A sweeping and highly readable work on the evolution of America’s domestic and global drug war How can the United States chart a path forward in the war on drugs? In Drugs and Thugs, Russell Crandall uncovers the full history of this war that has lasted more than a century. As a scholar and a high-level national security advisor to both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, he provides an essential view of the economic, political, and human impacts of U.S. drug policies. Backed by extensive research, lucid and unbiased analysis of policy, and his own personal experiences, Crandall takes readers from Afghanistan to Colombia, to Peru and Mexico, to Miami International Airport and the border crossing between El Paso and Juarez to trace the complex social networks that make up the drug trade and drug consumption. Through historically driven stories, Crandall reveals how the war on drugs has evolved to address mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, the legalization and medical use of marijuana, and America’s shifting foreign policy.

Johnson, author of the acclaimed Secret Agencies and ""an experienced overseer of intelligence"" (Foreign Affairs), here examines the present state and future challenges of American strategic intelligence.

What is the number one killer in the United States? Medical treatment. Western medicine has cures for surprisingly few diseases and actually causes illness with its drugs for every disease approach. Infectious diseases are making a comeback due to the overuse of antibiotics and our war on germs. We've seen an exponential rise in autism while vaccinating more than any other country. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, properly prescribed medication is the fourth leading cause of death, hospitals are the third, and medical doctors kill more than all other forms of accidental death combined. This first book in the Why We're Sick series exposes the myths, lies, greed, and just plain bungling that is the untold story of Western medicine. Deeply researched, deadly serious, yet often humorous and irreverent, no other work so thoroughly explains how we got into this mess and what we can do to be truly healthy.

Soap opera speaks a universal language, presenting characters and plots that resonate far beyond the culture that creates them. Latin American soap operas—telenovelas—have found enthusiastic audiences throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in Egypt, Russia, and China, while Mexican narco-dramas have become highly popular among Latinos in the United States. In this first comprehensive analysis of telenovelas and narco-dramas, Hugo Benavides assesses the dynamic role of melodrama in creating meaningful cultural images to explain why these genres have become so successful while more elite cultural productions are declining in popularity. Benavides offers close readings of the Colombian telenovelas Betty la fea (along with its Mexican and U.S. reincarnations La fea más bella and Ugly Betty), Adrián está de visita, and Pasión de gavilanes; the Brazilian historical telenovela Xica; and a variety of Mexican narco-drama films. Situating these melodramas within concrete historical developments in Latin America, he shows how telenovelas and narco-dramas serve to unite peoples of various countries and provide a voice of rebellion against often-oppressive governmental systems. Indeed, Benavides concludes that as one of the most effective and lucrative industries in Latin America, telenovelas and narco-dramas play a key role in the ongoing reconfiguration of social identities and popular culture.

In 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. The U.S. also ignored Colombian state complicity with paramilitary brutality, presenting them as evidence of an absent state and the authentic expression of a frustrated middle class. For rural residents of Colombia living under paramilitary dominion, these denials circulated as a form of state terror. Tate's analysis examines how oppositional activists and the policy's targets—civilians and local state officials in southern Colombia—attempted to shape aid design and delivery, revealing the process and effects of human rights policymaking.

They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

Revealing the astonishing story of how Afghanistan's booming opium trade is bankrolling Al Qaeda and the Taliban, "Seeds of Terror" follows the drugs from the fields of the small farmers to the clandestine deals of the weapons merchants.

I made my first voyage into the world of nuclear science at about the age of three. I had more books in my room than toys. I had Grimms' Fairy Tales, Aesop's Fables, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. My first out-of-body experience I can recall was when I overdosed on heroin at the age of sixteen. I saw my body lying on the sofa in my grandmother's parlor as I hovered by the ceiling. I finally harnessed enough energy to reinhabit my body. Enjoy this journey. I am Harold "the Docktor." Swim at your own risk!

This book examines the long, complex experience of American involvement in irregular warfare. It begins with the American Revolution in 1776 and chronicles big and small irregular wars for the next two and a half centuries. What is readily apparent in dirty wars is that failure is painfully tangible while success is often amorphous. Successfully fighting these wars often entails striking a critical balance between military victory and politics. America's status as a democracy only serves to make fighting - and, to a greater degree, winning - these irregular wars even harder. Rather than futilely insisting that Americans should not or cannot fight this kind of irregular war, Russell Crandall argues that we would be better served by considering how we can do so as cleanly and effectively as possible.

Terry Turbo gave ten million clubbers a good time, every time. From humble beginnings working in a McDonalds fast food restaurant to handing out flyers and selling rave tickets within the UK rave scene, he built up the country's biggest dance music empire, starting and running One Nation, Dreamscape, Rave Nation and Garage Nation - for a decade, he played host to more than 25,000 clubbers every week, all over the World. "e;King of Clubs...Sex, Drugs and Thugs"e; is Terry's no-holds barred tale of the sex, drugs and violence that became part of his everyday life. He has mixed with dozens of celebrities and gangsters - the book is littered with names as diverse as Tom Jones, Alesha Dixon, Kano, Robert Lindsay, Howard Marks, Julian Clary, Tamara Beckwith, Puff Daddy, The So Solid Crew, Dizzy Rascal, Shane Ritchie, Estelle, Miss Dynamite and various legendary faces from the Underworld and the Italian Mafia - he has been involved in life threatening situations fought off gunmen and lived a life of champagne hedonism that few can dream of. After selling his club interests in 2003 he is now concentrating on a new career in Hollywood under his real name Terry Stone as an Actor and Producer. Terry's inside story will be a must-read for millions clubbers who he so royally entertained and for anyone who is still clubbing today and wants to know how the club scene started and what really goes on behind the dancing, flashing lights and loud music.