The treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo Bay, and far-flung CIA "black sites" after the attacks of 9/11 included cruelty that defied legal and normative prohibitions in U.S. and international law. The antitorture stance of the United States was brushed aside. Since then, the guarantee of American civil liberties and due process for POWs and detainees has grown muddled, threatening the norms that sustain modern democracies. How the Gloves Came Off considers the legal and political arguments that led to this standoff between civility and chaos and their significant consequences for the strategic interests and standing of the United States. Unpacking the rhetoric surrounding the push for unitary executive action in wartime, How the Gloves Came Off traces the unmaking of the consensus against torture. It implicates U.S. military commanders, high-level government administrators, lawyers, and policy makers from both parties, exposing the ease with which powerful actors manipulated ambiguities to strip detainees of their humanity. By targeting the language and logic that made torture thinkable, this book shows how future decision makers can craft an effective counternarrative and set a new course for U.S. policy toward POWs and detainees. Whether leaders use their influence to reinforce a prohibition of cruelty to prisoners or continue to undermine long-standing international law will determine whether the United States retains a core component of its founding identity.

Robert Anasi's The Gloves offers a gritty, spirited inside look at the world of amateur boxing today. The Golden Gloves tournament is center stage in amateur boxing-a single-elimination contest in which young hopefuls square off in steamy gyms with the boxing elite looking on. Anasi took up boxing in his twenties to keep in shape, attract women, and sharpen his knuckles for the odd bar fight. He thought of entering "the Gloves," but put it off. Finally, at age thirty-two-his last year of eligibility-he vowed to fight, although he was an old man in a sport of teenagers and a light man who had to be even lighter (125 pounds) to fight others his size. So begins Anasi's obsessive preparation for the Golden Gloves. He finds Milton, a wily and abusive trainer, and joins Milton's "Supreme Team": a black teenager who used to deal guns in Harlem, a bus driver with five kids, a hard-hitting woman champion who becomes his sparring partner. Meanwhile, he observes the changing world of amateur boxing, in which investment bankers spar with ex-convicts and everyone dreads a fatal blow to the head. With the Supreme Team, he goes to the tournament, whose outcome, it seems, is rigged, like so much in boxing life today. Robert Anasi tells his story not as a journalist on assignment but as a man in the midst of one of the great adventures of his life. The Gloves, his first book, has the feel of a contemporary classic.

From USA Today bestselling author J.L. Berg comes a poignant story about young love that will stick with you long after the last page. Head down. Don’t look up. Never make eye contact. Those were the words I lived by growing up, the words that protected me in a house where men frequented, but did not stay. But, even with all the rules and warnings, I couldn’t keep them all away. I couldn’t keep him away. Hoping to leave behind the shattered life of my past, I find myself in a small town, with an aunt I’ve never met and at a school I loathe. But soon I learn, not everything in this world is as black and white as I’ve determined. Sometimes those we are so quick to judge need a second or third time to make a first impression. And often, there are friendships and even love—real love, waiting just around the corner, if we are brave enough to take that first step. Am I brave? Or will I hide behind these tattered gloves of mine forever?

Based on actual events, The Gloves starts as a love story between a mother and her four daughters. She was the thumb, and her girls were the other fingers--a hand if you may. The year was 1910 when my grandfather immigrated from Italy and joined a Hell's Kitchen mob soon after. In 1925, he met an innocent girl from New Jersey who wrongly crossed a legendary block in midtown Manhattan and wound up outside a speakeasy. They would marry, but the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, and the ensuing War would change their lives forever. The story of her four daughters growing up in Brooklyn unfolds with equal measures of grace and tragedy, as life grants and takes away its greatest gifts over the years. The oldest daughter would marry first. Her husband would win the Silver Star for bravery during WWII, and his brother would come within one boxing match of challenging Joe Louis for the world title. The other daughters' lives would take different paths. All had families of their own as the tides of life ebb and flow. In 1990, Hollywood would write about one such incident in an Academy Award-winning movie loosely based on fact and fiction. Time transcends over five generations as we learn about loyalty and betrayal, joy and sadness while struggling through dyslexia and autism. Read about all sorts of mayhem and murder. Plus, alcohol and drugs, gambling, bookmaking, and racketeering. The Gloves starts as a tribute to a remarkable and selfless life. That life belonged to my mother, as she was one of the four daughters. It continues, however, as an autobiography of one not so gifted.

A captivating history of gloves both real and mythical, practical and high fashion. This beautifully illustrated history of gloves draws on examples from across the world to explore their cultural significance. From hand-knitted mittens to exquisitely embroidered confections, and from the three-fingered gloves of medieval shepherds to Bluetooth-enabled examples that function like a mobile phone, gloves’ extraordinary variety is a tribute to human ingenuity. So, too, is the remarkable diversity of their—often contradictory—cultural associations. They have been linked to honor, identity, and status, but also to decadence and deceit. In this book, Anne Green discusses gloves both as material objects with their own fascinating history and as fictional creations in folktales, literature, films, etiquette manuals, paintings, and advertisements. Looking to the runway, Green even explores their recent resurgence as objects of high fashion.

When her grandmother, a devoted gardener, dies, a little girl inherits her gardening gloves and feels closer to her memory.