Best Selling Books by Robert

ERIN BROCKOVICH meets SILENT SPRING in this astounding true story of a lawyer who spent two decades building a case against one of the world’s largest chemical companies, uncovering a shocking history of environmental pollution and heartless cover-up. The story that inspired the motion picture from Participant Media/Focus Features, starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Bill Pullman and Tim Robbins, directed by Todd Haynes. In 1998, Robert Bilott was a 33-year-old Cincinnati lawyer on the verge of making partner when his career and life took an unforeseen turn. He was taken by surprise when he received a call from a man named Earl Tennant, a farmer from West Virginia with a slight connection to Robert’s family. Earl was convinced the creek on his property, where his cattle grazed, was being poisoned by run-off from a neighbouring factory landfill. His cattle were dying in hideous ways, and he hadn’t even been able to get a water sample tested by local agencies, politicians or vets. As soon as they heard the name DuPont – the area’s largest employer – he felt they were reluctant to investigate further. Once Robert saw the thick, foamy water that bubbled into the creek, the gruesome effects it seemed to have on livestock, and the disturbing frequency of cancer and lung problems in the surrounding area, he was persuaded to fight against the type of corporation his firm routinely represented. With all the cards stacked against him, Rob happened upon a stray reference in a random memo to a chemical called PFOA – a substance he’d never heard of that is used in the manufacture of Teflon. From that one reference, he ultimately gained access to 110,000 pages of DuPont documents, some of them fifty years old, that reveal decades of medical studies proving the harmful – more often than not fatal – effects of PFOA in animals and humans. And yet PFOA sludge had still been dumped into rivers and landfill, endangering many lives. The case of one farmer soon spawns a class-action suit and the shocking realisation that virtually every person on the planet has been exposed to PFOA and carries the chemical in his or her blood. This is the unforgettable story of the lawyer who worked tirelessly for twenty years to get justice for all those who had suffered because of this chemical.

"What is unique about this book is the perspective. To a modern-day reader, special ops conjure images of highly trained and exotically equipped soldiers leaping out of helicopters and Zodiac boats to wipe out terrorists... In an era when warfare was supposed to be gentlemanly and follow certain rules, did Washington and his contemporaries embrace special operations? The answer would seem to be, ''Yes.'' Even if they didn''t use the term ''special ops,'' they were willing to employ elite reconnaissance units, spies and partisan bands. Washington didn''t have SEAL Team 6. But he made good use of what he had." --The National InterestWhen the American Revolution began, the colonial troops had little hope of matching His Majesty''s highly trained, experienced British and German legions in confrontational battle. In this book, renowned author, and former U.S. Army Colonel, Robert Tonsetic describes and analyzes numerous examples of special operations conducted during the Revolution.

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling''s brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel''s suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he''s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry -- known to her friends as the Cuckoo -- famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you''ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you''ve never seen them under an investigation like this.

Everybody loves a winner, and the Rabbs are major league. Marty is the Red Sox star pitcher, Linda the loving wife. She loves everyone except the blackmailer out to wreck her life. Is Marty throwing fast balls or throwing games? It doesn''t take long for Spenser to link Marty''s performance with Linda''s past...or to find himself trapped between a crazed racketeer and an enforcer toting an M-16. America''s favorite pastime has suddenly become a very dangerous sport, and one wrong move means strike three, with Spenser out for good!

Essays by the influential—and controversial— macroeconomist Robert J. Barro. Since the 1970s, Robert Barro''s academic research has significantly influenced macroeconomic theory. For more than a decade, his writing has also enlivened the pages of publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Business Week. In Nothing Is Sacred, Barro applies his well-honed free market arguments to a remarkably diverse range of issues. These include global problems such as growth and debt, as well as social issues such as the predictive value of SAT scores, drug legalization, the economics of beauty, and the relationship between abortion rights and crime reduction.The book opens with a series of essays on famous economists, past and present, and other prominent figures whose work has economic implications, including Joe DiMaggio and Bono. In the book''s second part, Barro discusses the economics of social issues. In the third part, he considers democracy, growth, and international policy, and in the final part he examines fiscal policy, monetary policy, and the macroeconomy. Throughout, he shows that even the most widely held beliefs are not sacred truths but are open to analysis.

