Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

The Kremlin has never been afraid to assassinate its political opponents. In 1940, a Soviet agent murdered Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico City. In the 1950s, KGB agents poisoned the Ukrainian nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera and Lev Rebet in Munich. In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré broadcaster, was killed, supposedly by a poisoned pellet fired from an umbrella, on Waterloo Bridge in central London. New archival research suggests that the Soviet KGB ordered his murder.

The Obama administration’s decision to remove most sanctions on Myanmar presents an opportunity to refocus US attention and help Aung San Suu Kyi meet her most serious challenges.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used to seem invincible. Today, he and his regime look enervated, confused, and desperate. Increasingly, both Russian and Western commentators suggest that Russia may be on the verge of deep instability, possibly even collapse.

When Hillary Clinton’s career as a lawyer first drew media attention during the 1992 presidential campaign of her husband, Bill Clinton, she mused that she could have skipped law practice to stay at home and bake cookies. The comment led to a now-famous cookie bake-off between Clinton and Barbara Bush, which the upstart Arkansas governor’s wife handily won.

Nineteen-year-old Torien Risto has seen dissidents dealt with before. He knows the young local girl who just knifed him will hang for assaulting an Imperial officer, unless he can stop it. Someone inside the provincial government is kidnapping Imperial citizens and selling them across the desert to the salt mines, silencing anyone who tries to intervene. The girl's brother is one of those who has been taken.

In 2017, as crucial elections loom across Europe, the EU will no longer be able to defer hard questions about the migrant crisis. It will test the European project’s liberal values and the EU’s commitment to the international system for protecting refugees that many of its member states have championed for more than half a century.

Although today’s right-wing populists share some similarities with the interwar fascists, the differences are more significant. And more important, what today’s comparisons often fail to explain is how noxious politicians and parties grow into the type of revolutionary movements capable of fundamentally threatening democracy, as interwar fascism did.

Despite boasting the most powerful economy on earth, the United States too often reaches for the gun instead of the purse in its foreign policy. The country has hardly outgrown its need for military force, but over the past several decades, it has increasingly forgotten a tradition that stretches back to the nation’s founding: the use of economic instruments to accomplish geopolitical objectives, a practice we term “geoeconomics.”


Two days before the collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt, one man gathered the courage to tell the president the truth: he would be killed in his palace if he did not step down. What came next revealed the bitter power struggles atop the most populous country in the Middle East at its most vulnerable moment in six decades. This is the inside story of the final days of Egypt's modern day pharaoh, who ruled with near autocratic powers for three decades before being forced to resign on February 11, 2011.

Two years ago, I argued in these pages that America was suffering from political decay. The country’s constitutional system of checks and balances, combined with partisan polarization and the rise of well-financed interest groups, had combined to yield what I labeled “vetocracy,” a situation in which it was easier to stop government from doing things than it was to use government to promote the common good.

In profiling two leading figures in the German resistance, Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern have revealed an important truth about the anti-Nazi underground: although those who opposed Hitler often had motives unrelated to anti-Semitism, the most influential resisters were driven primarily by a shared horror at the mass murder of Jews.

Animals are God's gift to humans. They are instruments of His Grace blessed with a special gift for comforting us when we are down, filling us with joy at just the right moment, and encouraging us on our walk of faith. That's why Guideposts created All God's Creatures. Day by day, season by season, you'll be inspired by touching, often-humorous true animal stories, enlightening Scripture, and touching quotes about God's amazing animals. You'll find everything you need to deepen your faith.

The year is 2018. The United States has finally emerged from the previous decade's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession that threatened to tear the country apart. Eighteen months into his first term, President Tom Knowles sees a chance to put his stamp on world affairs when 32 American aid workers are massacred in Uganda by a group of rebel partisans. Knowles decides to send in troops into an area that China considers its African sphere of influence.

Paul St. Pierre was an alcoholic driven by an urge to kill all the time. He bullied his younger brother, Chris, into committing unspeakable acts. His childhood friend, Andrew Webb, took drugs, talked to skulls, and dreamed about eating human flesh. It was only a matter of time before the trio terrorized a quiet neighborhood near Tacoma, Washington, with the brutal murders of innocent victims caught in a storm of senseless rage. Then the twisted triad turned on each other - over money. Paul shot Andrew in the stomach. Chris called the cops. But with tortured individuals like these, justice opened the doors to more surprising revelations.

Investing in Resources: How to Profit from the Outsized Potential and Avoid the Risks details how history and fortunes will be made in another extraordinarily rare investment opportunity that's happening right now. The opportunity that will enable today's savvy investor to realize incredible long-term profits is in commodities.

Far from being a "First World problem", mental illness is a global scourge that affects people of all incomes and backgrounds. By 2030, mental disorders will cost the global economy around $6 trillion a year - more than heart disease.

As a close advisor to visionary startup founders and established CEOs, Marco Greenberg discovered something about the most successful people he knew: They had remarkable instincts, and they trusted them. They had an intuitive grasp of when to ignore convention. No matter how sophisticated, they could access something else - something primitive. It's a loaded term. But as Greenberg dug deeper, he saw a mindset that helped certain people to overcome challenges that stopped others cold.

Washington’s foreign policy elites have been left just as disoriented by the rise of presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, as everyone else. In signaling the rise of populism as a dominant strain in US politics, Trump and Sanders challenge the basic assumptions on which decades of US foreign and domestic policy have been built.

Did you know that to make a task seem easier, all you have to do is lean back a little? Or that retail salespeople who mimic the way their customers speak and behave end up selling more? If you like stats like this, are intrigued by ideas, and find connecting the dots to be a critical part of your skill set—this book is for you. Culled from Harvard Business Review's popular newsletter, The Daily Stat, this book offers a compelling look at insights that both amuse and inform.

For much of human history, only wars, revolutions, state collapses, or pandemics have reduced inequality. But a combination of government policy and technological progress offers hope for changing that grim formula.