Political – Bickerstaff Booksellers

Civilian Warriors

Kim — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 02:45:09 +0000

No company in our time has been as mysterious or as controversial as Blackwater. Founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997, it recruited special forces veterans and others with the skills and courage to take on the riskiest security jobs in the world. As its reputation grew, government demand for its services escalated, and Blackwater’s men eventually completed nearly one hundred thousand missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both the Bush and Obama administrations found the company indispensible. It sounds like a classic startup success story, except for one problem: Blackwater has been demonized around the world. From uninformed news coverage to grossly distorted fictional portrayals, Blackwater employees have been smeared as mercenaries, profiteers, jackbooted thugs, and worse. Because of the secrecy requirements of Blackwater’s contracts with the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA, Prince was unable to speak out when his company’s opponents spread false information. But now he’s able to tell the full and often shocking story of Blackwater’s rise and fall. In Civilian Warriors, Prince pulls no punches and spares no details. He explains his original goal of building an elite center for military and law enforcement training. He recounts how the company shifted gears after 9/11. He honors our troops while challenging the Pentagon’s top leadership. And he reveals why highly efficient private military contractors have been essential to running our armed forces, since long before Blackwater came along. Above all, Prince debunks myths about Blackwater that spread while he was forced to remain silent-myths that tarnished the memory of men who gave their lives for their country but never got the recognition they deserved. He reveals new information about some of the biggest controversies of the War on Terror, including: The true story of the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad. The actual details of Blackwater’s so-called impunity in Iraq. The events leading up to the televised deaths of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah. Prince doesn’t pretend to be perfect, and he doesn’t hide the sometimes painful details of his private life. But he has done a great public service by setting the record straight. His book reads like a thriller but is too improbable to be fiction.”

Breakthrough

Kim — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 02:45:08 +0000

New York Times Bestseller! Hailed by David Weigel in Slate as having had more of an impact on the 2012 election than any journalist, James O’Keefe is young, brash, and provocative: a new breed of guerrilla reporter for the twenty-first century. He and his associates have famously infiltrated some of America’s most protected organizations and institutions. They have challenged politicians, bureaucrats, media moguls, union bosses, and election officials, all with the goal of exposing the lies and malfeasance heretofore hidden from the public. Now, O’Keefe chronicles the harrowing undercover investigation that opened America’s eyes to the chicanery of its state houses and the duplicity of the White House during one of the most compromised election campaigns in our nation’s history: the 2012 presidential race. Of all his controversial sting operations, this was the one that his late mentor, Andrew Breitbart, called his most consequential. While still on federal probation, O’Keefe organized an army of citizen journalists, planned a series of video stings to reveal the American system’s vulnerability to voter fraud, and went nose to nose with the most powerful political machine in the world. Along the way, O’Keefe found disheartening evidence that Americans are not nearly as free a people as we may believe, but he also showed just how much real change ordinary citizens can bring about when they are willing to risk the wrath of the powerful. In just a few years, O’Keefe and his citizen journalism corps, Project Veritas, uncovered systemic corruption at ACORN, leading to its defunding by Congress; exposed the contemptuous biases of NPR executives leading to the resignation of two of their top people and a vote to freeze NPR funding by the House of Representatives; showed the callous indifference of New Jersey Educational Association officials to taxpayers and students; and revealed the easy tolerance of fraud at Planned Parenthood, Medicaid, HUD, and other government agencies. Perhaps most important, their work inspired several states to reform their election laws. Free of ideology, Breakthrough is at its core a clarion call for a more ethical society. Despite being vilified and libeled by an establishment media dedicated to suppressing the truth, James O’Keefe has dared to break through the firewall and reshape public opinion by showing things as they really are.

Buying the Night Flight

Kim — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 02:45:07 +0000

“Buying the Night Flight” is Georgie Anne Geyer’s retelling of her thrilling rise from cub reporter to foreign correspondent as she made her way into the male-dominated world of journalism. Geyer transports the reader to Guatemala, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, and Cambodia, recounting the history and politics, adventure and exhaustion of the time from a truly unique perspective. Told with brilliance and dead-on honesty, this book vividly captures the triumphs of a determined and talented young reporter.