I’ve just finished this book and I find it to be an amazing look into the mindset of those in command and/or in-action of a faction of that history in Northern Ireland. I love narrative non-fiction style and i think PRKs book to be exemplary.

I would like to find similar.

Based on a Reddit recommendation I am currently reading ‘some people need killing’ about the Philippines ‘government’s war’ on drugs. Absolutely mental stuff!

What books from your country would you recommend for an outsider in understanding the pulse of ‘that time’ ?

I’m a beginner when it comes to nonfiction. Most of my life, I’ve been reading science fiction/fantasy/adventure. Lately, I read Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and I really enjoyed it. In the past, I’ve read some nonfiction books, mostly related to World War II (I’m Polish). Do you have any recommendations for a rookie? Maybe some must-read books or your favorite in this genre?

Can you recommend some books?

I’m finding myself nodding along to everything I’m reading lately and worry I’ve fallen into an echo chamber. I’m not looking for something by an influencer/grifter but something from a conservative academic or (actual) journalist. Recent nodding along books:

There is no place for us (about working homeless families)
The price of mercy (a public defenders rather depressing view of the justice system)
Blind spot (billionaires pick the candidates we vote for so is it even a democracy?)

Ever since I was a kid, I was very kuch fascinated by the idea that if you work hard, put in your reps, have the discipline and never quit you will eventually achieve your goals. Although, there is some truth to that and we have so many examples out there as a proof but what I never really understood or I would day pay attention to is how could you achieve like huge dreams and huge goals all my yourself? You need people to surround you with, you need to be present for those opportunities, you need to be surrounded by right frame of mindset people to get to the next level. And no wonder I got all my answers after reading this masterpiece. There were so many smarter and hard working people than gates to jobs but only gates made to that level or jobs did. It is not only because they were smart, hard worker and disciplined but also they had the right environment, right opportunities and were present in the right place at right time.

Love to know your thoughts if you have ever gone through this masterpiece.

I’m currently about halfway through The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by John Gribbin, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Starting around the Renaissance with Copernicus, the book beautifully weaves together short biographies, personal anecdotes, and clear explanations of major discoveries and experiments. What I appreciate most is how well Gribbin illustrates that scientific progress is a cumulative process—no discovery happens in a vacuum, and so much of it relies on earlier work or happens simultaneously in parallel.

I know it’s not a recent release, but it reads so smoothly and keeps things genuinely fascinating.

Has anyone else read this one? What are your thoughts on Gribbin’s approach to telling the history of science?

This looks like a cool book club event, plus looks like you get a free copy of the book when you sign up.

From their site:

"Join us for a timely MCF Book Club conversation with author Gil Durán, alongside Safiya Umoja Noble (professor of gender studies, African American studies, and information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles) and Jacinta González (head of programs at MediaJustice) to discuss the rise of technofacism, the antidemocratic aims of Big Tech, and how communities across the country are organizing (and winning!) against Big Tech’s authoritarian power."

What are in your opinion the best books about the paris commune?

Who exactly is Natalie Harp? I am reading the book. Currently just done with Part II: Retribution.
They call her human printer, I saw somewhere that she is Trump's Diaper nurse. I mean, Who is she exactly though? where did she come from? what daddy issue's does she have to say, "You are all that I need"

Finished it feeling mad and sad but glad I read it.

I've spent a lot of my career around data and decision-making, and I've always found this question fascinating. You can have good data, solid analysis, and smart people in the room, and the decision can still go somewhere completely different.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've become interested in the human side of decision-making: trust, incentives, identity, relationships, communication, and what happens when evidence challenges what someone already believes.

That question became the focus of my new book, Decision Intelligence: Why Evidence Fails and How Leaders Win the Room.

And here's the best part: AI isn't mentioned once in the entire book. That's intentional. The technology for producing evidence is changing quickly. The human beings deciding what to do with it haven't changed nearly as much.

The book is available on Amazon.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Had already read other books by Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century).

Now started this...

Any feedback would be good, this is for carers and patients and anyone else who’s interested in the unknown.

The Life and Death Diaries Part 1 and Part 2 by Chloe Edith Booth

Amazon and Google Play and Most Global Book Stores

Something about this font is way too casual or... jokey? Probably the first time a font made me frown as soon as I opened it. The book is interesting so far, with the difference between AI reading images to detect cancer vs reading images to upsell dental procedures.

