The Imposters War

The shocking history of the espionage and infiltration of American media during WWI and the man who exposed it. A man who was not who he claimed to be... Russia was not the first foreign power to subvert American popular opinion from inside. In the lead-up to America’s entry into the First World War, Germany spent the modern equivalent of one billion dollars to infiltrate American media, industry, and government to undermine the supply chain of the Allied forces. If not for the ceaseless activity of John Revelstoke Rathom, editor of the scrappy Providence Journal, America may have remained committed to its position of neutrality. But Rathom emerged to galvanize American will, contributing to the conditions necessary for President Wilson to request a Declaration of War from Congress—all the while exposing sensational spy plots and getting German diplomats expelled from the U.S. And yet John Rathom was not even his real name. His swashbuckling biography was outrageous fiction. And his many acts of journalistic heroism, which he recounted to rapt audiences on nationwide speaking tours, never happened. Who then was this great, beloved, and ultimately tragic imposter? In The Imposter’s War, Mark Arsenault unearths the truth about Rathom’s origins and revisits a surreal and too-little-known passage in American history that reverberates today. The story of John Rathom encompasses the propaganda battle that set America on a course for war. He rose within the editorial ranks, surviving romantic scandals and combative rivals, eventually transitioning from an editor to a de facto spy. He brought to light the Huerta plot (in which Germany tied to push the United States and Mexico into a war) and helped to upend labor strikes organized by German agents to shut down American industry. Rathom was eventually brought low by an up-and-coming political star by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Arsenault tracks the rise and fall of this enigmatic figure, while providing the rich and fascinating context of Germany’s acts of subterfuge through the early years of World War I. The Imposter's War is a riveting and spellbinding narrative of a flawed newsman who nevertheless changed the course of history.

A desperate child escapes from hiding only to face new dangers in the New York Times–bestselling author’s near future YA adventure series. In a world where the Population Police wield terrifying power, Luke Garner is an illegal third child. After spending his entire life in hiding, he’s found a way to escape—by assuming the identity of a deceased child. But living among other people isn’t going at all how he imagined. Luke now attends Hendricks School for Boys, a windowless building with cruel classmates and oblivious teachers. He knows he has to blend in, but he lives in constant fear that his behavior will betray him. Then one day Luke discovers a door to the outside. He knows that beyond the walls of Hendricks lie the secrets he is desperate to uncover. What he doesn’t know is whom he can trust—and where the answers to his questions may lead him.

Frey and Rafi are inseparable . . . two edges of the same knife. But Frey's very existence is a secret. In Impostors, master storyteller Scott Westerfeld returns with a new series set in the world of his mega-bestselling Uglies, a world full of twist and turns, rebellion and intrigue, where any wrong step could be Frey's last

