This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive--dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son. Views: 42
At some point during the last 100,000 years, humans began exhibiting traits and behavior that distinguished us from other animals, eventually creating language, art, religion, bicycles, spacecraft, and nuclear weapons--all within a heartbeat of evolutionary time. Now, faced with the threat of nuclear weapons and the effects of climate change, it seems our innate tendencies for violence and invention have led us to a crucial fork in our road. Where did these traits come from? Are they part of our species immutable destiny? Or is there hope for our species' future if we change? With fascinating facts and his unparalleled readability, Diamond intended his book to improve the world that today's young people will inherit. Triangle Square's The Third Chimpanzee for Young People is a book for future generation and the future they'll help build. From the Hardcover edition. Views: 41
From R. Barri Flowers, award-winning criminologist and international bestselling author of the true crime classic, The Sex Slave Murders, comes a gripping new true crime short, Terror in East Lansing: The Tale of MSU Serial Killer Donald Miller. Views: 37
In this legal thriller short story, a group of criminal justice practitioners gamble on the jury's verdict. The dramatic ending will shock readers... Views: 32
A riveting and intricate literary thriller from the author The New York Times Book Review says “speaks up in a voice that gets your attention like a rifle shot . . . clean, direct, and a little dangerous.” Army Intelligence reservist Kat Caldwell is teaching Arabic at a military college in Virginia when the order comes: Retired spy chief Dick Morrow needs to find a CIA informant who has slipped away from his handler in Spain and may be heading to Morocco. Jamal was a prisoner whom Kat interrogated when she worked at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Having gained his trust, she is now expected to discover his whereabouts on a treacherous trail that leads from Madrid’s red-light district to the slums of Casablanca. But when a British Special Forces soldier is murdered just as he is about to give testimony on the death of a Bagram detainee, Kat begins to suspect that the real story here is one of the cover-up of U.S.-sanctioned torture. And when in desperation Jamal contacts his former CIA handler, he unwittingly rekindles a bitter struggle between the one man who can save him and the one who wants him dead.From Publishers WeeklyAt the start of this intelligent spy thriller from the pseudonymous Carr (the author of Flashback and other novels under her real name, Jenny Siler), Kat Caldwell, a gutsy U.S. Army interrogator stationed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, takes charge of Jamal, a 15-year-old Moroccan boy caught in a jihadi sweep by a British Special Forces team. Having fled a degraded existence as an orphan in Morocco, the resourceful Jamal is no terrorist, Kat decides. After Jamal escapes custody, a team of American intelligence agents, working in both an official and unofficial capacity, go in search of him. Because of their earlier relationship, Kat is recruited to help locate the boy. When she realizes that something bad will happen if she finds him, she also goes on the run. Effortlessly shifting point of view and back and forth in time, Carr (An Accidental American) well deserves comparisons with the early John le Carré. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistJamal, a Muslim teenager, is captured in Afghanistan and sent to Bagram Prison. He knows nothing of terrorism. He was taken at birth from his Moroccan mother, a political prisoner, and sent to a grimy orphanage in Casablanca. On leaving the orphanage, he survived by giving himself to a series of pederasts. But he must tell his interrogators something, and an innocuous lie sets off a chain reaction of murders in Britain and the Middle East. Jamal decides to disappear in Casablanca’s slums, and his former interrogator, Kat Caldwell, is reactivated to help find him. But Kat wonders who she is working for and what will happen to Jamal if she succeeds. The inevitable prepub comparisons of any promising new espionage writer to the work of John le Carré and Alan Furst aren’t too far from the mark this time. Carr has written a fine novel dense with complex and flawed characters, a vivid sense of place, and fascinating insights into the Muslim faith. By the final page, many readers will also find in the novel a metaphor for America’s ill-conceived global war on terror. --Thomas Gaughan Views: 32
Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods--that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient... Views: 29
Death by Trial and Error is a psychological legal fantasy and suspense short in which a wife plots revenge against her unfaithful husband with an ending you will never see coming! A real page-turner and domestic drama, where the mind can take you to a place you never wanted to go. Views: 27
Maui County homicide detective and composite sketch artist Leila Kahana and her new partner, Detective Jonny Chung, take on the case of a beautiful college instructor found murdered on the island's famed Kaanapali Beach, even as Leila continues to be haunted by a frustrating case of serial murder. Joyce Yashiro, estranged from her husband, was suffocated when she was forced face down into the soft sand on the beach. The case is anything but simple as the victim’s life and those of the people around her are put under the microscope, with a killer watching every move the police make.In a seemingly unrelated case, Detectives Rachel Lancaster and Trent Ferguson investigate the execution-style murder of businessman Parker Breslin in front of his Kihei home. It seems that more than one person may have wanted Breslin dead and someone made sure it happened.As the two murder investigations progress with a myriad of suspects, a surprising connection between the cases and crimes emerge. But is there one killer or two? As these cases move full steam ahead, there is also a brutal serial killer on the loose. Dubbed the "Zip Line Killer," he has been terrorizing women on the island, strangling them with a zip line, for over a year, while staying safely out of reach of the authorities.Now he has struck again and Leila and Chung, along with their Lieutenant Blake Seymour, are determined to bring him down. Do they finally have a break that can put this frightening killer behind bars before he strikes again? Or is he merely toying with them while sizing up his next victim? Views: 25
Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World until Yesterday: "Alice Dreger would win a prize for this year's most gripping novel, except for one thing: her stories are true, and this isn't a novel. Instead, it's an exciting account of complicated good guys and bad guys, and the pursuit of justice." An impassioned defense of intellectual freedom and a clarion call to intellectual responsibility, Galileo's Middle Finger is one American's eye-opening story of life in the trenches of scientific controversy. For two decades, historian Alice Dreger has led a life of extraordinary engagement, combining activist service to victims of unethical medical research with defense of scientists whose work has outraged identity politics activists. With spirit and wit, Dreger offers in Galileo's Middle Finger an unforgettable vision of the importance of rigorous truth seeking in today's America, where both the free... Views: 21
Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why do humans have sex any day of the month or year—including when the female is pregnant, beyond her reproductive years, or between her fertile cycles? Why are human females the only mammals to go through menopause? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large? Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest animal relatives and ancestors?With wit and fascinating scientific expertise, the author of The Third Chimpanzee explores the mystifying evolutionary forces that gave shape to our sexual distinctions and shows how they contributed to what it means to be uniquely human. Views: 20