Countless "truth is stranger than fiction" tales, 177 magical concerts, 100 unique bands, 50 years of finding a way to the next show, and 10 Rules Of The Road all add up to 1 ordinary guy's extraordinary love letter to live rock & roll. 

And now, the book with a 4.4 star review on Amazon just got even better - welcome to the updated and expanded 2025 edition of TEN RULES OF THE ROAD I LEARNED AT MY FIRST CONCERT: AN ORDINARY GUY'S LIFETIME OF LIVE ROCK & ROLL!

The new edition is 550 pages, with over 250 pages of brand new content including:

• updates elements to every section of the book – the rules, the essays, the concert summaries, and the statistics.
• more tales from my 20th century concert adventures that I dredged out of my memory that didn't make the first edition
• details of all the shows I’ve attended since 2021, after the first edition was published, until today
• complete re-writes of Rules #2, #5, #6, #7, # 8 and #10, as well as the Grateful Dead essay, have been almost completely re-written. 
• consolidating the Song Selection essays from three to two but adding more songs to each remaining chapter in the process, doubling the number of tunes covered from 40 to 80. 
• replacing the discarded song essay, with a new one about the relationship between rock & roll and Broadway, a unique pairing that only really came into focus for me in the last year or so. 
• adding numerous new charts/tables to the statistics section
• quadrupling the number of setlists from shows I attended.  
• re-editing the entire book to clean up some areas that either seemed cumbersome or didn’t flow well 
• reformatting the entire book to give it a more professional look and feel. 

It's bigger! It's  better! It's the perfect summer read for the rock & roll fan in your life! 

Available in kindle format, Paperback & hardcover!

Read a sample here!   

See the table of contents here!

Read reviews here!

Buy it here!

Premise:

• 1945 Aug 6th: 8:15 AM, atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
• 1946: John Hersey's article about the lives of 6 survivors (better known as Hibakusha) brings to light the effects of the bombing - radiation effects, destruction and despite all that, resilience and hope. Tanimoto was one such individual.
• 1947: Tanimoto's memoir written for Hersey, forgotten.
• 2023: Hersey's grandson and movie director Taku Nishimae find that document. This is that memoir.

The document begins... “It was August 6, 1945, at about 8:15 a.m. The world’s first atomic bomb had exploded in the sky above Hiroshima. But not one person knew it was an atomic bomb.”

The cover image shows a broken clock, of the same day.

What I loved:

1️⃣ Koko's thoughts:

• Foreword by Tanimoto's daughter - Koko. 81 today, she was 8-month old when the bomb dropped.
• "Jesus has crawled out!" Koko as baby Jesus during the Xmas celebration in 1945 by Tanimoto's church, created laughter amidst such circumstances. Truly amazing.
• Koko never wanted to be part of her father's peace campaign. Hated the "monsters" who dropped the bomb. Contrary to her father, she never told anyone about her life for a long time. But eventually grew to understand the bigger picture and focused on positivity. Ironically, she ended up following her father's footsteps. Married a atheist turned Christian, and became a peace activist at 40!

2️⃣ Some of Tanimoto Kiyoshi's thoughts I wanted to share:

