Armageddon Insurance


Book Description

The dangerous, decades-long arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War begged a fundamental question: how did these superpowers actually plan to survive a nuclear strike? In Armageddon Insurance, the first historical account of Soviet civil defense and a pioneering reappraisal of its American counterpart, Edward M. Geist compares how the two superpowers tried, and mostly failed, to reinforce their societies to withstand the ultimate catastrophe. Drawing on previously unexamined documents from archives in America, Russia, and Ukraine, Geist places these civil defense programs in their political and cultural contexts, demonstrating how each country's efforts reflected its cultural preoccupations and blind spots and revealing how American and Soviet civil defense related to profound issues of nuclear strategy and national values. This work challenges prevailing historical assumptions and unearths the ways Moscow and Washington developed nuclear weapons policies based not on rational strategic or technical considerations but in power struggles between different institutions pursuing their own narrow self-interests.




Armageddon


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller AT STAKE: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA The 2016 election is truly America's Armageddon—the ultimate and decisive battle to save America, a fight to defeat Hillary Clinton and the forces seeking to flout our constitutional government and replace it with an all-powerful president backed up by an activist judiciary that answers to no one. Already President Obama has moved America far down this path, and a President Clinton will act as his "third term," institutionalizing the excesses of the past eight years. In Armageddon, bestselling author and political strategist Dick Morris provides a winning game plan to take back the White House, and America. Because this is our last chance: • Our last chance to stop socialist uniformity, corruption and executive usurpation • Our last chance to curb welfare programs that are destroying the economic and social fabric of the nation • Our last chance to secure our border and keep our sovereignty • Our last chance to stand up against ISIS and terrorism • Our last chance to protect the Second Amendment We can do it. We must. It's our last chance. Read Armageddon, or risk losing the battle to save America! On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, American voters will make a momentous decision. They will decide whether or not this great country will remain a free market, constitutional democracy. The stakes could not be higher. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, it will mean the end of the America we know and love. Armageddon, by New York Times bestselling authors Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, is a call to arms, a call to join that ultimate battle. Few know Hillary Clinton better than Dick Morris. For almost two decades he served as a special adviser to both her and her husband, Bill Clinton. He knows their strengths, their vulnerabilities, and even their deepest secrets. In Armageddon, Morris offers a manual on how to win this battle and defeat Hillary once and for all. He argues that a typical Republican campaign won’t work—and that Hillary’s opponent must strike her in a very unorthodox and powerful way. Morris says it’s a winning strategy and voters play a critical role. A noted political strategist, Dick Morris has created winning strategies for numerous presidential campaigns in the U.S. and abroad. In this book he lays out a war plan, one the Republican nominee must use to prevent her victory: • Throw a surprising right jab: terrorism and healthcare • Throw the left hook: jobs, immigration, Wall Street • Play her game on class warfare: women, Latinos, and young voters Republicans need to stop playing by the old rules of the game. Those rules don’t work—they elected Barack Obama twice. Obama has changed America in fundamental ways and Morris posits that Hillary’s opponents need to grasp this and implement a strategy that can finally defeat her.




Atomic Americans


Book Description

At the dawn of the Atomic Age, Americans encountered troubling new questions brought about by the nuclear revolution: In a representative democracy, who is responsible for national public safety? How do citizens imagine themselves as members of the national collective when faced with the priority of individual survival? What do nuclear weapons mean for transparency and accountability in government? What role should scientific experts occupy within a democratic government? Nuclear weapons created a new arena for debating individual and collective rights. In turn, they threatened to destabilize the very basis of American citizenship. As Sarah E. Robey shows in Atomic Americans, people negotiated the contours of nuclear citizenship through overlapping public discussions about survival. Policymakers and citizens disagreed about the scale of civil defense programs and other public safety measures. As the public learned more about the dangers of nuclear fallout, critics articulated concerns about whether the federal government was operating in its citizens' best interests. By the early 1960s, a significant antinuclear movement had emerged, which ultimately contributed to the 1963 nuclear testing ban. Atomic Americans tells the story of a thoughtful body politic engaged in rewriting the rubric of rights and responsibilities that made up American citizenship in the Atomic Age.




