Ugly Americans

Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448108039
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
The true story of the Ivy League hedge fund cowboys who gambled with the dangerously high stakes of the Asian stock market. John Malcolm, high school football hero and Princeton graduate made his millions back in the early '90s, a time when dozens of elite young American graduates made their fortunes in hedge funds in the Far East, beating the Japanese at their own game, riding the crashing waves of the Asian stock markets, gambling at impossibly high stakes and winning. Failure meant not only bankruptcy and disgrace à la Nick Leeson, but potentially even death - at the hands of the Japanese Yakuza: one of the world's most notoriously violent organised crime syndicates. Ugly Americans tells Malcolm's story, and that of others like him, in a high octane book, filled with glamour, money and the dangers these incur, this true story is a cross between Mezrich's own best-selling Bringing Down the House and Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker.

Ugly American

Author: William J. Lederer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318678
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
The ineffectual Ambassador is just one of the handicaps facing the Americans as Southeast Asia becomes increasingly involved with Communism.

Those Ugly Americans

Author: Rodney Stich
Publisher: Silverpeak Enterprises
ISBN: 0932438490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 548

Book Description
The book details the conduct of U.S. politicians and other government employees during the past 50 years, including the invasion of Iraq, which justified the books title.

Fat, Dumb, and Ugly

Author: Peter Strupp
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451603908
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
The world's lone superpower...supreme guardian of democracy...and home of the blithely uninformed and epidemically obese. Welcome to America -- pull up a chair, click on the tube, and grab a donut. Concerned Citizen Peter Strupp is shocked and bothered by what he sees. It seems we're not as thin, smart, and good-looking as we like to think. Packed with real facts and statistics, Fat, Dumb, and Ugly takes readers on an eye-opening, laugh-out-loud, and at times horrifying tour of the numbers that shape our country: • Percentage of adults in the United States who are overweight: 64.5 • Percentage of Americans who believe they have actually spoken with Satan: 5 • Percentage of voters for whom Saturday Night Live and MTV are primary sources of information about presidential candidates: 16 • Average number of pink lawn flamingos sold annually in America: 250,000 A wickedly hilarious and addictive cultural snapshot of our nation of conspicuous consumers, fast-food fanatics, and dumbed-down dolts, Fat, Dumb, and Ugly casts a revealing spotlight on John Q. Public, the average American -- and it's not always pretty.

The Quiet Americans

Author: Scott Anderson
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385540469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 722

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia—the gripping story of four CIA agents during the early days of the Cold War—and how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world. “Enthralling … captivating reading.” —The New York Times Book Review At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling the fascinating lives of four agents, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies: Michael Burke, who organized parachute commandos from an Italian villa; Frank Wisner, an ingenious spymaster who directed actions around the world; Peter Sichel, a German Jew who outwitted the ruthless KGB in Berlin; and Edward Lansdale, a mastermind of psychological warfare in the Far East. But despite their lofty ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.

Ugly Girls

Author: Lindsay Hunter
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374533865
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Traces the chaotic breakdown of a friendship that shapes and unravels the identities of two rebellious girls in the wake of a stalker's predations.

The Quiet American

Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504052544
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
A “masterful . . . brilliantly constructed novel” of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian). It’s 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it’s not just a political tangle that’s kept him tethered to the country. There’s also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what’s best for Southeast Asia, but rather a “Third Force”: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle’s blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it’s ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing. Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene’s “complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue” would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).

The Ugly Pumpkin

Author: Dave Horowitz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142411450
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Book Description
Perfect for the changing seasons, this wacky twist on The Ugly Duckling is a great read for Halloween and Thanksgiving. The Ugly Pumpkin has waited all through October for someone to take him home, but no one wants him. He doesn't look like other pumpkins. So the lonely Ugly Pumpkin leaves the patch in search of a place where he'll fit in. By the time Thanksgiving arrives, he discovers the truth about who he is--but it's not what he expected!

Bringing Down the House

Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743250842
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
The #1 national bestseller, now a major motion picture, 21—the amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas—and lived to tell how. Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.

The Ugly Laws

Author: Susan M. Schweik
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 081474057X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Book Description
In 1881, the Chicago City Code read, "Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed... shall not... expose himself to public view." These "ugly laws" began in San Francisco in 1867, then spread through the U.S. and abroad; many in the U.S. weren't repealed until the 1970s. English professor Schweik (A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War), co-director of UC Berkley's disabilities studies program, explores the emergence of these laws and their tragic consequences for thousands. Motivated largely by the desire to reduce beggar populations and to expand the role of charitable organizations, in practical terms the ugly laws meant "harsh policing; antibegging; systematized suspicion...; and structural and institutional repulsion of disabled people." Schweik discusses the nineteenth century conditions that created a demand for these laws, but notes how the resulting practices have carried through to the present. Schweik draws on a deep index of resources, from legal proceedings to out-of-print books, to tell the story of individuals long lost to history. Her detailed analysis will be of primary interest to those involved with the history of social justice in the U.S. and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 18 Illus. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.