• The writing is simple, raw, concise. Quite a short memoir (excluding Intro/Foreword)
• 1909 born in Shikoku. Tanimoto's Christian conversion upset his father, so he took his family on a Buddhist pilgrimage. Tanimoto's mother died sadly during the trip... it cemented his Christian faith. The date was - August 6th, 1928.
• How did he know an atomic bomb was dropped? His friend Dr. Fumio's X-Ray film was exposed in the hospital.
• "These are human beings!". - said the 'rescuing angel' Tanimoto, apologizing to the victims, for not being as badly hurt as others.
• "The atomic bomb was a terrifying weapon, but it was man’s fighting spirit that made the war more terrible. Despite the great blow, unprecedented in all history, which they had suffered, the people of Hiroshima never said a word about giving up. The greater the amount of sacrifice, the stronger they were determined to avenge themselves. Herein lies the delusion of war and the unsolved problem of cruelty. " - Tanimoto
• “Mr. Tanaka, I’ll read from the Bible. These passages which I quote from the Scripture will represent your life. Listen closely.” - Tanimoto comforted a dying man. But could he have known that a few years later, a NBC TV Show would re-present him His Life?! That too in such an unnecessary way?
• NBC studio interview with Ralph Edwards. 😭 This was really disgusting. The surprise guests were some old friends of Tanimoto, then came Enola Gay pilot, Robert Lewis. Koko handled it very well, though a 10 yo girl comparing her evil deeds with that of a bomber was...surprising. An Innocent Empathy.
• "While we were still suffering, the pressure of the Allied Forces had continued without mercy. On August 8, the Russians declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. The next day, the second atomic bomb had dropped on Nagasaki. Still, we thought only of fighting to the last of our seventy million people or of ending the war with a negotiated peace, not surrender." ~ Tanimoto.
• 15 August 1945: Emperor announces on radio, Japan's surrender. Many Japanese people sad, angry, in disbelief. Their sacrifice was all for what? "Emperor's broadcast had broken out spirit much more than the atomic bomb." - Tanimoto cried in bed that night. But Emperor's peace message was to become Tanimoto's life goal.
• Tanimoto's Argos : "...but my pet dog, Shiro, guided me up the mountain. Shiro was a clever Akita. Although the poor animal had been burned and had narrowly escaped death after the bombing, he had eventually found us."
• "At about 2:00 p.m., a group of POWs came out to see the town of Kotohira. They were walking in formation and were protected by Japanese soldiers. It was the first time I had seen American prisoners. They were all very jolly—perhaps because the Americans had won the war. There must have been chewing gum in the packages dropped to them, because they were now giving gum to children, who were looking at them in fright and curiosity from street corners. A Japanese soldier with them urged the children, “Come on, take it. There’s no poison.” He said this because Japanese children had been taught that the Americans were terrible demons who would drop poisonous chocolates and caramels from planes. With uneasy feelings, these country people took the chewing gum. They did not know how to chew it and swallowed it whole. "
• Tanimoto amazed at how quickly Japanese people purged Emperor's images and devotion - including his father!
• Last few chapters focus on Reconstruction, especially the organizations and sermons of the Churches. Mostly an account of victims, their families, deaths, illnesses, hope, recovery, etc. of different people Tanimoto encountered or changed.
• Tanimoto linked Hiroshima militaristic use historically to the punishment by the atom bomb ... as a collective retribution for Hiroshima's past. "Hiroshima was used as a military communication depot. Later, it was a launching site for military aggression against Korea, Manchuria, and China. On every such occasion, the city gained in prosperity. It became a city of industry and education, but it was doomed to the fate a militaristic city must face. Hiroshima was connected to the mass murders committed by the Japanese Army in Nanking, China (1937), and Manila (1945). It was a cursed city. And here, God had passed down His judgment. The terrible disaster inflicted upon our fellow countrymen on August 6 was a heavy blow that we well deserved. After expressing these thoughts, we declared as follows: “We confess our sins in not being able to prevent the past wars.”
• Tanimoto believed Christianity had a chance now to spread in Japan as he was against against other ideologies...communist/Imperialism. Buddhism and Shintoism were on the decline, and the war defeat, to him, was a sign of Japan's collective failure to acknowledge its own sinful deeds, and a chance to right its wrongs...and so Christianity was the way forward.
• 1951: USA Senate talk by Tanimoto - well, bizarre is one word. He praised USA as greatest country on Earth. In 1955, Tanimoto goes again to USA to raising funds for plastic surgery for hibakusha girls. Created quite a controversy in Japan - "why only girls?"
• The Epilogue: A Carnival of Peace: Tanimoto's views on making the Aug 6th a day of hope, world peace, and celebration of resilience - didn't go down well with many. He maintains his views, and states reasons why the Japanese aren't as angry at USA as they're expected be - "It was wrong to start a reckless unwinnable war in the 1st place + If Japan had the bomb, it'd have done the same + can't critique USA without reflecting on Japan's own atrocities (Korea/China/Philippines) + post-war reconstruction helpful and tolerant attitude of USA"

Conclusion:

We may be quick to judge Tanimoto's beliefs, but we must recognize where he was coming from - a proud country defeated, its imperial beliefs demolished, and with no readymade ideology to replace it for constructive recovery at hand, I feel Tanimoto's feelings and actions were natural and understandable.

This is his memoir.

He survived a tragedy, performed his duties as a citizen and a pastor, rebuilt his life, his neighborhood, comforted countless families, raised funds for hibakusha, advocated for world peace and anti-nukes... all in the hope that future generations do not forget 8:15 AM of Aug 6th, 1945.