Planning Armageddon


Book Description

Before the First World War, the British Admiralty conceived a plan to win rapid victory in the event of war with Germany-economic warfare on an unprecedented scale.This secret strategy called for the state to exploit Britain's effective monopolies in banking, communications, and shipping-the essential infrastructure underpinning global trade-to create a controlled implosion of the world economic system. In this revisionist account, Nicholas Lambert shows in lively detail how naval planners persuaded the British political leadership that systematic disruption of the global economy could bring about German military paralysis. After the outbreak of hostilities, the government shied away from full implementation upon realizing the extent of likely collateral damage-political, social, economic, and diplomatic-to both Britain and neutral countries. Woodrow Wilson in particular bristled at British restrictions on trade. A new, less disruptive approach to economic coercion was hastily improvised. The result was the blockade, ostensibly intended to starve Germany. It proved largely ineffective because of the massive political influence of economic interests on national ambitions and the continued interdependencies of all countries upon the smooth functioning of the global trading system. Lambert's interpretation entirely overturns the conventional understanding of British strategy in the early part of the First World War and underscores the importance in any analysis of strategic policy of understanding Clausewitz's "political conditions of war."




The Double Game


Book Description

How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations three presidents had with their most trusted advisors, James Cameron offers an original answer to this question. John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a fa ade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age. Cameron shows how, despite reservations about the nuclear buildup, Kennedy and Johnson pushed ahead with an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system for the United States, fearing the domestic political consequences of scrapping both the system and the popular doctrine of strategic superiority that underpinned it. By contrast, the abrupt decline in US public and congressional support in 1969 forced Nixon to give up America's first ABM and the US lead in offensive ballistic missiles through agreements with the Soviet Union, despite his conviction that the US needed a nuclear edge to maintain the security of the West. By placing this dynamic at the center of the story, The Double Game provides a new overarching interpretation of this pivotal period in the development of US nuclear policy and a window onto current debates over nuclear superiority, deterrence, and the future of American grand strategy.




Reckless Endangerment


Book Description

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco. Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster. Character-rich and definitive in its analysis, and with a new afterword that brings the story up to date, this is the one account of the financial crisis you must read.




Beyond Exile: Day by Day Armageddon


Book Description

Sporadic news reports indicate chaos and violence spreading through US cities. An unknown evil is sweeping the planet. The dead are rising to claim the earth as the new dominant species in the food chain. Day by Day Armageddonand its sequel Beyond Exileare the handwritten journals of one desperate survivor as he battles in the face of global disaster. Zombie fiction at its finest, these books will take you to a whole new level of terror.




Against the Gods


Book Description

A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller "Ambitious and readable . . . an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism." —The New York Times "An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book." —The Wall Street Journal "A lively panoramic book . . . Against the Gods sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it." —Business Week "Deserves to be, and surely will be, widely read." —The Economist "[A] challenging book, one that may change forever the way people think about the world." —Worth "No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement." —Robert Heilbroner author, The Worldly Philosophers "With his wonderful knowledge of the history and current manifestations of risk, Peter Bernstein brings us Against the Gods. Nothing like it will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it." —John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today. "An extremely readable history of risk." —Barron's "Fascinating . . . this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties that every investor must face." —Money "A singular achievement." —Times Literary Supplement "There's a growing market for savants who can render the recondite intelligibly-witness Stephen Jay Gould (natural history), Oliver Sacks (disease), Richard Dawkins (heredity), James Gleick (physics), Paul Krugman (economics)-and Bernstein would mingle well in their company." —The Australian




Prosper!


Book Description

The Next 20 Years Will Be Completely Different From The Past Current global trends are bleak: weak economic growth, too much debt, declining incomes for the lower 99%, a dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, and ecological destruction – just to name a few. Many of us understandably feel resigned to an eroding standard of living in the years to come. At best. But what if we told you that there are specific, attainable steps you can take today that can limit your vulnerability to these trends and help you be: - Richer - Live with greater purpose - Healthier - More valued by others - Happier - Safer from harm That’s exactly what Prosper! offers: a blueprint for taking control of and improving your destiny. It outlines practical, actionable investments of your time & resources that will ensure you enjoy greater prosperity in your life, whatever the future may bring. In Prosper!, Martenson and Taggart will explain: - The trends mostly likely to shape your life over the next 20 years - Why developing resilience offers your best chance for thriving, even though society may suffer from the changes these trends may bring - How to build true wealth - What specific actions to take now to secure a prosperous future, no matter what the future holds - How everybody can benefit from this guidance, regardless of age, income or ability How we can best serve the next generation by the actions we take today Prosper! is the highly anticipated follow-up to Martenson’s acclaimed book The Crash Course (Wiley, 2011)




The Armageddon Letters


Book Description

On the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous confrontation of the nuclear era, two of the leading experts on the Cuban missile crisis recreate the drama of those tumultuous days as experienced by the leaders of the three countries directly involved: U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Cuban President Fidel Castro.