Available at JSCC Jackson Campus
Written by a prominent historian, this book examines the public policy agendas of Margaret Thatcher and John Major and explores the broader implications of the leaders' profound impact on British politics & society.
A personal portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the woman who was the pivotal point of the rescue of a country, a woman who woke up her nation and made it once again a world leader. It is not only the story of her life but also an examination of the ideas, interests, and circumstances surrounding key events. The author illustrates Thatcher's decisive style in handling potentially explosive issues, her sang-froid, and her charm through numerous vignettes and quotes.
Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher were all described at various times as the 'only man' in their respective cabinets - a reference to their tough, controlling behavior. What explains this type of leadership style? In Women in Power, Blema Steinberg describes the role that personality trait played in shaping the ways in which these three women governed. For each of her subjects, Steinberg provides a personality profile based on biographical information, an analysis of the patterns that comprise the personality profile using psychodynamic insights, and an examination of the relationship between personality and leadership style through an exploration of various aspects of political life - motivation, relations with the cabinet, the caucus, the opposition, the media, and the public.
Lady Thatcher's outstanding accomplishments, the debates she sparked, and her inimitable character, personality, and style are captured in this collection of Parliamentary tributes and international comments, with a Foreword and Biographical Sketch by long-time advisor John Blundell and an Introduction by The Rt Hon David Davis MP. These pages provide first-person observations and anecdotes describing vividly the policies of Margaret Thatcher, her life, and her legacy. At the end of Margaret Thatcher's remarkable life, over 150 Members of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and international leaders spoke about their experiences with her. Many of those who chose to speak had opposed her policies as a Member of Parliament and later as Prime Minister, yet still found themselves inspired to commemorate her and contribute to the picture of Lady Thatcher that will be recorded in history.
The Falklands War, the US invasion of Grenada, the Anglo-Guatemalan dispute over Belize, and the US involvement in Nicaragua in the 1980s, these crises threatened to overwhelm a renewal in US-UK relations. US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's efforts to normalize relations, during and after these crises, reveal a mutual desire to strengthen Anglo-American ties and safeguard individual foreign policy objectives. At the same time, they cultivated a close political and personal bond that lasted well beyond their terms in office.
Based on recently declassified British government documents, this authoritative new book by best-selling popular historian Thomas Hennessey argues that it was almost impossible for the British government to grant the demands of the Irish Republican prisoners, regardless of the impact that the hunger strikes had in boosting support for Sinn Fein. The concession of the'5 demands would have amounted to POW status for Republican prisoners and would have fatally undermined the British position that it was fighting terrorism. Controversially, Hennessey concludes that the long-term consequence for the Republican Movement was an irreversible change of strategy, effectively sowing the seeds of the end of the armed struggle as far back as 1981. In the book, Margaret Thatcher's personal role in the hunger strikes is forensically analyzed, including her clashes with Charles Haughey and her early experience of Irish Republicanism: the assassinations of Airey Neave and Lord Mountbatten, as well as the Warrenpoint Ambush.
In some ways, I didn't – don't – want to remember any of it. This is not to say that one ever forgets. I don't know any journalist who worked through the Troubles, with its relentless cycle of murders and doorstepping the homes of the dead and funerals and yet more murders, who isn't haunted from time to time by being an eyewitness to evil, to heartache and, yes, to courage too. GAIL WALKER, editor, Belfast Telegraph In Reporting the Troubles sixty-eight renowned journalists tell their stories of working in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – the victims that they have never forgotten, the events that have never left them, and the lasting impact of the experience of working through those years. The result is a compelling account of one of the most turbulent periods in recent history, told by the journalists who reported on it. Beginning in 1968 with an eyewitness report of the day that civil rights protestors clashed with the police in Derry, the journalists give candid accounts of the years that followed – arriving on the scene of major atrocities; knocking on the doors of bereaved relatives; maintaining objectivity in the face of threats from paramilitaries and pressure from the state; and always the absolute commitment to telling the truth.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe sharply divides opinion and embodies the contradictions of his country's history and political culture. As a symbol of African liberation and a stalwart opponent of white rule, he was respected and revered by many. This heroic status contrasted sharply, in the eyes of his rivals and victims, with repeated cycles of gross human rights violations. Mugabe presided over the destruction of a vibrant society, capital flight, and mass emigration precipitated by the policies of his government, resulting in his demonic image in Western media. This timely biography addresses the coup, led by some of Mugabe's closest associates, that forced his resignation after thirty-seven years in power.