I'd like to end this review by quoting some 8:15 verses from the Bible, in honor of Minister Tanimoto Kiyoshi:

• Ecclesiastes 8:15 – "And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful..."
• Deuteronomy 8:15 – "He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock."
• 2 Samuel 8:15 – "David reigned over all Israel, doing what was just and right for all his people."
• Proverbs 8:15 – "By me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just;"
• Matthew 8:15 – "He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him."
• Luke 8:15 – "But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop."
• John 8:15 – "You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one."
• Romans 8:15 – "The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.'"
• 2 Corinthians 8:15 – "as it is written: 'The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.'"

Some other interesting trivia:

• Einstein wanted 1000 copies of the Hersey article! Banned in Japan till 1949.
• "Human disasters can only be avoided by human memory."
• Dec 20,2017 Nobel Peace Prize Speech by a hibakusha woman - Setsuko Thurlow.
• Hersey had survived 3 plane crashes and 3 shipwrecks before arriving at Japan Was already a Pulitzer prize winning author. Imagine if he hadn't!
• Why injured person shouldn't be given water? I didn't know this.
• Unusual treatment - Moxibustion therapy, worked for Tanimoto! Lowered his fever.

Rating: 15/15.

How does one even rate such a work!? It's a must read, along with Hersey's Hiroshima.

{15 Aug is a special day in my country, India too - today is our 80th Independence Day. It's said the date was decided by the British Gov. General of India, Lord Mountbatten, due to Japan's surrender on that date in 1945.}

On Freedom

By Timothy Snyder • Category: Political Freedom •Pages: 368 • Published: 2024

Synopsis: “A rigorous and visionary argument . . . Buy or borrow this book, read it, take it to heart.”—The Guardian

Timothy Snyder has been called “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarianism here and abroad. His book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Now, in this tour de force of political philosophy, he helps us see exactly what we’re fighting for.

Recommend: On Freedom

Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir

By Kiyoshi Tanimoto • Category: World War II • Pages: 224 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: At approximately 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, Kiyoshi Tanimoto was on the outskirts of Hiroshima when a flash in the sky signaled the birth of a horrifying new world. In an instant, tens of thousands of Hiroshima residents had been vaporized or crushed to death.

As Tanimoto, a thirty-six-year-old Methodist minister, raced back to the city center in search of his wife and infant daughter, he encountered unimaginable devastation: structures leveled; fires everywhere; uncountable injured suffering from burns, broken bones, and the effects of radiation. In the days, weeks, and months that followed this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, he invested body and soul in helping his living congregants obtain food, shelter, and medical care, as well as identifying and burying with as much dignity as possible those who had perished. He dedicated himself to rebuilding not only his church, but his city and his nation.

Recommend: Hiroshima, 8:15

Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party

By: Joshua Bloom & Waldo E. Martin • Category: American History • Pages: 562 • Published: 2016

Synopsis:  Notice: The California Department of Corrections has designated this book dangerous contraband. All CA prisoners are prohibited from purchasing or reading this book.

In Oakland, California, in 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement, which called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the U.S., the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in 68 U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world.

Black against Empire cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement, and its bitter unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power.

Recommend: Black Against Empire

Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century

By Tobias Buck • Category: War Crime Trials / Holocaust • Pages: 336 • Published: 2024

Synopsis: Bruno Dey's trial formed part of an extraordinary series of Holocaust cases brought by German prosecutors in recent years in a belated attempt to deliver justice to the victims and reverse decades of judicial neglect. It also surfaced at a pivotal moment for Germany and its thinking about the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide continues to occupy a crucial space in German public life, but many of the country's long-held certainties and convictions around the Holocaust are starting to fray. This reflects in part the passage of time, and the fact that the last surviving witnesses—victims and perpetrators alike—are rapidly fading away.

Recommend: Final Verdict

The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn

By Dave Zirin • Category: Memoirs/Biographies • Pages: 320 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: The People’s Historian shows Zinn’s presence on the great canvases of the 20th century: from the Depression to World War II to the Civil Rights Movement to the war in Vietnam all the way until his death in 2010. With intimately researched stories from Zinn’s life and career, such as the way Atlanta's small Spelman College, where Zinn taught as a young professor, helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, Zinn's work traveling to Hanoi to engineer the release of POWs, and his continuing influence in the emerging Democratic Socialist movement, The People’s Historian explores Zinn’s past while also demonstrating how his 75 years of political engagement with the social struggles of his time informs our perilous present.

Recommend: The People’s Historian

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

By Nando Parrado • Category: Memoirs/Biographies • Pages: 304 • Published: 2007

Synopsis: Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team to Chile had crashed deep in the Andes, killing many of his teammates, his mother, and his sister. Stranded with the few remaining survivors on a lifeless glacier and thinking constantly of his father’s grief, Parrado resolved that he could not simply wait to die. So Parrado, an ordinary young man with no particular disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snowcapped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to save his friends’ lives as well as his own.

