Good Reads

[Waiuta]

I found The Chancellor,
The remarkable odyssey of Angela Merkel, by Kati Marton a very good read.

[percy]

Just read another good read;

Dark Towers
Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and An Epic Trail of Destruction
Enrich, David, 1979-
(1 rating)
Book, 2020
eBook
Available
In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank's history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law. Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality, the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he'd seen at the bank and his son's obsessive search for the secrets he kept.Read le

[whatsup]

"Red Notice", true story about how Putin stole all of the money in Russia and gave it to his mates after the deregulation of the Russian economy, reads like a novel. ***** a 5 star read !

[percy]

"Red Notice", true story about how Putin stole all of the money in Russia and gave it to his mates after the deregulation of the Russian economy, reads like a novel. ***** a 5 star read !

Agree a great read.:
Red Notice
How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy
Browder, Bill, 1964-
(6 ratings)
Book, 2015
November 2009. An emaciated young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, is led to a freezing isolation cell in a Moscow prison, handcuffed to a bed rail, and beaten to death by eight police officers. His crime? To testify against the Russian Interior Ministry officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes paid to the state by one of the world's most successful hedge funds. Magnitsky's brutal killing has remained uninvestigated and unpunished to this day. His farcical posthumous show-trial brought Putin's regime to a new low in the eyes of the international community. Red Notice is a searing expose of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths. Bill Browder, the hedge fund manager who employed Magnitsky, takes us on his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through his battles with ruthless oligarchs in the turbulent landscape of post-Soviet Union Moscow, to his expulsion from Russia on Putin's orders. Browder's graphic portrait of the Russian government as a criminal enterprise wielding all the power of a sovereign state illuminates his personal transformation from financier to human rights activist, campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking but true political roller-coaster that plays out in the highest echelons of Western power.Read less

[whatsup]

Agree a great read.:
Red Notice
How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy
Browder, Bill, 1964-
(6 ratings)
Book, 2015
November 2009. An emaciated young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, is led to a freezing isolation cell in a Moscow prison, handcuffed to a bed rail, and beaten to death by eight police officers. His crime? To testify against the Russian Interior Ministry officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes paid to the state by one of the world's most successful hedge funds. Magnitsky's brutal killing has remained uninvestigated and unpunished to this day. His farcical posthumous show-trial brought Putin's regime to a new low in the eyes of the international community. Red Notice is a searing expose of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths. Bill Browder, the hedge fund manager who employed Magnitsky, takes us on his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through his battles with ruthless oligarchs in the turbulent landscape of post-Soviet Union Moscow, to his expulsion from Russia on Putin's orders. Browder's graphic portrait of the Russian government as a criminal enterprise wielding all the power of a sovereign state illuminates his personal transformation from financier to human rights activist, campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking but true political roller-coaster that plays out in the highest echelons of Western power.Read less

Percy, As I have said a thousand times " the left is a lie " sad but true !!

[justakiwi]

Can you just not! Go post your political BS in the political threads. You and your politically obsessed mates have already commandeered more than a few threads. There is no need to hijack the whole damned site!

Percy, As I have said a thousand times " the left is a lie " sad but true !!

[winner69]

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin is a fascinating read

Amazing how much sugar the brain needs …uses about 20% of the body’s energy

[whatsup]

Can you just not! Go post your political BS in the political threads. You and your politically obsessed mates have already commandeered more than a few threads. There is no need to hijack the whole damned site!

Kiwi, it the back bone of all lefty govts , lies , lies. lies, its just that Russia is leading the pack, that country is just a bigger lie !

[justakiwi]

I don’t care. It has nothing​ to do with “Good Reads” which is the subject of this thread! Take it elsewhere please.

Kiwi, it the back bone of all lefty govts , lies , lies. lies, its just that Russia is leading the pack, that country is just a bigger lie !

[percy]

Have just started reading ,Davos Man,by Peter S Goodman.isbn.978 0 06 323934 0
A bit of a wake up call for me.

The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism's triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century. Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative "Davos Men" members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more. Goodman's rollicking and revelatory expose of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government.