In March 2011, as the Arab Spring sweeps across the Middle East, NATO powers begin a bombing campaign against the forces of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. In London, a top secret team led by an abrasive Cold War veteran, Priscilla Clarke, has been given the task of finding the whereabouts of Gaddafi's gold. The unaccounted stash is rumoured to be worth at least a hundred billion dollars. The aim is to prevent the gold falling into the wrong hands. The Russian military intelligence, the GRU, is also after Gaddafi's bullion. Who will get to the treasure first? A member of Priscilla's team, a brilliant mathematician, is getting closer. An aspiring TV reporter finds himself drawn into the murky world of international espionage. Their separate nail biting adventures collide with disastrous consequences. When Priscilla discovers that somebody is betraying her, she takes the law in her own hands. The story races from London to Tripoli and Vienna, from the mysterious Bear Valley in Southern Tyrol to the heart of the Sahara Desert. If you're a fan of accurate historical detail and vivid geographical descriptions drawn on the author's first hand experience, this a book for you. The book is also an invaluable guide for anybody who wants to work as a TV reporter in a war zone.

This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

An updated and comprehensive single-volume history covering all periods from human origins to contemporary African situations.

In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008. Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict. As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself. Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas. While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Rickards untangles the web of failed paradigms, wishful thinking, and arrogance driving current public policy and points the way toward a more informed and effective course of action.

Follows a fifteen-year-old girl who, after presenting Gaddafi with a bouquet of flowers during a visit to her school, was summoned to his compound where she, along with a number of young women, was violently abused, raped, and degraded.

“The Hollywood memoir that tells all . . . Sex. Drugs. Greed. Why, it sounds just like a movie.”—The New York Times Every memoir claims to bare it all, but Julia Phillips’s actually does. This is an addictive, gloves-off exposé from the producer of the classic films The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture—who made her name in Hollywood during the halcyon seventies and the yuppie-infested eighties and lived to tell the tale. Wickedly funny and surprisingly moving, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again takes you on a trip through the dream-manufacturing capital of the world and into the vortex of drug addiction and rehab on the arm of one who saw it all, did it all, and took her leave. Praise for You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again “One of the most honest books ever written about one of the most dishonest towns ever created.”—The Boston Globe “Gossip too hot for even the National Enquirer . . . Julia Phillips is not so much Hollywood’s Boswell as its Dante.”—Los Angeles Magazine “A blistering look at La La Land.”—USA Today “One of the nastiest, tastiest tell-alls in showbiz history.”—People

This book examines the health/fitness interaction in an historical context. Beginning in primitive hunter-gatherer communities, where survival required adequate physical activity, it goes on to consider changes in health and physical activity at subsequent stages in the evolution of “civilization.” It focuses on the health impacts of a growing understanding of medicine and physiology, and the emergence of a middle-class with the time and money to choose between active and passive leisure pursuits. The book reflects on urbanization and industrialization in relation to the need for public health measures, and the ever-diminishing physical demands of the work-place. It then evaluates the attitudes of prelates, politicians, philosophers and teachers at each stage of the process. Finally, the book explores professional and governmental initiatives to increase public involvement in active leisure through various school, worksite, recreational and sports programmes.

Looking to the future in confronting the Islamic State The Islamic State (best known in the West as ISIS or ISIL) has been active for less than a decade, but it has already been the subject of numerous histories and academic studies—all focus primarily on the past. The Future of ISIS is the first major study to look ahead: what are the prospects for the Islamic State in the near term, and what can the global community, including the United States, do to counter it? Edited by two distinguished scholars at Indiana University, the book examines how ISIS will affect not only the Middle East but the global order. Specific chapters deal with such questions as whether and how ISIS benefitted from intelligence failures, and what can be done to correct any such failures; how to confront the alarmingly broad appeal of Islamic State ideology; the role of local and regional actors in confronting ISIS; and determining U.S. interests in preventing ISIS from gaining influence and controlling territory. Given the urgency of the topic, The Future of ISIS is of interest to policymakers, analysts, and students of international affairs and public policy.

Includes photographs, summaries of each Dirk Pitt novel, an interview with Cussler, and Dirk Pitt trivia questions.