Private Politics

Introduction to Conducting Private Investigations provides the essential tools you need to become a successful private investigator. From conducting straightforward background investigations to more complicated cases involving accidents and fraud, you will learn the critical skills needed to conduct all types of investigations and build a thriving business. Specifically tailored to meet the requirements established by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, this easy-to-use resource offers an excellent balance between theory and practice.

In 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the beautiful, rebellious, and intelligent ex-wife of a top CIA official, was killed on a quiet Georgetown towpath near her home. Mary Meyer was a secret mistress of President John F. Kennedy, whom she had known since private school days, and after her death, reports that she had kept a diary set off a tense search by her brother-in-law, newsman Ben Bradlee, and CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton. But the only suspect in her murder was acquitted, and today her life and death are still a source of intense speculation.

England's Tudor monarchs - Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I - are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry's quest for male heirs or Elizabeth's purported virginity, the lives of the Tudor monarchs away from the public eye remain largely beyond our grasp, mostly not chronicled by previous historians.

Private equity firms have long been at the center of public debates on the impact of the financial sector on Main Street companies. Are these firms financial innovators that save failing businesses or financial predators that bankrupt otherwise healthy companies and destroy jobs? The first comprehensive examination of this topic, Private Equity at Work provides a detailed yet accessible guide to this controversial business model.

In the last years of the Cold War, policy and trust for the Russians have led to disarmament treaties and hope for a new beginning. But peace is not yet within grasp. An entire American town has been wiped off the map: not by nuclear strike, but rather a space-borne particle cannon capable of reducing the entire nation to dust in hours. But who pulled the trigger? Was it the Russians, making a final bid for world domination? Or was it a third power - some aspiring conqueror hoping to pit the superpowers against each other? It’s up to Blaine McCracken to find out.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

From the number-one New York Times bestselling author and FOX News host Trey Gowdy comes a dark mystery debut about a murder in a small South Carolina town. Assistant DA Colm Truesdale must pick up the pieces of his own life in order to solve the case. Following the death of his wife and...

A space shuttle is destroyed during flight, and the CIA recalls disgraced agent Blaine McCracken to uncover the people responsible. A space shuttle disappears during a routine repair mission, 180 miles above Earth’s surface. An intelligence operative with a dark secret is murdered, his car set ablaze, while he is in the middle of fulfilling a depraved fantasy. And a reporter receives a message from a dying man that suggests the organization responsible may be one of the world’s most prestigious corporations. The government knows just one man who can untangle this mystery: a throwaway on the deactivated list. Exiled to a desk job in Paris for stepping on the wrong toes, Blaine McCracken is a killer—a ruthless pursuer of truth who will let no one, friend or enemy, stand in his way when civilian lives are in danger. McCracken gets results, and his country needs him now more than ever.

Former NYPD detective Thomas Austin is enjoying a rare date at a monday night football game in Seattle when the evening takes a horrifying turn. A team of merciless terrorists has taken over the stadium by force, blocking cellphone signals and sealing the exits. The terrorists have a single demand: release a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative from a US supermax prison. And they have a simple threat: do so in the next 24 hours or they will blow up the stadium, killing themselves along with tens of thousands of innocent victims.

Since he first went behind enemy lines in Vietnam, Blaine McCracken has faced death on every continent. In the line of fire he is an iron man, but now he faces a different challenge: fatherhood. His son, Matt, is 13 - the unknown product of a long ago tryst. When the boy’s mother dies, McCracken goes to England to meet him. He finds a son cut in his father’s mold: a young athlete determined to put his body at risk to serve his country.

Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors. In this trailblazing account of the Group’s origins and operations, John Lechner—the only journalist to report across its many warzones—brings us on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests.

There are 96 names on the list. They are those of businessmen, judges, and senators - the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful. And they are all going to die. A man named Takahashi has hired the world’s finest assassins to eliminate these men in secrecy and style, crossing names off the list without raising any suspicion. And they are killing ahead of schedule. But someone has noticed the pattern of these seemingly unrelated deaths, and she knows enough to call Blaine McCracken.

Far beneath the sands of Alexandria, an archaeological team digs deeper than anyone has before, seeking an ancient power older than the pyramids. What they unearth is an evil that threatens the whole world. First it targets the worst of humanity: Ex-Nazis, Central American warlords, and the pushers who peddle drugs to children are found massacred, ripped limb from limb without having fired a shot in their own defense. But the next to die will be ordinary people.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a profound exploration of humanity’s potential for self-overcoming and the search for meaning in a godless world. Presented in powerful spoken form, Nietzsche’s ideas come alive through the voice of Zarathustra, delivering a poetic and provocative vision of living authentically and embracing life’s challenges with courage and creativity.

How did former Chicago cop Jim McGill become the first PI to live in the White House? He married Patricia Darden Grant, the first woman to become a US president...not long after he solved the murder of her first husband. Winning an election was one thing. Finding work after moving to Washington was another. McGill decided to be his own boss and took out a private investigator's license. That wasn't a politically correct occupation, but then McGill refused to allow himself to be addressed as the First Gentleman. He nicknamed himself The President's Henchman.

*VANITY FAIR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025*ONE OF NEW REPUBLIC'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR*KIRKUS' BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025*ONE OF AV CLUB'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025* "[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like...

From both the right and the left today there is pressure to constrain, control, censor, and crimp private charitable giving. A decade where some philanthropy became politicized has convinced certain politicians that our donating habits need to be reshaped by government. Careful reforms could indeed be useful, and this book offers some suggestions. But there is a danger that voluntary giving in America—one of the deepest sources of our national success—could be badly damaged by political manipulators. From our founding right up to the present moment, our nation’s independent charitable...

In this sharp and controversial international best seller, an award-winning economist debunks the pervasive myth that the government is sluggish and inept, and at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies that the opposite is true: The state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation.

In the 1980s, religion and politics, two forces that affect all our lives, locked arms in a concerted effort to seize power in government and overturn America's most basic constitutional guarantee: the separation of church and state. Holy Terror was the first book to expose the coalition of fundamentalist Christians, right-wing ideologues and tech-savvy political strategists who use faith, fear and intimidation in their war on America’s freedoms and their drive to impose their beliefs on people and cultures worldwide. In this classic edition of their acclaimed 1982 book, with a new ...