The Three Imposters is a strange little book, a narrative about a secret society's efforts to retrieve a Roman coin ("The Gold Tiberius"), but this "novel" appears to be little more than a convenient device for telling a series of marvelous, horrific tales. Two of these tales--"The Novel of the Black Seal" and "The Novel of the White Powder"--are first-class works of imaginative fiction, and the entire book itself is entrancing, reminiscent of Stevenson's New Arabian Nights in its descriptions of London--conveyed in musical, Swinburneian prose--make of this nineteenth century metropolis something as exotic and fantastic as the Baghdad of Haroun al-Rashid. In addition, this collection contains not only two short stories but also the novella "The Great God Pan," one of the acknowledged classics of the weird tale. Its Chinese box structure--the horror revealed in fragments, in various voices, with lacunae which must be supplied by the reader--makes the narrative all the more compelling and terrifying in its obliqueness. (Lovecraft used this structure as his model for "The Call of Cthulhu.") "The Great God Pan" has an interesting plot as well, in that it is an inversion of the Ripper murders which occurred only a few years before. Instead of lower-class women murdered in the slums by an unknown male slasher, we have wealthy young men committing suicide in the most fashionable sections of London--and this time a mysterious woman seems to be involved.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the acclaimed author of Outlaws • For decades, Enric Marco was revered as a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a crusader for justice, and a Holocaust survivor. But in May 2005, at the height of his renown, he was exposed as a fraud. Marco was never in a Nazi concentration camp. And perhaps the rest of his past was fabricated, too, a combination of his delusions of grandeur and his compulsive lying. In this hypnotic narrative, which combines fiction and nonfiction, detective story and war story, biography and autobiography, Javier Cercas sets out to unravel Marco’s enigma. With both profound compassion and lacerating honesty, Cercas probes one man’s gigantic lie to explore the deepest, most flawed parts of our humanity.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER, updated with a new afterword “This is the definitive account of what has gone wrong in our two-party system, and how our democracy has to adapt to survive it. I can't say it in strong enough terms: Read. This. Book.” —RACHEL MADDOW The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America For decades, American voters innocently assumed the two major political parties were equally mature and responsible governing entities, ideological differences aside. That belief is due for an overhaul: in recent years, the Republican Party has undergone an astonishing metamorphosis, one so baffling and complete that few have fully reckoned with the reality and its consequences. Republicans, simply put, have quit governing. As MSNBC's Steve Benen charts in his groundbreaking new book, the contemporary GOP has become a "post-policy party." Republicans are effectively impostors, presenting themselves as officials who are ready to take seriously the substance of problem solving, but whose sole focus is the pursuit and maintenance of power. Astonishingly, they are winning–at the cost of pushing the political system to the breaking point. Despite having billed itself as the "party of ideas," the Republican Party has walked away from the hard but necessary work of policymaking. It is disdainful of expertise and hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized, or implemented. This policy nihilism dominated the party's posture throughout Barack Obama's presidency, which in turn opened the door to Donald Trump -- who would cement the GOP's post-policy status in ways that were difficult to even imagine a few years earlier. The implications of this approach to governance are all-encompassing. Voters routinely elect Republicans such as Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz to powerful offices, expecting GOP policymakers to have the technocratic wherewithal to identify problems, weigh alternative solutions, forge coalitions, accept compromises, and apply some level of governmental competence, if not expertise. The party has consistently proven those hopes misguided. The result is an untenable political model that's undermining the American policymaking process and failing to serve the public's interests. The vital challenge facing the civil polity is coming to terms with the party's collapse as a governing entity and considering what the party can do to find its policymaking footing anew. The Impostors serves as a devastating indictment of the GOP's breakdown, identifying the culprits, the crisis, and its effects, while challenging Republicans with an imperative question: Are they ready to change direction? As Benen writes, "A great deal is riding on their answer."

Good Morning Vietnam meets Bill & Ted - an incredible true story with film awards written all over it. I raced through each chapter wondering what would happen to these guys next! - Kelly Urich, 94.9 KCMO An amazing true story that would be impossible to happen today. Richard Blade steers us on a wild, thrilling musical ride - buckle up! Terri Nunn, lead singer, Berlin! In 1966, two teenage boys from Torrance, California, were hunted by the FBI, and disappeared by assuming the identity of a best-selling singing duo from the fifties. For the next three years they toured America, masquerading as popstars, racing to stay one step ahead of the authorities, while they watched their country endure its most turbulent decade as it reeled from the effects of assassinations, protests and the Vietnam War

Rejected by her fiancé after traveling to post-WWII Montreal, Lily accepts the marriage proposal of her ex's smitten brother Nathan, who is shocked to discover that Lily is not the woman she claimed to be when she disappears.

The Imposters is the memoir of a young would-be writer making her way alone in Manhattan in the early 1980s. With no long-term friends and a family that is going literally bankrupt, she finds friendship and community in a tiny yoga school on Eighth Avenue run by a dynamic leader of a merry band of outsider yogis. Here, she thinks, she will find meaning and purpose. With little hesitation, she gives it her all. The tyranny of a charismatic personality is one of the most blindingly seductive. The circumstances of this journey with a small cult are unique, but the experience will resonate with anyone who has fallen prey to something or someone promising ecstasy and delivering poison.