Category Archives: Books

The Accusation-forbidden stories from inside North Korea:

The Accusation-forbidden stories from inside North Korea:

We will worship the Great Leader until the sun and moon go out”

Billed as the first piece of regime critical fiction from within North Korea by a dissident writer (the only hitherto examples of such documentation being from successful defectors), The Accusation encompasses seven separate stories that have been smuggled out to the world at large & found their way to print.

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Chaos-Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties (Tom O’Neill & Dan Piepenbring):

I needed a crash course in the governments involvement in antileft action in California, and solid sources to tell me how Manson could have been swept up in it. I focused on two secret intelligence operations that were under way in Los Angeles in 1969: the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the CIA’s CHAOS. Their primary objective. According to three congressional committees that investigated them in the midseventies, was to discredit the leftwing movement by any means necessary – an aim that, coincidentally or not, described exactly the effect of the Manson murders.

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Queens of the kingdom-the women of saudi arabia speak (nicola sutcliff):

Its about time! this is potentially the best book I have read on ‘The Kingdom’ & delivers a remarkable exposure into this secretive, routinely self-misrepresenting “ultraconservative theocratic autocracy”. With immense finesse & substantive diplomatic tact, author Nicola Sutcliff – & over 28 Saudi women from a vast & varied pool of social positions – render a brilliant intra-exposé.

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Rio De Janeiro – extreme city (Luiz Eduardo Soares):

Whoa! Initially published in 2015, when Operation Car Wash was blowing its gaskets. Half memoir & all observatory, Extreme City throws wide the unique abhorrence & awesomeness of the beleaguered & siege-stricken prodigy that is Rio, & the greater country of Brazil. This is one of the best & most personal scribes I have streaked on the region (Soares is a carioca – “Rio born & bred”), reclining amongst the likes of Peter Robb’s A Death in Brazil & Misha Glenny’s excellent Nemesis.

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Kill all the gentlemen-class struggle and change in the English countryside (Martin Empson):

“Over the next few days the rebels were to bring the most powerful figures in England’s ruling class to their knees. Several of them, like the hated Arch Bishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury and the King’s treasurer Sir Robert Hales were executed. Even as the rebellion was defeated in London, it was still spreading across England and it was only after months of repression, torture and execution that the ruling class regained control.”

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