Archives de catégorie : History

CRACKING THE NAZI CODE de Jason Bell

The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the first enemy of the Nazis.

CRACKING THE NAZI CODE
The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code
by Jason Bell
Pegasus Books, May 2024
(via Vertical Ink)

The thrilling true story of Agent A12, the first enemy of the Nazis In public life, Dr. Winthrop Picard Bell was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman. As MI6 Secret Agent A12, he evaded gunfire and shook pursuers to break open the emerging Nazi conspiracy in electrifying 1919 Berlin. His reports, the first warning of the Nazi plot for WWII, went directly to the man known as C, the mysterious founder of MI6, and to prime ministers. But a powerful fascist politician quietly worked to suppress his alerts. Nevertheless, his intelligence sabotaged the Nazis in ways only now revealed. Bell became a spy once again in the face of WWII. In 1939, he was the first to crack Hitler’s deadliest secret code: the Holocaust. At that time the Führer was a popular politician who said he wanted peace. Could anyone believe Bell’s shocking warning? Fighting an epic intelligence war from Ukraine, Russia, and Poland to France, Germany, Canada and Washington, D.C., A12 was the real-life 007, waging a single-handed fight against madmen bent on destroying the world. Without Bell’s astounding courage, the Nazis might just have won the war.

CRACKING THE NAZI CODE, informed by recently declassified documents, is the first book to illuminate the astounding exploits of Winthrop Bell, Agent A12.

Jason Bell, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He has served as Fulbright Professor in Germany (at Göttingen, Winthrop Bell’s alma mater), and has taught at universities in Belgium, the United States, and Canada. He was the first scholar granted exclusive access to Winthrop Pickard Bell’s classified espionage papers.

INFERNAL MACHINE de Steven Johnson

Combining science, forgotten periods of history, and philosophy, Johnson documents the rise of dynamite-driven political terrorism, the emergence of modern forensic sciences, and the formation of the modern detective in the twentieth century.

INFERNAL MACHINE
A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective
by Steven Johnson
Crown, May 2024

When Arthur Woods took command of the NYPD in April of 1914, the institution was still largely corrupt and low-tech. Determined to change that, he couldn’t have anticipated the maelstrom of violence that would test his science-based approach to policing. Within weeks of his tenure, New York City was engulfed in a period of relentless bombings, many of them perpetrated by the anarchists movement led by the radicals Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman.

Steven Johnson’s engrossing account of the struggle between the anarchist movement and the emerging surveillance goes back to Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite, to the development of forensic science in France, and to the assassination of Czar Alexander II. As the forces of anarchy and policing clash in New York City, we meet Inspector Joseph Faurot, a science-first detective who works closely with Woods in reforming the police force; Hans Schmidt, the psychotic killer priest whose capture turns Faurot into a household name; and Amadeo Polignani, the young Italian undercover detective who infiltrates the notorious Bresci Circle.

Steven Johnson is the author of seven books including the bestseller Ghost Map. His writings have influenced everything from the way political campaigns use the Internet, to cutting-edge ideas in urban planning, to the battle against 21st-century terrorism.

FEARLESS d’Ann Hagedorn

In the vein of Hidden Figures, FEARLESS is fascinating and moving look at a “hidden history” of women at the forefront of a movement of great and lasting impact.

FEARLESS
The Hidden Story of The Women Who Powered America’s Anti-Slavery Movement
by Ann Hagedorn
Simon & Schuster, 2025
(via The Martell Agency)

From the author of Edgar Award finalist Sleeper Agent comes FEARLESS: The Hidden Story of The Women Who Powered America’s Anti-Slavery Movement, which recounts the heretofore unchronicled lives of seven activist women – Black and white, urban and rural, rich and poor and middle class — who formed the backbone of the Abolitionist movement in the decades leading up to the Civil War, networking and organizing across the country, forming anti-slavery societies, newspapers, conventions and lecture circuits, raising funds that were critical to the cause and daring to stand up for their beliefs amidst widespread condemnation.

Ann Hagedorn, an award-winning author and journalist, has been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and has written for other publications including The Washington Post. She has taught writing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of Sleeper Agent (2022); The Invisible Soldiers (Simon & Schuster); Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (Simon & Schuster); Beyond the River: A True Story of the Underground Railroad (Simon & Schuster); Ransom: The Untold Story of Global Kidnapping (Holt) and Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc. America’s Premier Racing Dynasty (Holt).

WOMEN MONEY POWER de Josie Cox

From an experienced financial journalist, the story of how women have fought for financial freedom, and the social and political hurdles that have keep them from equality.

WOMEN MONEY POWER
The Rise and Fall of Economic Equality
by Josie Cox
Abrams, March 2024

For centuries, women were denied equal access to money and the freedom and power that came with it. They were restricted from owning property or transacting in real estate. Even well into the 20th century, women could not take out their own loans or own bank accounts without their husband’s permission. They could be fired for getting married or pregnant, and if they still had a job, they could be kept from certain roles, restricted from working longer hours, and paid less than men for equal work.

It was a raw deal, and women weren’t happy with it. So they pushed back. In WOMEN MONEY POWER, financial journalist Josie Cox tells the story of women’s fight for financial freedom. This is an inspirational account of brave pioneers who took on social mores and the law, including the “Rosies” who filled industrial jobs vacated by men and helped win WWII, the heiress whose fortune helped create the birth control pill, the brassy investor who broke into the boys’ club of the New York Stock Exchange, and the namesake of landmark equal pay legislation who refused to accept discrimination.

But as any woman can tell you, the battle for equality—for money and power—is far from over. Cox delves deep into the challenges women face today and the culture and systems that hold them back. This is a fascinating narrative account of progress, women’s lives, and the work still to be done.

Josie Cox is a journalist, editor, and broadcaster with a particular interest in business, workplace culture, and equality. She has an extensive professional network and experience working for a broad range of media outlets in Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US, including Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and The Independent, where she served as business editor. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in The Guardian, Fortune, Forbes, The Times and Sunday Times of London, and other publications. She has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, and Sky News, and is a regular guest on the BBC. Cox was a fully funded 2020/2021 Knight–Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Journalism School. She has an MBA from Columbia Business School and is also an associate instructor within the Strategic Communications program at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies. She lives in New York City.

THE TIME OF AI de Kate Crawford

A riveting, intellectual journey through the history of artificial intelligence and how it has shaped culture and the workplace.

THE TIME OF AI
How Generative AI is Changing Culture, Work, Politics and Time
by Kate Crawford
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

A leading scholar of artificial intelligence explores the ways in which AI is shaping contemporary culture: how it will change our lives, for better and for worse, and what it means to live in this crucial, watershed moment. The book will be structured around five parts, each centered on a basic ingredient of human creation: Words, Images, Sounds, Motion, and Systems. The chapters contend with how each element is transformed by AI systems, and how the industries that depend upon it are changing, Asking what does this mean for us, as individuals and as a society, Professor Crawford posits that the best way to understand the cultural metamorphosis underway is to start with how AI makes things for us, and what we are making of it. In this way, the book speaks to changes at the foundational level of human creation, as well as addressing a dramatic series of simultaneous industrial shifts.

Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of artificial intelligence. She is a Distinguished Professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, and the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. She has founded multiple research groups including FATE at Microsoft Research, the AI Now Institute at New York University, and the Knowing Machines Group at the University of Southern California. Her last book, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021), won multiple awards including the prestigious Sally Hacker Prize, and was described by the Financial Times and New Scientist as one of the best books of the year.