Available at JSCC Jackson Campus
When the southern African country of Rhodesia was reborn as Zimbabwe in 1980, democracy advocates celebrated the defeat of a white supremacist regime and the end of colonial rule. Zimbabwean crowds cheered their new prime minister, freedom fighter Robert Mugabe, with little idea of the misery he would bring them. Under his leadership for the next 30 years, Zimbabwe slid from self-sufficiency into poverty and astronomical inflation. The government once praised for its magnanimity and ethnic tolerance was denounced by leaders like South African Nobel Prize-winner Desmond Tutu. Millions of refugees fled the country. How did the heroic Mugabe become a hated autocrat, and why we're so many outside of Zimbabwe blind to his bloody misdeeds for so long?
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In this remarkable look inside Mugabe's isolated yet restive Zimbabwe, journalist Godwin and his sister, Georgina, return to their childhood home and tour the economically devastated and state-terrorized cities, farms, and diamond mines at considerable personal risk, gathering candid interviews with dispossessed farmers, marginalized elites, and former insiders to cast a light on the workings of Mugabe's dictatorship and psychology, and the "fear factor" crucial to his control.
Mugabe's dictatorship had survived due to the vicious military oppression of the population and the ruthless suppression of opposition. At the same time, Mugabe has indulged in numerous military interventions outside his borders regardless of the cost in terms of regional stability, lives, and money. The authors examine the background to Mugabe's accession to power through the black nationalist insurgencies against white rule and the civil war between the black Zimbabweans (ZANLA, ZIPRA, and militia groups.) Once Black power was established in 1980, Mugabe launched a brutal campaign in Matabeleland using his Central Intelligence Organization, police, army, and the Special Forces 5th Brigade. At least 30,000 ‘insurgents and civilians were killed. From 1982 the Zimbabwe Defense Forces (ZDF) deployed to Mozambique to secure vital transport arteries to the coast. In 1985 ZDF fought alongside troops from Kenya and Tanzania against Renamo and the South African Defense Forces. From 1998 to 2005 the ZDF deployed into the Democratic Republic of the Congo ostensibly to support President Kabila but in reality, diamonds and other resources were the motives. This war became known as Africa's First World War. Since 2000 Zimbabwe has been in a state of civil war polarized between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the MDC opposition. At the same time, the white farmers have been driven off their land and the economy ruined. Despite the so-called Government of National Unity, the outlook remains bleak and Mugabe's grip on power relies on his war machine.
In 1980, the newly independent and democratic Zimbabwe was a beacon of hope in a troubled region. Three decades later, Zimbabwe became the focus of international attention for very different reasons: acrimonious racial relations, controversial elections, economic hardship, and military intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mugabe and the Politics of Security in Zimbabwe argue that this unfortunate transition is intrinsically linked to the ways in which President Robert Mugabe used the politics of domestic and external security for his own gain. Abiodun Alao presents a comprehensive study of defense institutions, domestic security policy, and external use of military force during Mugabe's decades of rule.
Ben Freeth has an extraordinary story to tell. Like that of many white farmers, his family's land was reclaimed by Mugabe's government for redistribution. But Ben's family fought back. Appealing to international law, they instigated a suit against Mugabe's government in the SADC (The Southern African Development Community). The case was deferred time and again while Mugabe's men pulled strings. But after Freeth and his parents-in-law were abducted and beaten within inches of death in 2008, the SADC deemed any further delay to be an obstruction of justice. The case was heard, and successful on all counts. But the story doesn't end there. In 2009 the family farm was burnt to the ground. The fight for justice in Zimbabwe is far from over - this book is for anyone who wants to see into the heart of one of today's hardest places, and how human dignity flourishes even in the most adverse circumstances.
Denis Norman was born into an ordinary farming family in Oxfordshire, England in 1931, and 22 years later he traveled to Africa to become an assistant on a tobacco farm in Southern Rhodesia. Within a few years, he had bought his own farm and had begun to rise through the ranks of the country's agricultural administration. He was President of the Commercial Farmers Union when Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 and, with no previous political affiliations, he was appointed Minister of Agriculture in the inaugural Zimbabwean government. His story throws a unique and fascinating light on the political and economic development of Zimbabwe.
Available at JSCC Jackson Campus
Osama bin Laden as a historical figure, the mastermind behind 9/11, but no longer relevant to the world it created. In this book, Scheuer, the first head of the CIA's bin Laden Unit, provides a closely reasoned portrait of bin Laden.
Available at JCSS Jackson Campus
Who is Osama bin Laden—the only terrorist leader ever to have declared a holy war? What drives him and those he leads to hate a West that helped enrich and arm them? Bin Laden’s name has been linked to a number of incidents that have cost Americans their lives, including the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the destruction of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Now, he is linked to the catastrophic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Here is a comprehensive account of the rise of bin Laden. In meticulous detail, world-renowned terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky uncovers the events in bin Laden’s life that turned the once-promising engineering student into a cold-blooded leader of radical Islam. In the process, Bodansky reveals a chilling story that is as current as of today’s headlines but as ancient as the Crusades, a story that transcends bin Laden and any other single man.
