Current Affairs

In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents. Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today's most dangerous extremist threat.

"Whoever you are, whatever side you're on, if you care about the American west and what's happening to it, read this book."
--Caroline Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires

An extraordinary inside look at America's militia movement that shows a country at the crossroads of class, culture, and insurrection.

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.

He witnessed the fallout of communities riven by politics and the danger (and allure) of uncompromising religious belief. The occupation ended in the shooting death of one rancher, the imprisonment of dozens more, and a firestorm over the role of government that engulfed national headlines.

In a raw and restless narrative that roams the same wild terrain as his literary forebears Edward Abbey and Hunter S. Thompson, Pogue's Chosen Country examines the underpinnings of this rural uprising and struggles to reconcile diverging ideas of freedom, tracing a cultural fault line that spans the nation.

When Trump fired James Comey, he triggered the appointment of Robert Mueller as an independent special counsel and caused the FBI to open a formal investigation into the President himself. This set in motion a chain of events, which would join in unprecedented and potentially mortal combat two vital institutions of American democracy: the Presidency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the investigative arm of the Department of Justice.

The stakes could not be higher: the rule of law itself, the foundation of the American constitution and Anglo-American democracy for centuries. In this epic battle, there is no room for compromise. There can only be winners and losers, to invoke a distinctly Trumpian view of the world. But there is plenty of room for collateral damage. The reputations of both sides have already been harmed, perhaps irrevocably, and at great cost to American democracy and its institutions.

Drawing on scores of interviews with key FBI, Justice Department, and White House officials, and voluminous transcripts, notes, and internal reports, Stewart tells the dramatic saga of the FBI and its simultaneous investigations of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - the first time in American history the FBI has been thrust into the middle of both parties' campaigns for the Presidency. Packed with drama and a cast of fascinating characters, Deep State goes where others cannot, revealing the truth of the grand and world-changing struggle that has defined the Trump presidency.