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Praise for Merchant of Death "A riveting investigation of the
world's most notorious arms dealer--a page-turner that digs deep
into the amazing, murky story of Viktor Bout. Farah and Braun have
exposed the inner workings of one of the world's most secretive
businesses--the international arms trade." -Peter L. Bergen, author
of The Osama bin Laden I Know "Viktor Bout is like Osama bin Laden:
a major target of U.S. intelligence officials who time and again
gets away. Farah and Braun have skillfully documented how this
notorious arms dealer has stoked violence around the world and
thwarted international sanctions. Even more appalling, they show
how Bout ended up getting millions of dollars in U.S. government
money to assist the war in Iraq. A truly impressive piece of
investigative reporting." -Michael Isikoff, coauthor of Hubris: The
Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
"Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun are two of the toughest
investigative reporters in the country. This is an important book
about a hidden world of gunrunning and profiteering in some of the
world's poorest countries." -Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The
Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the
Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 "In Merchant of Death , two
of America's finest reporters have performed a major public
service, turning over the right rocks that reveal the brutal
international arms business at the dawn of the twenty-first
century. In Viktor Bout, they have given us a new Lord of War, a
man who knows no side but his own, and who has a knack for turning
up in every war zone just in time to turn a profit. As Farah and
Braun uncover and document his troubling role in the Bush
Administration's Global War on Terror, his ties to Washington
almost seem inevitable." -James Risen, author of State of War: The
Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration "An
extraordinary and timely piece of investigative reporting, Merchant
of Death is also a vividly compelling read. The true story of
Viktor Bout, a sociopathic Russian gunrunner who has supplied
weapons for use in some of the most gruesome conflicts of modern
times--and who can count amongst his clients both the former
Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the U.S. military in Iraq--is a
stomach-churning indictment of the policy failures and moral
contradictions of the world's most powerful governments, including
that of the United States. " -Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall
of Baghdad Two respected journalists tell the incredible story of
Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has
changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout's vast enterprise of
guns, planes, and money has fueled internecine slaughter in Africa
and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the
American military in Iraq. This book combines spy thrills with
crucial insights on the shortcomings of a U.S. foreign policy that
fails to confront the lucrative and lethal arms trade that erodes
global security.
What is data visualisation? In Data Visualization for Success, 40
designers and their works demonstrate that data visualisation is a
vibrant and constantly evolving field that is as multimodal as it
is interdisciplinary. Through the works showcased here, these
designers discuss some of their approaches to working with data
visualisation, offering insight into the design methods they
commonly use and providing tips that will help beginning
practitioners in the field. This book shows that data visualisation
is a practice and discipline whose fluid boundaries continue to be
moved in new, exciting, and unprecedented directions by emerging
and seasoned designers alike.
A selection of sixty poems reflecting on life's experiences,
especially the sad and difficult ones. Displaying the author's
mastery of language, the poems are written in a variety of styles,
including free verse, lyrics, sonnets, dramatic monologues and
translations.
Alcohol and caffeine are deeply woven into the fabric of life for most of the world's population, as close and as comfortable as a cup of coffee or a can of beer. Yet for most people they remain as mysterious and unpredictable as the spirits they were once thought to be. Now, in Buzz, Stephen Braun takes us on a myth-shattering tour of these two popular substances, one that blends fascinating science with colorful lore, and that includes cameo appearances by Shakespeare and Balzac, Buddhist monks and Arabian goat herders, even Mikhail Gorbachev and David Letterman (who once quipped, `If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever'). Much of what Braun reveals directly contradicts conventional wisdom about alcohol and caffeine. Braun shows, for instance, that alcohol is not simply a depressant as popularly believed, but is instead `a pharmacy in a bottle' - mimicking the action of drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, valium, and opium. At low doses, it increases electrical activity in the same brain systems affected by stimulants, influences the same circuits targeted by valium, and causes the release of morphine-like compounds known as endorphins - all at the same time. This explains why alcohol can produce a range of reactions, from boisterous euphoria to dark, brooding hopelessness. Braun also shatters the myth that alcohol kills brain cells, reveals why wood alcohol or methanol causes blindness, and explains the biological reason behind the one-drink-per-hour sobriety rule (that's how long it takes the liver, working full tilt, to disable the 200 quintillion ethanol molecules found in a typical drink). The author then turns to caffeine and shows it to be no less remarkable. We discover that more than 100 plant species produce caffeine molecules in their seeds, leaves, or bark, a truly amazing distribution throughout nature (nicotine, in comparison, is found only in tobacco; opium only in the poppy). It's not surprising then that caffeine is far and away the most widely used mind altering substance on the planet, found in tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, soft drinks, and more than 2,000 non-prescription drugs. (Tea is the most popular drink on earth, with coffee a close second.) Braun also explores the role of caffeine in creativity: Johann Sebastian Bach, for one, loved coffee so much he wrote a Coffee Cantata (as Braun notes, no music captures the caffeinated experience better than one of Bach's frenetic fugues); Balzac would work for 12 hours non-stop, drinking coffee all the while; and Kant, Rousseau, and Voltaire all loved coffee. And throughout the book, Braun takes us on many engaging factual sidetrips - we learn, for instance, that Theodore Roosevelt coined the phrase `Good to the last drop' used by Maxwell House ever since; that distances between Tibetan villages are sometimes reckoned by the number of cups of tea needed to sustain a person (three cups being roughly 8 kilometres); and that John Pemberton's original recipe for Coca-Cola included not only kola extract, but also cocaine. Whether you are a sophisticated consumer of cabernet sauvignon and Kenya AA or just someone who needs a cup of coffee in the morning and a cold one after work, you will find Buzz to be an eye-opening, informative, and often amusing look at two substances at once utterly familiar and deeply mysterious.
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