A way of hope

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Peter Padfield

The flight of Rudolf Hess, the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, to Scotland in May 1941 remains one of the great unresolved mysteries of the Second World War. Did he come on Hitler's commission--or, as he always maintained, without the Fuhrer's knowledge? Was the man who parachuted out of the Messerschmitt Bf 100 really Hess ... or a double? What was his purpose, why was he incarcerated for life in Berlin's Spandau Prison, and was he (as his son alleged) murdered to prevent his revealing an explosive secret? The biographer of Himmler and Donitz navigates these still swirling controversies with confidence, profiling the man, the milieu, and the uppermost echelons of the Nazi hierarchy. The conclusion: Hess was indeed sacrificed ... but he was a most willing victim.

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Luca Fezzi

Publio Clodio Pulcro (93-52 a.C.) nasce da una famiglia di antichissima nobiltà. Fratello della spregiudicata Clodia, la Lesbia cantata da Catullo, sin dagli inizi della carriera politica si rende protagonista di gravi scandali, uscendone miracolosamente indenne. Nel 60 a.C. abiura le proprie origini patrizie divenendo plebeo; due anni dopo si fa eleggere tribuno e inizia una folgorante ascesa politica, sorretto dal favore del popolo. Spregiudicato e audace, gestisce un potere inedito e lo fa in modo particolarmente radicale e violento: combatte i suoi nemici - Cicerone in primis - con le bande armate di piazza, si assicura l'impunità grazie alla connivenza dei triumviri Cesare, Pompeo e Crasso, blinda il proprio successo popolare a colpi di demagogia. Muore per mano dell'avversario Milone, a pochi giorni dalle elezioni alla carica di pretore.

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Raymond Wolters

Raymond Wolters maintains that Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds made the "right turn" when they questioned and limited the use of racial considerations in drawing electoral boundaries. He also documents the Reagan administration's considerable success in reinforcing within the country, and reviving within the judiciary, the conviction that every person - black or white - should be considered an individual with unique talents and inalienable rights. This book begins with a biographical chapter on William Bradford Reynolds, the Assistant Attorney General who was the principal architect of Reagan's civil rights policies. It then analyzes three main civil rights issues: voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation. Wolters describes specific cases: at-large elections and minority vote dilutions; congressional districting in New Orleans; legislative districting in North Carolina; the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964; social science critiques of affirmative action; the question of quotas; and school desegregation and forced busing. Because Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds were men of the right, and because most journalists and historians are on the left, Wolters feels the "people of words" have dealt harshly with the Reagan administration. In writing this book, he hopes to correct the record on a subject that has been badly represented.

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Rena Pederson

Drawing on exclusive interviews, a journalist and former State Department speechwriter sheds new light on Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who inspired Burma's first steps towards democracy, and her lifelong fight for liberty.