'Heart-thumpingly powerful ... history told from the closest and most frightening quarters.' SINCLAIR MCKAY, author of The Secret Life of Bletchley Park 'Shocking, terrifying and revealing. Ground-breaking history, expertly told - a dramatic new insight into the Falklands conflict.' ROGER BOLTON, BBC journalist and broadcaster Forty years on from the outbreak of the war, acclaimed TV journalist Julian Manyon digs down into Argentina's 'Dirty War' and its effect on the Falklands conflict On May 12th, 1982, after the first bloody exchanges of the Falklands War, journalist Julian Manyon and his TV crew were kidnapped on the streets of Buenos Aires and put through a traumatic mock execution by the secret police. Less than eight hours later they were invited to the Presidential Palace to film a world-exclusive interview with an apologetic President Galtieri, the dictator and head of the Argentine Junta. Spurred on by the recent release of declassified CIA documents about Argentina's 'Dirty War', Manyon discovered that his kidnapper was a key figure in the Junta's bloody struggle against left-wing opposition, with a terrifying record of torture and murder. Also in the secret documents were details of the wider picture - the turmoil inside the Junta as the war with Britain got under way, and how Argentina succeeded in acquiring vital US military equipment which made its war effort possible. Published on the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict, this book is an extraordinary insight into the war behind the war. Manyon provides a harrowing depiction of the campaign of terror that the Junta waged on its own population, and a new perspective on an episode of history more often centred on Mrs Thatcher, the Belgrano and the battle of Goose Green.

This book analyzes kidnapping in various forms and from various perspectives. First it argues that kidnapping, including the threat of kidnapping, reflects a breakdown in the mechanisms of social control in society. This volume also discusses the ways governments and para-military and terrorist groups employ kidnappings as part of their foreign and domestic policy. This analysis evaluates why and under what conditions governments, para-military and terrorist groups decide to abduct individuals and groups. It emphasizes how individuals, groups, and governments employ abductions to achieve their psychological, social, religious, and political objectives. This analysis also examines the ways in which cultural traditions in different societies emerge to foster behaviors such as bride abductions. Moreover, this book addresses the extent to which social change modifies these cultural patterns. Suitable for students and researchers, mental health practitioners, and law enforcement, this volume is a unique analysis of our contemporary understanding of kidnapping and violence, and the social, psychological, political, and cultural motivations for such an act.

Bea Gormley tells the story of Pope Francis, known as the People’s Pope, who has humbly said, “My people are poor and I am one of them.” Ordained as Pope on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis became the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Known worldwide for his great humility and approachability, he is the first citizen from the Americas, the first non-European, and first Jesuit priest to be named Pope. Gormley explores the pontif’s early years, growing up as the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants in Argentina, working as a chemical technician before venturing in the priesthood as a Jesuit novice. He went from Bishop to Archbishop to Cardinal—and gained a reputation for personal humility, doctrinal conservatism, and a commitment to social justice, which stands to this day. Named Person of the Year by Time magazine in December 2013, Pope Francis remains outspoken in support of the world’s poor and marginalized people, and he has been involved actively in areas of political diplomacy and environmental advocacy.

When the friend of a young farm girl appears after going missing, Jezzi sets out to find out what has happened to her. Through this she finds herself drawn into a world that exists on the fringe of society, and threatens to change civilisation as she knows it

Now in its third edition, Latin America since Independence explores the region’s rich and diverse history through carefully selected stories, primary source documents, maps, and tables that offer a diverse approach to dominant historical narratives. While histories of the "other" Americas often link disparate histories through revolutionary or tragic narratives, this text begins with the assumption that our efforts to imagine a common past for nearly thirty countries are deeply problematic. Without losing sight of chronology or regional trends, the book offers a distinctive conceptualization of the region as a diverse social landscape with a multiplicity of peoples and voices. Each chapter introduces students to a specific historical issue, which in turn raises questions about the history of the Americas as a whole. Key themes include: Race and Citizenship Inequality and Economic Development Politics and Rights Foreign Interventions Social and Cultural Movements Globalization Violence and Civil Society The Environment Chapters also include timelines highlighting important dates and suggestions for further reading. This third edition has been updated throughout and includes a new Chapter 9 that discusses foreign intervention in Central America, and new text on the drug wars, resource extraction, and indigenous self-determination. Richly informative and highly readable, Latin America since Independence provides compelling accounts of this region’s past and present that will be of interest to students of Latin American history and society.

