The History Thieves

The History Thieves PDF Author: Ian Cobain
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781846275852
Category : Government accountability
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed, creating offences of 'disclosure of information' and 'breach of official trust'. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should, be told. Since then a culture of secrecy has flourished. As successive governments have been selective about what they choose to share with the public, we have been left with a distorted and incomplete understanding not only of the workings of the state but of our nation's culture and its past. In this important book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of some of the key moments in British history since the end of WWII, including: the measures taken to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and its successor, GCHQ, for three decades; the unreported wars fought during the 1960s and 1970s; the hidden links with terrorist cells during the Troubles; the sometimes opaque workings of the criminal justice system; the state's peacetime surveillance techniques; and the convenient loopholes in the Freedom of Information Act. Drawing on previously unseen material and rigorous research, The History Thieves reveals how a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state, allowing governments to evade accountability and their secrets to be buried.

The History Thieves

The History Thieves PDF Author: Ian Cobain
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 9781846275852
Category : Government accountability
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed, creating offences of 'disclosure of information' and 'breach of official trust'. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should, be told. Since then a culture of secrecy has flourished. As successive governments have been selective about what they choose to share with the public, we have been left with a distorted and incomplete understanding not only of the workings of the state but of our nation's culture and its past. In this important book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of some of the key moments in British history since the end of WWII, including: the measures taken to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and its successor, GCHQ, for three decades; the unreported wars fought during the 1960s and 1970s; the hidden links with terrorist cells during the Troubles; the sometimes opaque workings of the criminal justice system; the state's peacetime surveillance techniques; and the convenient loopholes in the Freedom of Information Act. Drawing on previously unseen material and rigorous research, The History Thieves reveals how a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state, allowing governments to evade accountability and their secrets to be buried.

The Book Thieves

The Book Thieves PDF Author: Anders Rydell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735221235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"A chilling reminder of Hitler’s twisted power." —BBC For readers of The Monuments Men and The Hare with Amber Eyes, the story of the Nazis' systematic pillaging of Europe's libraries, and the small team of heroic librarians now working to return the stolen books to their rightful owners. While the Nazi party was being condemned by much of the world for burning books, they were already hard at work perpetrating an even greater literary crime. Through extensive new research that included records saved by the Monuments Men themselves—Anders Rydell tells the untold story of Nazi book theft, as he himself joins the effort to return the stolen books. When the Nazi soldiers ransacked Europe’s libraries and bookshops, large and small, the books they stole were not burned. Instead, the Nazis began to compile a library of their own that they could use to wage an intellectual war on literature and history. In this secret war, the libraries of Jews, Communists, Liberal politicians, LGBT activists, Catholics, Freemasons, and many other opposition groups were appropriated for Nazi research, and used as an intellectual weapon against their owners. But when the war was over, most of the books were never returned. Instead many found their way into the public library system, where they remain to this day. Now, Rydell finds himself entrusted with one of these stolen volumes, setting out to return it to its rightful owner. It was passed to him by the small team of heroic librarians who have begun the monumental task of combing through Berlin’s public libraries to identify the looted books and reunite them with the families of their original owners. For those who lost relatives in the Holocaust, these books are often the only remaining possession of their relatives they have ever held. And as Rydell travels to return the volume he was given, he shows just how much a single book can mean to those who own it.

The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate

The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate PDF Author: Martin Puchner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Tracking an underground language and the outcasts who depended on it for their survival becomes "a deeply personal project, one that probes the meaning of language and family, inheritance and debt" (Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times Book Review). Centuries ago in middle Europe, a coded language appeared, scrawled in graffiti and spoken only by people who were "wiz" (in the know). This hybrid language, dubbed Rotwelsch, facilitated survival for people in flight—whether escaping persecution or just down on their luck. It was a language of the road associated with vagabonds, travelers, Jews, and thieves that blended words from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Romani, Czech, and other European languages and was rich in expressions for police, jail, or experiencing trouble, such as "being in a pickle." This renegade language unsettled those in power, who responded by trying to stamp it out, none more vehemently than the Nazis. As a boy, Martin Puchner learned this secret language from his father and uncle. Only as an adult did he discover, through a poisonous 1930s tract on Jewish names buried in the archives of Harvard’s Widener Library, that his own grandfather had been a committed Nazi who despised this "language of thieves." Interweaving family memoir with an adventurous foray into the mysteries of language, Puchner crafts an entirely original narrative. In a language born of migration and survival, he discovers a witty and resourceful spirit of tolerance that remains essential in our volatile present.

Thieves of Book Row

Thieves of Book Row PDF Author: Travis McDade
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190239719
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In Thieves of Book Row, Travis McDade tells the gripping tale of the worst book-theft ring in American history, and the intrepid detective who brought it down. Both a fast-paced, true-life thriller, Thieves of Book Row provides a fascinating look at the history of crime and literary culture.