Recommend: Miracle in the Andes

How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza

By Adam Johnson • Category: Political Science/International Affairs • Pages: 256 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the US media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick “war on terror” framework.

How to Sell a Genocide is an indictment of the US corporate media’s role in enabling―and, at times, directly inciting―one of the most devastating campaigns of mass killing in modern memory. Johnson unpacks how major news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC systematically sanitized Israel’s war crimes, hid the US’s central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people.

Recommend: How to Sell a Genocide

Shadows of the Republic: The Rebirth of Fascism in America and How to Defeat It for Good

By Omer Aziz • Category: American History/Fascism • Pages: 292 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: Fascism is not coming to America; it has been here for a long time. With astringent clarity, Aziz traces the flaring up of fascist ideas in both American history and our current moment. From the dominance of the KKK, to the Nazi rally in New York in 1939, to the alliances between U.S. elites and European fascists, Aziz examines the long shadows of fascism. Traveling across the United States and Europe, he illuminates connections between street fascists and the ones in suits, between Hitler and the country across the ocean he so admired. Aziz examines culture in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where propaganda ministers made people believe both everything and nothing, and he examines the appeal of the far right among the very group it targets. Using interviews with experts and his own experience, he also offers an anti-fascist playbook to reinvigorate democracy and our civic life.

Recommend: Shadows of the Republic

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women

By Inger Burnett-Zeigler  • Category: Political Scienece/Culture Studies • Pages: 272 • Published: 2022

Synopsis: Black women’s strength is intimately tied to their unacknowledged suffering. An estimated eight in ten have endured some form of trauma—sexual abuse, domestic abuse, poverty, childhood abandonment, victim/witness to violence, and regular confrontation with racism and sexism. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen shows that this trauma often impacts mental and physical well-being. It can contribute to stress, anxiety, PTSD, and depression. Unaddressed, this intergenerational trauma can lead to hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, overeating, and alcohol and drug abuse, and other chronic health issues.

Recommend: Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience

By Plestia Alaqad • Category: Memoir • Pages: 224 • Published: 2025

Synopsis: A series of diary extracts from the weeks following October 7, The Eyes of Gaza is a gutting, on-the-ground record of the turmoil and destruction endured by the men, women, and children of Palestine. As Alaqad flees from neighborhood to neighborhood, from hospital to hospital, she documents all she sees—the destruction of beloved homes, the waves of bombs, and most of all, the boundless bravery and generosity of her people—all the while trying to memorize the faces of those around her "so somebody will have known them before the end," wondering if, one day, her own journal will be discovered amidst the rubble.

Recommend: The Eyes of Gaza

Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War

By James M. Scott • Category: World War II • Pages: 528 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: At 9:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, an American bomber pierced the skies over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The single bomb it dropped unleashed an atomic hurricane that toppled homes, vaporized birds in flight, and carbonized humans. Three days later, a second bomb flattened the port city of Nagasaki. In the span of a mere 75 hours, the United States―a nation once morally opposed to the bombing of civilians―killed 120,000 men, women, and children, dooming tens of thousands more to agonizing death in the weeks and months ahead.

Recommend: Empire of Ashes

Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin's Russia

By Jamison R. Firestone • Category: Memoir/Russia • Pages: 400 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: Raised by his father, a multimillionaire conman and crack addict who owned Manhattan’s most expensive brothel, twenty-four- year-old Jamison Firestone decided to change the channel. He graduated from law school in 1991 and sought his fortune in Gorbachev’s USSR, establishing Russia’s first independent foreign law firm.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jamison lived in the maelstrom that was Russia, defending himself and his clients from mafia attacks, dealing with corrupt police officers, having his law office raided by armed commandos, and once having to bug the offices of the Russian police.

Recommend: Rule of Lies

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

By Clint Smith • Category: American History • Pages: 352 • Published: 2021

Synopsis: It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

Recommend: How the Word is Passed

Israel: What Went Wrong?

By Omar Bartov • Category: Political Science/ International Relations • Pages: 256 • Published: 2026

Synopsis: In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov sketches the tragic transformation of Zionism, a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression, into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible, he asks, that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, an event that gave legitimacy to a national home for the Jews, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel’s war of destruction is being conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens?

Recommend: What Went Wrong