"Beltway doyenne Samantha Calhoun has learned many lessons in a lifetime of politics, and she relishes teaching certain young congressmen everything she knows. But when her latest fling, married U.S. Rep. Quentin Wilson, is found dead in Samantha's home, she turns to longtime friend Molly Malone for support."--

Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.

A revealing and dispassionate look at the recent history of Harvard Law School recounts the ideological and political battles currently being waged over changes that have been made in the school's traditional style and focus.

One morning in 2000, Dr. Jane Hightower walked into her exam room to find a patient with disturbing symptoms she couldn’t explain. The woman was nauseated, tired, and had difficulty concentrating, but a litany of tests revealed no apparent cause. She was not alone. Dr. Hightower saw numerous patients with similar, inexplicable ailments, and eventually learned that there were many more around the nation and the world. They had little in common—except a healthy appetite for certain fish. Dr. Hightower’s quest for answers led her to mercury, a poison that has been plaguing victims for centuries and is now showing up in seafood. But this “explanation” opened a Pandora’s Box of thornier questions. Why did some fish from supermarkets and restaurants contain such high levels of a powerful poison? Why did the FDA base its recommendations for “safe” mercury consumption on data supplied by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist extremists? And why wasn’t the government warning its citizens? In Diagnosis: Mercury, Dr. Hightower retraces her investigation into the modern prevalence of mercury poisoning, revealing how political calculations, dubious studies, and industry lobbyists endanger our health. While mercury is a naturally occurring element, she learns there’s much that is unnatural about this poison’s prevalence in our seafood. Mercury is pumped into the air by coal-fired power plants and settles in our rivers and oceans, and has been dumped into our waterways by industry. It accumulates in the fish we eat, and ultimately in our own bodies. Yet government agencies and lawmakers have been slow to regulate pollution or even alert consumers. Why? The trail of evidence leads to Canada, Japan, Iraq, and various U.S. institutions, and as Dr. Hightower puts the pieces together, she discovers questionable connections between ostensibly objective researchers and industries that fear regulation and bad press. Her tenacious inquiry sheds light on a system in which, too often, money trumps good science and responsible government. Exposing a threat that few recognize but that touches many, Diagnosis: Mercury should be required reading for everyone who cares about their health.

On the political conditions in Sri Lanka after civil war in 1983 and its effect on development; a study.

The economic crisis in Greece is a potential international disaster and one of the most extraordinary monetary and political dramas of our time. The financial woes of this relatively small European nation threaten the long-term viability of the Euro while exposing the flaws in the ideal of continental unity. "Solutions" proposed by Europe’s combined leadership have sparked a war of prideful words and stubborn one-upmanship, and they are certain to fail, according to renowned economist James K. Galbraith, because they are designed for failure. It is this hypocrisy that prompted former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, when Galbraith arrived in Athens as an adviser, to greet him with the words “Welcome to the poisoned chalice.” In this fascinating, insightful, and thought-provoking collection of essays—which includes letters and private memos to both American and Greek officials, as well as other previously unpublished material—Galbraith examines the crisis, its causes, its course, and its meaning, as well as the viability of the austerity program imposed on the Greek citizenry. It is a trenchant, deeply felt commentary on what the author calls “economic policy as moral abomination,” and an eye-opening analysis of a contemporary Greek tragedy much greater than the tiny economy of the nation itself.

Almost fifty years after Britain and France left the Middle East, the toxic legacies of their rule continue to fester. To make sense of today's conflicts and crises, we need to grasp how Western imperialism shaped the region and its destiny in the half-century between 1917 and 1967. Roger Hardy unearths an imperial history stretching from North Africa to southern Arabia that sowed the seeds of future conflict and poisoned relations between the Middle East and the West. Drawing on a rich cast of eye-witnesses - ranging from nationalists and colonial administrators to soldiers, spies, and courtesans - The Poisoned Well brings to life the making of the modern Middle East, highlighting the great dramas of decolonisation such as the end of the Palestine mandate, the Suez crisis, the Algerian war of independence, and the retreat from Aden. Concise and beautifully written, The Poisoned Well offers a thought-provoking and insightful story of the colonial legacy in the Middle East.