Thousands of people have been honored for saving Jews during the Holocaust -- but not a single Arab. Looking for a hopeful response to the plague of Holocaust denial sweeping across the Arab and Muslim worlds, Robert Satloff sets off on a quest to find the Arab hero whose story will change the way Arabs view Jews, themselves, and their own history. The story of the Holocaust''s long reach into the Arab world is difficult to uncover, covered up by desert sands and desert politics. We follow Satloff over four years, through eleven countries, from the barren wasteland of the Sahara, where thousands of Jews were imprisoned in labor camps; through the archways of the Mosque in Paris, which may once have hidden 1700 Jews; to the living rooms of octogenarians in London, Paris and Tunis. The story is very cinematic; the characters are rich and handsome, brave and cowardly; there are heroes and villains. The most surprising story of all is why, more than sixty years after the end of the war, so few people -- Arab and Jew -- want this story told.

Caught in the midst of England''s War of the Roses, young Dick Shelton''s loyalties are torn between a guardian who betrays him and the leader of the secret fellowship, "The Black Arrow."

"Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts."—David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker The New York Times–bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease. While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery—our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover. Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin—because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated—with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape. With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.

A high society wedding ends unhappily ever after in this mystery starring Boston PI Spenser—“the timeless hero of American detective fiction” (The New York Times Book Review). Hired as a bodyguard at an exclusive wedding, Spenser witnesses an unexpected crime: the kidnapping of the young bride, which opens the door for murder, family secrets, and the reappearance of an old nemesis.

"A penniless survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary, George Soros is now one of the richest men in the world, and Robert Slater does an excellent job of helping us understand how Soros did it. . . . Slater distinguishes Soros from other great investors by explaining his mental processes . . . . He explains how Soros views markets as chaotic, not efficient, and very prone to boom-bust sequences. . . . Slater has written a fascinating volume."--Barron''s The highly acclaimed bestseller updated to reveal Soros'' role in our new economic and political era As a financial genius, global philanthropist, political activist, man of conscience, and the world''s only investor with his own foreign policy--it cannot be denied that Soros is an enigmatic man of enormous influence. For more than four decades he has been so successful that he has been accused of directing the course of global markets and shaping the destinies of nations. Now, in this exhaustively updated and expanded edition of his 1996 bestseller, biographer Robert Slater separates fact from fiction to get at the truth about the mysterious figure of George Soros. Working from extensive interviews with Soros and those closest to him, Slater combines compelling biographical detail with scrupulous analysis to: Detail how Soros made his billions as a global currency trader and stock operator Chronicle his role in bringing down communism and establishing open societies to Eastern Europe and the former USSR Demystify Soros''s macroeconomic approach to investing and his oft-misunderstood theory of reflexivity Explore his fanatical obsession with unseating George W. Bush in 2004 and his growing involvement with left-wing political activist groups Reveal George Soros''s strategies for surviving and thriving in the chaos of today''s credit markets

The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a 1935 fantasy novel written by Robert E. Howard featuring his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was the last Conan story published before Howard''s suicide although not the last to be written.The plot is a loosely based melange of motifs from previous Conan short stories, most notably "The Scarlet Citadel", with which it shares an almost identical storyline. It takes place when Conan is about forty-five, during his reign as King of Aquilonia, and follows a plot by a group of conspirators to depose him in favor of Valerius, heir to Conan''s predecessor Numedides, whom he had slain to gain the throne.

A deeply informed look at the intensifying struggle over the future of the Catholic Church. Robert Blair Kaiser examines the most important and divisive issues confronting the Church: the sex abuse scandal, a shortage of priests due to the insistence upon celibacy, the ban on contraception, the roles of women in the Church, the increased participation of laypeople in Church affairs. He gives us an in-depth and behind-the-scenes view of six of the cardinals who gathered in Rome in April 2005 to choose a new pope and through them makes clear why Catholics worldwide are increasingly leaving the Church or defying Church doctrine. With passion and heartfelt concern, Robert Blair Kaiser brilliantly illuminates the issues and the combatants in the battle for the soul of the Catholic world. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Did J. Edgar Hoover die a natural death? Or was he murdered? When a group of high-minded and high-placed intellectuals known as Inver Brass detect a monstrous threat to the country in Hoover’s unethical use of his scandal-ridden private files, they decide to do away with him—quietly, efficiently, with no hint of impropriety. Then bestselling thriller writer Peter Chancellor stumbles onto information that makes his previous books look like harmless fairy tales. Now Chancellor and Inver Brass are on a deadly collision course, spiraling across the globe in an ever-widening arc of violence and terror. All roads lead to a showdown that will rip the nation’s capital apart—leaving only one damning document to survive. Praise for Robert Ludlum and The Chancellor Manuscript “[The Chancellor Manuscript] exerts a riveting appeal, as it seems to justify our worst nightmares of what really goes on in the so-called intelligence community in Washington.”—The New York Times Book Review “Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six-pack of thriller writers combined.”—The New York Times “Powerhouse momentum . . . as shrill as the siren on the prowl car.”—Kirkus Reviews “A complex scenario of inventive double-crossing.”—Chicago Sun-Times BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity.

