This volume explores the growing hostility of the public toward the media, discussing the reasons behind the ever-widening communications gap and the disturbing consequences of the problem.

They say you can judge a person by the friends he keeps, but the focus of this book comes, in part, from the enemies of the Prophet Muhammad. Viewed by some as one of the most influential figures in history, he continues to polarise people. This book is written for people of all faiths and none who are curious as to how an illiterate orphan born in 570 emerged from the desert sands of Arabia to become a great political, military and religious leader. His importance to today’s 1.8 billion Muslims cannot be underestimated especially since his name is part of the five-times-a-day call to prayer. Whenever it is spoken by them, it is usually followed by the phrase “may God’s blessings and peace be upon him.” The phenomenal growth of Islam saw the rise of an empire more than 10 times the size of lands conquered by Alexander the Great, five times the size of the Roman Empire, and seven times the size of America.

DON’T MISS BRIDGE OF CLAY, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE THE BOOK THIEF AND AN UNFORGETTABLE AND SWEEPING FAMILY SAGA. From the author of the extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller The Book Thief, I Am the Messenger is an acclaimed novel filled with laughter, fists, and love. A MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR BOOK FIVE STARRED REVIEWS Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first ace arrives in the mail. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?

Travis Hugh Culley came to Chicago to work and live as an artist. He knew he'd have to struggle, but he found that his struggle meant more than hard work and a taste for poverty. In becoming a bike messenger, he found a sense of community and fulfillment and a brotherhood of like-minded individualists. He rode like a postmodern cowboy across the city's landscape; he passed like a shadow through its soaring office towers; he soared like a falcon through the roaring chaos of the multilayered streets of Chicago. He became an invisible man in society, yet at the same time its most intimate observer. In one of the most dangerous jobs on dry land, he found freedom. In The Immortal Class, Culley takes us in-side the heart and soul of an urban icon the bicycle messenger. In describing his own history and those of his peers, he evokes a classic American maverick, deeply woven into the fabric of society from the pits of squalor to the highest reaches of power and privilege yet always resolutely, exuberantly outside. And he celebrates a culture that eschews the motorized vehicle: the cult of human power. The Immortal Class, Culley's vivid evocation of a bicycle messenger's experience and philosophy, sheds a compelling light on the way human beings relate to one another and to the cities we inhabit. Travis Hugh Culley's voice is at once earthy and soaringly poetic a Gen-X Tom Joad at hyperspeed. The Immortal Class is a unique personal and political narrative of a cyclist's life on the street.

Now a major motion picture starring Jeremy Renner! Kill the Messenger tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories. Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Kill the Messenger examines the "Dark Alliance" controversy, what it says about the current state of journalism in America, and how it led Webb to ultimately take his own life. Webb's widow, Sue Bell Stokes, remains an ardent defender of her ex-husband. By combining her story with a probing examination of the one of the most important media scandals in recent memory, this book provides a gripping view of one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of investigative journalism.

An easy to read & follow A to Z guide for public speaking. From ADRENALIN to ZIPPER, this book is loaded with tips for the communicator. If you are a top executive or if you were recently hired & are starting your career...you should develop your public speaking skills. You will become more confident, comfortable & convincing in every communication situation. In ancient times, messengers did not live to a ripe old age. Many were shot because people did not like the message! It still happens in the 1990's! We SHOOT THE MESSENGER! Someone, somewhere, is making a speech or business presentation. Audiences listen attentively at the outset...but as the speaker drones on, or gets into a losing battle with audio visual equipment, they load their guns (figuratively) & they shoot the messenger. People sleep, start side conversations, & make decisions NOT to buy a product, or try an idea. Read this book & follow the suggestions & tips TO DECREASE YOUR CHANCES OF BEING SHOT! TO ORDER CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-544-9551, Clear Communication Books, 7349 Via Paseo Del Sur, Suite 515-189, Scottsdale, AZ 85258.

If the Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked the United States in 2001 wanted to weaken the West, they achieved their mission by striking a blow at the heart of democracy. Since 9/11 governments including those of the USA, the UK, France and Australia have introduced tough, intimidating legislation to discourage the legitimate activities of a probing press, so greatly needed after the Iraq War proved that executive government could not be trusted. Often hiding behind arguments about defending national security and fighting the war on terror, governments criminalised legitimate journalistic work, ramping up their attacks on journalists’ sources, and the whistle-blowers who are so essential in keeping governments honest. Through detailed research and analysis, this book, which includes interviews with leading figures in the field, including Edward Snowden, explains how mass surveillance and anti-terror laws are of questionable value in defeating terrorism, but have had a ‘chilling effect’ on one of the foundations of democracy: revelatory journalism.

On the trail of a deadly al-Qaeda operative, Gabriel Allon returns in a spellbinding story of deception, power, and revenge by the #1 New York Times bestselling "world-class practitioner of spy fiction" (Washington Post). Gabriel Allon—art restorer and spy—is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. An al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer—photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, aimed straight at the heart of the Vatican. Allon and his colleagues soon find themselves in a deadly duel of wits against one of the most dangerous men in the world—a hunt that will take them across Europe to the Caribbean and back. But for them, there may not be enough of anything: enough time, enough facts, enough luck. All Allon can do is set his trap—and hope that he is not the one caught in it.

Judge Baltasar Garzon achieved international prestige in 1998 when he pursued the perpetrators of crimes committed in Argentina against Spanish citizens and began proceedings for the arrest of the Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet. But, when Garzon transferred his attention to his Spanish homeland, he was put on trial for opening an investigation into crimes committed by Francoists. As a result, in 2012, he found himself on the point of being expelled from the judiciary. The Garzon case is neither so absurd nor so difficult to understand if the record of the Spanish judiciary is examined through the prism of a series of representative cases since the transition to democracy. Key to this examination is the way the judiciary has dealt with those who have investigated cases of people murdered by the military rebels from July 1936 onwards. This book relates 13 judicial cases that took place between 1981 and 2012. They range from the banning of the documentary film Rocio by Fernando Ruiz Vergara, because it named the person responsible for one of the massacres in southwest Spain, to the recent trial of Judge Garzon. The judicial outcome in each case reflected the prejudices and ideology of the judge in charge. The Francoist repression still constitutes a dead weight in Spanish politics as heavy as the gravestone that covers the remains of the dictator in the Valle de los Caidos. The nature of the transition from autocracy to democracy has made it difficult to overcome a black past that not even the post-Franco democratic governments (Rodriguez Zapatero's "memory" policy included) have dared confront. The potential defrocking of Judge Garzon puts the Spanish polity/judiciary back in the realm of Franco's end-of-year message on December 30, 1969, with what became the nautical catch-phrase of his twilight years: "all is lashed down and well lashed down" ("todo ha quedado atado, y bien atado").

It’s been two years since Peter Nimble and Sir Tode rescued the kingdom of HazelPort. In that time, they have traveled far and wide in search of adventure. Now they have been summoned by Professor Cake for a new mission: To find a twelve-year-old bookmender named Sophie Quire. Sophie knows little beyond the four walls of her father’s bookshop, where she repairs old books and dreams of escaping the confines of her dull life. But when a strange boy and his talking cat/horse companion show up with a rare and mysterious book, she finds herself pulled into an adventure beyond anything she has ever read.