This work explores the impact of Christian women—as scholars and leaders representing the ethnic, national, racial, and denominational diversity of Christianity today—on all aspects of life. Women and Christianity explores the experiences of women and how their daily lives interface with their spirituality and faith. Beginning with a historical overview, the book presents essays grouped under five broad headings: women, family, and environment; socioeconomics, politics, and authority; body, mind, and spirit; sex, power, and vulnerability; and women, world view, and religious practice. These essays focus on multiple aspects of women's experiences and contemporary Christian realities, involving the interrelatedness of faith, thought, and activism across many strata of global society. They wrestle with the daily experiences and challenges women face integrating their lives as women of faith—as they are advocates, experience agency, and work for mutuality. It shows how in all these roles, women must negotiate power, injustice, and the impact of sexism as they work within systemic oppression amid a patriarchal system, nevertheless championing change and refusing to be severely compromised.

On the first day of February 2021, Myanmar's military grabbed power in a coup d'etat, ending a decade of reforms that were supposed to break the shackles of military rule in Myanmar. Protests across the country were met with a brutal crackdown that shocked the world but were a familiar response from an institution that has ruled the country with violence and terror for decades. Return of the Junta is a detailed account of the ways that Myanmar's military – the Tamatdaw - has maintained control over its people despite a decade of supposed reform. In this detailed account, drawing on first-hand accounts from activists, jouralists and politicians, Oliver Slow explores the measures the military has used to keep hold of power and the motivations of those now rising up against its rule. The book asks the question: what needs to be done to remove the military from power in Myanmar once and for all?

Growth against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World, by H.L.T. Quan, is a radical critique of development as a modern project. Using three historical cases (Brazil-Japan, China-Africa, and US-Iraq), Quan probes the discursive practices of modern development, exploring the coercive and juridical dimensions of trade, diplomacy and war and their impact. This study builds on the critical works of neoliberalism, capitalist development, and empire to lay the groundwork for an honest assessment of neoliberal economics and foreign conducts and their impact on human life.

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • An anthropologist working with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead in this haunting account of grief, the power of ritual, and a quest for justice. “Absorbing . . . multifaceted and elegiac . . . Still Life with Bones captures the ethos that drives the search—often tireless and against the odds—for truth.”—The New York Times “Exhumation can divide brothers and restore fathers, open old wounds and open the possibility of regeneration—of building something new with the ‘pile of broken mirrors’ that is memory, loss, and mourning.” Throughout Guatemala’s thirty-six-year armed conflict, state forces killed more than two hundred thousand people. Argentina’s military dictatorship disappeared up to thirty thousand people. In the wake of genocidal violence, families of the missing searched for the truth. Young scientists joined their fight against impunity. Gathering evidence in the face of intimidation and death threats, they pioneered the field of forensic exhumation for human rights. In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: how life shapes us down to the bone. A weaver is recognized from the tiny bones of the toes, molded by kneeling before a loom; a girl is identified alongside her pet dog. In the tenderness of understanding these bones, forensics not only offers proof of mass atrocity but also tells the story of each life lost. Working with forensic teams at mass grave sites and in labs, Hagerty discovers how bones bear witness to crimes against humanity and how exhumation can bring families meaning after unimaginable loss. She also comes to see how cutting-edge science can act as ritual—a way of caring for the dead with symbolic force that can repair societies torn apart by violence. Weaving together powerful stories about investigative breakthroughs, histories of violence and resistance, and her own forensic coming-of-age, Hagerty crafts a moving portrait of the living and the dead.

Spanning from WWII to the Cold War and beyond, this is the “magnificent . . . triumphant” biography of the investigative journalist, resistance fighter, and whistle blower who helped expose the Watergate scandal (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Leadership) He was one of the most fascinating figures in 20th-century political history. Yet today, Elias Demetracopoulos is strangely overlooked—even though his life reads like an epic adventure story . . . As a precocious twelve-year-old in occupied Athens, he engaged in heroic resistance efforts against the Nazis, for which he was imprisoned and tortured. After his life was miraculously spared, he became an investigative journalist, covering Greece’s tumultuous politics and America’s increasing influence in the region. A clever and scoop-hungry reporter, Elias soon gained access to powerful figures in both governments—and attracted many enemies. When the Greek military dictatorship took power in 1967, he narrowly escaped to Washington DC, where he would lead the fight to restore democracy in his homeland—while running afoul of the American government, too. Now, after a decade of research and original reporting, James H. Barron uncovers the story of a man whose tireless pursuit of uncomfortable truths would put him at odds with not only his own government, but that of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, making him a target of CIA, FBI, and State Department surveillance and harassment—and Greek kidnapping and assassination plots American authorities may have purposefully overlooked. A stunning feat of biographic storytelling, sweeping from World War II to the Cold War, Watergate and beyond, The Greek Connection is about a lifetime of standing up for democracy and a free press against powerful special interests. It has much to teach us about our own era’s abuses of power, dark money, journalist intimidation, and foreign interference in elections.