History Thieves

History Thieves PDF Author: Zinoviĭ Zinik
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781906497781
Category : Grandfathers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Coming from a thoroughly secular Soviet background, the Russian-British novelist Zinovy Zinik became aware for the first time of his "Jewishness" when he emigrated to Israel in the 1970s. In this stylistically innovative autobiographical taleZinik describes how an unheimliche experience in Berlin--of seeing for real the house he dreamed about many years before in London-led him to investigate the chequered and enigmatic past of his Russian-born grandfather, who, while ostensibly practicing as a doctor in Lithuania, was building the Soviet empire from which Zinik tried to escape 50 years later. In the manner of the classic detective story, Zinik's meditation on "assumed identity" and "plagiarized past" culminates in the notion of recognition as a redeeming factor, suggesting that it is not only central to the twentieth-century Jewish experience or even the wider world of émigrés, exiles and migrants of all kinds, but to the human condition itself.

Crimes Against Nature

Crimes Against Nature PDF Author: Karl Jacoby
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520282299
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
"This Study of the Early American conservation movement reveals the hidden history of three of the nation's first parks: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Karl Jacoby traces the effects that the criminalization of such traditional rural practices as hunting, fishing, and foraging had on country people in these areas. Despite the presence of new environmental regulations, poaching arson, and timber stealing became widespread among the Native Americans, poor whites, and others who had long relied on the natural resources now contained within conservation areas. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes," providing a rich and multifaceted portrayal of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." "Crimes against Nature includes previously unpublished historical photographs depicting such subjects as poachers in Yellowstone and a Native American "squatters' camp" at the Grand Canyon. This study demonstrates the importance of considering class for understanding environmental history and opens a new perspective on the social history of rural and poor people a century age."--Jacket of 2001 edition

Pack of Thieves

Pack of Thieves PDF Author: Richard Z. Chesnoff
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307766942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
It was the largest organized robbery in history: the systematic looting of Europe's Jews by the Nazis, in cooperation with most of the nations in Europe?Axis, Allied, and neutral. Award--winning journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff, one of the first reporters to break the story that Swiss banks had hoarded the assets of Holocaust victims, traveled to fourteen countries to research this heartbreaking, compelling story of human greed. Through exclusive interviews and information from hitherto classified files, Chesnoff tells a tragic tale, the vast scope of which is only beginning to be known. Revealing new details that many would prefer remained secret, Pack of Thieves describes the detective work used to trace Holocaust assets that continue to be hidden inside the financial systems of such Allied nations as France and the Netherlands. Daring, insightful, and necessary, Pack of Thieves is at once a fascinating piece of investigative journalism and an enraging account of one of history's greatest crimes.

The Marrow Thieves

The Marrow Thieves PDF Author: Cherie Dimaline
Publisher: DCB
ISBN: 1770864873
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Just when you think you have nothing left to lose, they come for your dreams. Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden — but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.

The History Thieves

The History Thieves PDF Author: Ian Cobain
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781846275838
Category : Government accountability
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the award winning author of Cruel Britannia, here is a revelatory new book which exposes the culture of concealment at the heart of the British state - from the secret wars of the past century to covert surveillance todayIn 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed and created offences of 'disclosure of information' and 'breach of official trust'. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should, be told. Since then, Britain's governments and civil service have been engaged in the greatest identity fraud of all time - the dishonest and manufactured creation of our understanding of the British nation, our history and our culture.In this important new book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of British history since the end of the Second World War, exploring, among other issues: the measures taken to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and its successor GCHQ for three decades; the unreported wars fought during the 1960s and 70s; the hidden links with terrorist cells during the Troubles; the opaque workings of the criminal justice system; and the state's peacetime surveillance techniques. The History Thieves is a story that reveals the development of a complex bureaucratic machine - from the vast paper archives from the colonial era to the electronic data captured and stored today - that enables the government to operate unchecked and ensure that its secrets remain hidden. It is a powerful indictment of a political system which defrauds us daily, even as it promises us all the freedom and transparency of a liberal democracy in the Western world.

The Thieves of Legend

The Thieves of Legend PDF Author: Richard Doetsch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439109672
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
In a world of dark and light, where East meets West, a horrific act of violence propels former thief Michael St. Pierre into a mystery that began five hundred years ago. . . . In Richard Doetsch's next unforgettable Thieves thriller, Michael and his ex-girlfriend KC Ryan have been blackmailed by a U.S. Army colonel. They are to travel to opposite ends of China, and each is responsible for stealing a piece of an ancient puzzle: a diary and a compass. With their lives dependent on each other’s success, they must face off against the complex underworld of the Chinese triads, a twisted female assassin, and a madman whose only desire is to possess the secrets held within the pages of the diary—knowledge that would give him enormous power and lead to the downfall of nations. Moving from the glittering casinos of Macau to its dark and dangerous backstreets; from the palace at the heart of China’s Forbidden City to the medieval castles of Spain; from the seaside mansions along the Amalfi Coast to an uncharted Pacific island, Michael is in a race against time. He has less than five days to uncover a five-hundred-year-old mystery—and to save KC from certain death.