the entire country. He also chronicles his affliction with mental illness and manic depression, which has gone into remission.

This is a history of Western culture, divided into two parts. The first concerns the aggressive championing of monotheism by Jewish people as their distinctive national culture (although they only fell into or embraced it late in their development). Jesus offended by proposing an inversion of the divine protocols and an agenda more in harmony with international political realities: the one God proposed to use the Jews to reach (and transform) the entire human race, which was the actual object of His redemptive and creative energies. With the Renaissance widening opportunities for study, travel, learning and discovery, authorities had greater difficulty justifying limitations on individuals’ freedom of expression of heterodox artistic, political, philosophical or religious positions. This book explores the difficult modern psychological adjustment of dealing with a world with diminishing centers of authority – where it often seems as if no one is in charge – while also doing justice to one’s feelings of frustration and lack of fulfillment without becoming a radical narcissist.

Levit Fernandini was born in poverty in the Bronx, NYC, and attempted to escape through a life of crime. His journey is a testament to the power of change and will leave you feeling hopeful. It is a story full of drugs, crime, and money, coming around the circle, being caught by the FBI, and prosecuted. But also, where is he now, the regrets and hope for the future...

Conscious Choices, Conscious Life! Transcending Abuse & Betrayal is an inspirational book that celebrates the triumph of dignity, courage and self-empowerment over the brutality and denigration of abuse and betrayal. The book depicts the life experiences of four women, Stacy, Miriam, Tessa and Jasareen with much of the focus on Stacy's personal journey to healing and selfhood. By sharing the stories of healing and the transformational power of conscious choices and forgiveness, Sasha Samy hopes that others may garner the courage to confront and transcend their experiences. With poignant personal anecdotes, penetrating insights, psychological research and spiritual teachings, Samy integrates a practical and holistic approach to healing and transformation in her book. The book, which is divided into three parts, also discusses: What constitutes abuse and its effects Why the targeted do not leave their abusive partners What is lacking in dysfunctional relationships How our erroneous thoughts, attitudes and belief systems create self-sabotaging and self-destructive behavioral patterns Why shadow and inner works are essential to understanding the self Techniques and tools to embrace the healing process www.sashasamy.com