Available at JSCC Jackson Campus
The Bin Ladens rose from poverty to privilege; they loyally served the Saudi royal family for generations--and then one of their numbers changed history on September 11, 2001. Journalist Steve Coll tells the story of the rise of the Bin Laden family and of the wildly diverse lifestyles of the generation to which Osama bin Laden belongs, and against whom he rebelled. Starting with the family's escape from famine at the beginning of the twentieth century, through its jet-set era in America after the 1970s oil boom, and finally, to the family's attempts to recover from September 11, this book unearths extensive new material about the family and its relationship with the United States and provides a richly revealing and emblematic narrative of our globally interconnected times.
Starting in 2001, much of the world media used the image of Osama bin Laden as a shorthand for terrorism. Bin Laden himself considered media manipulation on a par with military, political, and ideological tools, and intentionally used interviews, taped speeches, and distributed statements to further al-Qaida's ends. In Covering Bin Laden, editors Susan Jeffords and Fahed Yahya Al-Summit collect perspectives from global scholars exploring a startling premise: that media depictions of Bin Laden not only diverge but often contradict each other, depending on the media provider and format, the place in which the depiction is presented, and the viewer's political and cultural background. The contributors analyze the representations of the many Bin Ladens, ranging from Al Jazeera broadcasts to video games. They examine the media's dominant role in shaping our understanding of terrorists and why/how they should be feared, and they engage with the ways the mosaic of Bin Laden images and narratives have influenced policies and actions around the world.
Examining major terrorist acts and campaigns undertaken in the decade following September 11, 2001, internationally recognized scholars study the involvement of global terrorist leaders and organizations in these incidents and the planning, organization, execution, recruitment, and training that went into them. Their work captures the changing character of al-Qaeda and its affiliates since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the sophisticated elements that, despite the West's best counterterrorism efforts, continue to exert substantial direction over jihadist terrorist operations. Through case studies of terrorist acts and offensives occurring both in and outside the West, the volume's contributors investigate al-Qaeda and other related entities as they adapted to the strategies of Operation Enduring Freedom and subsequent U.S.-led global counterterrorism programs.
No two figures could seem further removed than Mohandas K. Gandhi and Osama bin Laden. Gandhi advocated an inclusive religious perspective and believed that the highest ideals in religion led to the path of absolute nonviolence. In contrast, Bin Laden has concocted a militant and exclusive interpretation of Islam and tried to justify some of the most barbarous acts of terrorism witnessed at the turn of the century. Can both men be equally 'religious' figures? As leaders of movements of political protest, do they have any points of similarity? Moreover, how can the religious philosophy of nonviolence respond to its nemesis, which makes life so easy and casual? These and other important questions are explored in this work that examines the lives and ideas of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Osama bin Laden, as well as that of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a refreshing, nonviolent representative of Islam.
Almost ten years before Osama bin Laden was killed, the United States had the opportunity of a decade to decapitate the organization that so ruthlessly enacted the deadliest foreign attack on American soil in the nation's history. Battles raged across Afghanistan in the 102 days following September 11, from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul to Tora Bora. Yet bin Laden escaped while al Qaeda and the Taliban endured the initial onslaught. In 102 Days of War, Yaniv Barzilai takes the reader from meetings in the White House to the most sensitive operations in Afghanistan to explain how America's enemies survived in 2001. Using a broad array of sources, including interviews with top-level U.S. officials at every level of the war effort, Barzilai concludes that the failure to kill bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda at the Battle of Tora Bora was not only the result of a failure in tactics but, more importantly, the product of failures in policy and leadership.
An alternative argument for understanding the success of Titoist Yugoslavia (1945–1990) and raises new questions about the bipolar international relations between East and West.
The devastation of World War II left the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in ruins. Communist Party leader Josip Broz Tito saw this as a golden opportunity to recreate the city through his own vision of socialism. In Designing Tito's Capital, Brigitte Le Normand analyzes the unprecedented planning process called for by the new leader, and the determination of planners to create an urban environment that would benefit all citizens. Led first by architect Nikola Dobrovic and later by Miloš Somborski, planners blended the predominant school of European modernism and the socialist principles of efficient construction and space usage to produce a model for housing, green space, and working environments for the masses. A major influence was modernist Le Corbusier and his Athens Charter published in 1943, which called for the total reconstruction of European cities, transforming them into compact and verdant vertical cities unfettered by slumlords, private interests, and traffic congestion. As Yugoslavia transitioned toward self-management and market socialism, the functionalist district of New Belgrade and its modern living were lauded as the model city of socialist man. The glow of the utopian ideal would fade by the 1960s, when market socialism had raised expectations for living standards and the government was eager for inhabitants to finance their own housing. By 1972, a new master plan emerged under Aleksandar Ðordevic, fashioned with the assistance of American experts. Espousing current theories about systems and rational process planning and using cutting edge computer technology, the new plan left behind the dream for a functionalist Belgrade and instead focused on managing growth trends. While the public resisted aspects of the new planning approach that seemed contrary to socialist values, it embraced the idea of a decentralized city connected by mass transit. Through extensive archival research and personal interviews with participants in the planning process, Le Normand's comprehensive study documents the evolution of ‘New Belgrade' and its adoption and ultimate rejection of modernist principles, while also situating it within larger continental and global contexts of politics, economics, and urban planning.
Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power - either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an 'ethnically cleansed' Greater Serbia.
This landmark biography reveals the life of one of the most powerful figures of the Cold War era. Josip Broz (1892–1980), nicknamed Tito, led Yugoslavia for nearly four decades with charisma, cunning, and an iron fist. With his Partisans he fought Hitler during World War II, and after the war he shrewdly resisted the Soviet Union's grasp. A leader of the non-aligned nations, he long enjoyed a reputation in the West as 'the only good Communist' despite a dubious human rights record at home. Jože Pirjevec employs impressive research from archives in eight languages to offer this illuminating, definitive portrait of a complex man in turbulent times. Pirjevec recounts how Tito, with little schooling but an astute intellect and driving ambition, rose through Communist Party ranks to shape and rule the Yugoslav federation. Surviving multiple assassination attempts by Nazis, Soviet spies, and others, Tito boldly threatened Stalin in return and may have, Pirjevec reveals, contrived Stalin's death. The narrative follows Tito's personal and political life into old age, as the specter of a Soviet invasion haunted him until his death at age eighty-seven.
Josip Broz Tito was a remarkable figure in the history of Communism, the Second World War, the Balkans and post-war Eastern Europe. He was the only European besides Lenin to lead a successful Communist revolution and became one of the most renowned Communist leaders of all time. For a certain generation, he was remembered as someone who stood up to both Hitler and Stalin - and won. Tito was above all else a communist, and was devoted to the communist cause until the day he died. What made him different from other communist leaders was that his early experience of Soviet Russia had given him sufficient knowledge of the Soviet experiment to be wary of its spell. In this, the first post-communist biography of Tito, the acclaimed historian Geoffrey Swain paints a new picture of this famous figure, focusing primarily on his Communist year
The devastation of World War II left the Yugoslavian capital of Belgrade in ruins. Communist Party leader Josip Broz Tito saw this as a golden opportunity to recreate the city through his own vision of socialism. In Designing Tito's Capital, Brigitte Le Normand analyzes the unprecedented planning process called for by the new leader, and the determination of planners to create an urban environment that would benefit all citizens. Led first by architect Nikola Dobrovic and later by Miloš Somborski, planners blended the predominant school of European modernism and the socialist principles of efficient construction and space usage to produce a model for housing, green space, and working environments for the masses. A major influence was modernist Le Corbusier and his Athens Charter published in 1943, which called for the total reconstruction of European cities, transforming them into compact and verdant vertical cities unfettered by slumlords, private interests, and traffic congestion. As Yugoslavia transitioned toward self-management and market socialism, the functionalist district of New Belgrade and its modern living were lauded as the model city of socialist man. The glow of the utopian ideal would fade by the 1960s, when market socialism had raised expectations for living standards and the government was eager for inhabitants to finance their own housing. By 1972, a new master plan emerged under Aleksandar Ðordevic, fashioned with the assistance of American experts. Espousing current theories about systems and rational process planning and using cutting edge computer technology, the new plan left behind the dream for a functionalist Belgrade and instead focused on managing growth trends. While the public resisted aspects of the new planning approach that seemed contrary to socialist values, it embraced the idea of a decentralized city connected by mass transit. Through extensive archival research and personal interviews with participants in the planning process, Le Normand's comprehensive study documents the evolution of ‘New Belgrade' and its adoption and ultimate rejection of modernist principles, while also situating it within larger continental and global contexts of politics, economics, and urban planning.
Commencing with the death of Tito, Meier presents an insider's guide to all the regions of Yugoslavia, including Macedonia, and in particular, emphasizes the crucial part played by Slovenia before the outbreak of war in 1991. Drawing on official federal and republican archives, but also sources which are not yet officially open for scholarly use, the book covers: • the legacy of Tito's regime • the personalities who dominated the Yugoslav stage during its dismemberment • the military threat against Slovenia in the late 1980s • the attempts to find a peaceful solution • the political conditions in Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina • Western policy towards Yugoslavia's disintegration and terror.