Search Results for: there will come a darkness

At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan. He never returned. Kidnapped by warlords and then sold to the US after 9/11, he was disappeared to Gauntánamo Bay, where he spent the next 15 years as Detainee #441.

In the vein of Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Don’t Forget Us Here tells two coming-of-age stories in parallel: a makeshift island outpost becoming the world’s most notorious prison and an innocent young man emerging from its darkness. Arriving as a stubborn teenager, Mansoor survived the camp’s infamous interrogation program and became a feared and hardened resistance fighter leading prison riots and hunger strikes. With time though, he grew into the man prisoners nicknamed “Smiley Troublemaker”: a student, writer, historian, and dedicated pop culture fan. With unexpected warmth and empathy, he unwinds a narrative of fighting for hope and survival in unimaginable circumstances, illuminating the limitlessness of the human spirit.

And through his own story as well as those who were there with him–detainees and guards–Mansoor also tells Gauntánamo’s story, offering an unprecedented window into one of the most secretive places on earth. Putting a human face on the Gauntánamo we know from the news, as well as showing the side we never see–the art, the community, the joyful reclamation of stolen humanity–this book reconstructs the camp’s history in human terms, bearing witness to the lives lost and destroyed there.

Twenty years later, Gauntánamo remains open. At a moment of due reckoning, Mansoor helps us understand what actually happened there–both the horror and the beauty–offering a vital chronicle of an experience we cannot afford to forget.

The Great Peace is a harrowing, heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in Hollywood, in which young teenage model-turned-actor Mena Suvari lost herself to sex, drugs and bad, often abusive relationships even as blockbuster movies made her famous. It’s about growing up in the 90s, with a soundtrack ranging from The Doors to Deee-Lite, fashion from denim to day-glo, and a sad young woman dealing with the lasting psychological scars of abuse, yet knowing deep inside she has and desires so much more from life.
Within these vulnerable pages, Mena not only reveals her own mistakes, but also the lessons she learned and her efforts to understand and grow rather than casting blame. As such, she makes this a timeless story of girl empowerment and redemption, of somebody using their voice to rediscover their past, seek redemption, and to understand their mistakes, and ultimately come to terms with their power as an individual to find a way and a will to live-and thrive. Poignant, intimate, and powerful, this book will resonate with anyone who has found themselves lost in the darkness, thinking there’s no way out. Ultimately, Mena’s story proves that, no matter how hopeless it may seem, there’s always a light at the end.

A thought-provoking exploration of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic album, Born in the U.S.A.-a record that both chronicled and foreshadowed the changing tides of modern America

On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years. Because this record ended up being much more than just an album-it is a document of what this country was in its moment, a dream of what it might become, and a prescient forecast of what it actually turned into decades later.

In There Was Nothing You Could Do, veteran rock critic Steven Hyden explores the essential questions that explain this classic album – what it means, why it was made, and how it changed the world. By mixing up his signature blend of personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Hyden digs deep into the songs that made Born In The U.S.A. as well as the scores of tunes that didn’t, including the tracks that make up the album’s sister release, 1982’s Nebraska. He investigates how the records before Born In The U.S.A. set the table for the album’s tremendous success, following Springsteen as he tries to balance his commercial ambitions with his fear of losing artistic control and being co-opted by the machine. Hyden also takes a closer look how Springsteen’s work after Born In The U.S.A. reacted to that album, discussing how “The Boss” initially ran away from his most popular (and most misunderstood) LP until he learned to once again accept his role as a kind of living national monument.

But the book doesn’t stop there. Hyden also looks beyond Springsteen’s career, placing Born In The U.S.A. in a larger context in terms of how it affected rock music as well as America. Though he aspired to be as big as Elvis and as profound as Dylan, he was equally aware of his heroes’ shortcomings and eager to avoid their mistakes-all while navigating the tumultuous aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, a time when America was coming apart at the seams. Born In The U.S.A. simultaneously chronicles that coming apart and pushes for a more united future, a duality that made him a hero to a younger generation of bands – from Arcade Fire to The Killers to The War On Drugs – who openly emulated the sound of Born In The U.S.A. in the hopes of somehow, in their own way, achieving a measure of that album’s impact in the 21st century. By the aughts, when Springsteen fan (and future podcast partner) Barack Obama entered the White House, it appeared that the hopeful promise of Born In The U.S.A. might be realized. But the election of Donald Trump seemed to confirm an opposite truth that was closer to the darkness of songs like “My Hometown” and “Born In The U.S.A.” than Springsteen’s revival-like shows. As Springsteen himself reluctantly conceded, the working-class middle American progressives he wrote about in 1984 had turned into the resentful and scored Trump voters of the 2010s.

How did we lose Springsteen’s heartland? And what can listening to these songs teach us about the American decline that Born In The U.S.A. forecasted? In There Was Nothing You Could Do, Hyden takes readers on a journey to find out.

It is the year 2018- a highly volatile nuclear world. Israel has obliterated the deep underground nuclear weapons facility built by Iran. The United States has destroyed the nuclear facility of a defiant North Korea. Against this background, the Russians have upped the stakes in the latest world power-play- cyber warfare- to reduce the United States to helplessness: a three-strike missile attack on the National Security Agency at Fort Mead, Maryland, while simultaneously jamming the top-secret electronic access key to America’s nuclear launch system- the nuclear football. If successful, Russia would blow the United States off the nuclear map. Meanwhile the British Royal Navy, formerly the most powerful in the world, is rapidly crumbling, leaving the United States without its main deep sea ally at a time when they’re needed most. As this geo-political battle comes to light behind close doors dealings and dark secrets, it is up to Mossad spymaster, codenamed the &lsquoGolan,’ to avert the Russian scheme, and there is only one man he in turn can trust to get the job done: US Navy Seal Mack Bedford. It is now up to Mack Bedford, the hero previously encountered in The Delta Solution , Intercept , and Diamondhead , to devise a plan to stop the Russians before they and their cyber weaponry reach the Chinese border- the launch site of their master plan. And with the entire country’s fate in his hands, Mack and his hard-trained, one of a kind SEAL Team 10 must not, cannot fail.