"A unique and revealing portrait of Saddam Hussein's Iraq which was every bit as authoritarian and brutal as Stalin's Russia or Mao's China"-- "The Ba'th Party came to power in 1968 and remained for thirty-five years, until the 2003 U.S. invasion. Under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, who became president of Iraq in 1979, a powerful authoritarian regime was created based on a system of violence and an extraordinary surveillance network, as well as reward schemes and incentives for supporters of the party. The true horrors of this regime have been exposed for the first time through a massive archive of government documents captured by the United States after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is these documents that form the basis of this extraordinarily revealing book and that have been translated and analyzed by Joseph Sassoon, an Iraqi-born scholar and seasoned commentator on the Middle East. They uncover the secrets of the innermost workings of Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council, how the party was structured, how it operated via its network of informers, and how the system of rewards functioned. Saddam Hussein's authority was dominant. His decision was final, whether arbitrating the promotion of a junior official or the death of a rival or a member of his family. As this gripping portrayal of Saddam Hussein's Iraq demonstrates, the regime was every bit as authoritarian and brutal as Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China and some of the regimes in the Arab world who are witnessing upheavals, are not not dissimilar from the Ba'th regime"--

This is the account of the 2010 San Jose mine rescue in Chile, after one of the longest human entrapments in history. With his coveted "rescue pass," the author was permitted access far past the police perimeter. It would be seventeen long days before the miners were discovered alive and the world press descended. It would be another fifty-two days before the miners were all successfully rescued. For eight weeks, the author conducted interviews with families, rescue workers, the mine psychologist, drill operators, scientists, and the architects of the rescue operation. He reported from an improvised office on the mountainside that was the nerve center of the rescue operation, in a makeshift container. Far below, families and loved ones lived in a cluster of tents known as Camp Hope. While the men were still underground, the author interviewed them via a crude telephone; he helped send vital supplies to them via the "paloma" (pigeon). And when the first miners were rescued on October 13, he had the first media contact with the recently freed men in a series of interviews from inside the field hospital. The book reads like a thriller, toggling between the dramatic chaos below ground as the men realized that their escape routes were blocked and that their shelter held only enough rations for ten men to survive seventy-two hours; and the desperate rescue efforts aboveground, the massive campaign from the top level of the Chilean government to enlist and unite brilliant minds from around the world in the San Jose rescue effort. In never before revealed detail, the author tells a story of the improbable survival of the miners, trapped some 2,200 feet underground for sixty-nine days. He also chronicles what had to go right, an impossibly long list, to rescue them all alive. The death-defying rescue demanded endurance, ingenuity, and most of all, unified fronts above and below ground. To be sure, none of this came easily. Based on more than 110 interviews with the miners, their families, and the rescue team, this account combines an eye for detail and dialogue with the remarkable human interest story of these miners struggling to survive in a savage environment.

"Pilotless planes or "drones" have become an important aspect of modern military operations. Developed for espionage and warfare, pilotless planes are also used for public safety issues and can reduce injury or death rates for pilots"--Provided by publisher.