In a trawl through the entire sweep of sub-Saharan history, the authors have written an accessible introduction for students and general readers. The opening chapter on geography and climate frames the discussion, demonstrating how the environment has shaped the societies and cultures of those living in the region. Thereafter they describe the rise of states and empires in the classical period, the slave trade within Africa and beyond to the Americas, and the European conquest. The concluding section focuses on Africa in the twentieth century as it gains independence and searches for a new identity beyond colonialism. While the authors mull over the debates which have shaped the study of African history, at the center of this story are the tragedies, triumphs and the resilience of the African people. The book is illustrated with photographs, maps, and sidebars which feature the salient points on either side of the debates.

Exploring the origins of Christianity, this book looks at why it was that people first in Judea and then in the Roman and Greek Mediterranean world became susceptible to the new religion. Robert Knapp looks for answers in a wide-ranging exploration of religion and everyday life from 200 BC to the end of the first century. Survival, honour and wellbeing were the chief preoccupations of Jews and polytheists alike. In both cases, the author shows, people turned first to supernatural powers. According to need, season and place polytheists consulted and placated vast constellations of gods, while the Jews worshipped and contended with one almighty and jealous deity. Professor Knapp considers why any Jew or polytheist would voluntarily dispense with a well-tried way of dealing with the supernatural and trade it in for a new model. What was it about the new religion that led people to change beliefs they had held for millennia and which in turn, within four centuries of the birth of its messiah, led it to transform the western world? His conclusions are as convincing as they are sometimes surprising.

The author of the blockbuster The Bridges of Madison County blends passion and adventure in the story of an American novelist in Mexico and his young lover, who take a trip with a killer.

Provides irrefutable evidence that not only did government interference with the market cause the Great Depression (and our current economic collapse), but Herbert Hoover''s and Franklin Delano Roosevelt''s big government policies afterwards made it much longer and much worse.--From publisher description.

After so many adrenaline-soaked years risking his life, Jason Bourne is chafing under the quiet life of a linguistics professor. Aware of his frustrations, his academic mentor asks for help investigating the murder of a former student by a previously unknown Muslim extremist sect called the Black Legion. The young man died carrying information about the group''s terrorist activities, including an immediate plan to attack the United States. In Europe, Bourne''s investigation of the Black Legion turns into one of the deadliest and most tangled operations of his double life-the pursuit of the leader of a murderous terrorist group with roots in the darkest days of World War II.

Warren Buffett is the most famous investor of all time and one of today’s most admired business leaders. He became a billionaire and investment sage by looking at companies as businesses rather than prices on a stock screen. The first two editions of The Warren Buffett Way gave investors their first in-depth look at the innovative investment and business strategies behind Buffett''s spectacular success. The new edition updates readers on the latest investments by Buffett. And, more importantly, it draws on the new field of behavioral finance to explain how investors can overcome the common obstacles that prevent them from investing like Buffett. New material includes: How to think like a long-term investor – just like Buffett Why "loss aversion", the tendency of most investors to overweight the pain of losing money, is one of the biggest obstacles that investors must overcome. Why behaving rationally in the face of the ups and downs of the market has been the key to Buffett''s investing success Analysis of Buffett''s recent acquisition of H.J. Heinz and his investment in IBM stock The greatest challenge to emulating Buffett is not in the selection of the right stocks, Hagstrom writes, but in having the fortitude to stick with sound investments in the face of economic and market uncertainty. The new edition explains the psychological foundations of Buffett''s approach, thus giving readers the best roadmap yet for mastering both the principles and behaviors that have made Buffett the greatest investor of our generation.