Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments—building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion—were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. In The Radioactive Boy Scout, veteran journalist Ken Silverstein recreates in brilliant detail the months of David’s improbable nuclear quest. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. (Ironically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was his number one source of information.) Scavenging antiques stores and junkyards for old-fashioned smoke detectors and gas lanterns—both of which contain small amounts of radioactive material—and following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town’s forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. An outrageous account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris that sits comfortably on the shelf next to such offbeat science books as Driving Mr. Albert and stories of grand capers like Catch Me If You Can, The Radioactive Boy Scout is a real-life adventure with the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor

Silverstein, Ken

Science & Math

Random House]

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Random House Publishing Group

"An intellectual of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and a US-based journalist produce a sympathetic portrait of the Party. Without being critical offers history and context of PT's phenomenal growth in 1980s. Title is an awkward translation of Lula's 1989 campaign slogan"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/

Without Fear of Being Happy: Lula, the Workers Party and Brazil

History

Sader, Emir

Americas

Verso Books

The Brazilian Workers Party is the most important political formation to emerge in Latin America for many years. Under the charismatic leadership of an ex-metalworker and union official, Luis Inácio da Silva, known simply as “Lula” by the Brazilian masses, the Workers Party won 31 million votes to come within three per cent of winning the 1989 presidential election on a bold anti-capitalist platform. Taking its title from the Workers Party’s slogan in these elections, Without Fear of Being Happy shows how the party’s development reflected the increasing social inequalities under Brazil’s military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985, and gives an account of the wave of strikes organized by Workers Party leaders which accelerated the collapse of the generals’ regime. Since its formation in 1980, the party has brought together trade unionists, landless peasants, shantytown activists, the progressive wing of the Catholic Church and human rights campaigners. Drawing on the experiences and aspirations of this wide coalition, it has attempted to redefine a socialist perspective in a time of triumphant neo-liberalism. In a detailed assessment of the organization, program and electoral prospects of the Workers Party today, Emir Sader and Ken Silverstein highlight the dilemmas it faces as a radical political force in a country who economy—the eighth largest in the West—attracts keen interest from the United States. The Workers Party’s success has foreshadowed the emergence of leftwing coalitions in other countries of the region and has been an inspiration for socialists throughout the Third World. The first comprehensive account of this remarkable political phenomenon, Without Fear of Being Happy will be of lasting value to all those interested in Latin American politics and anti-imperialist strategies in the era of the New World Order.

Without Fear of Being Happy

“As I have often said, I would represent the devil himself for the right price–it’s not personal, just business.” –a Washington, D.C., lobbyist For nearly as long as there have been politicians in the United States, there have been lobbyists haunting the halls of Congress–shaking hands, bearing gifts, and brandishing agendas. Everyone knows how the back-scratching game of money, power, and PR is played. For a good enough offer, there are those who will gladly dive into the dirtiest political waters. The real question is: Just how low will they sink? Veteran investigative journalist Ken Silverstein made it his mission to find out–and “Turkmeniscam” was born. On assignment for Harper’s magazine, and armed with a fistful of fake business cards, Silverstein went deep undercover as a corporate henchman with money to burn and a problem to solve: transforming the former Soviet-bloc nation Turkmenistan–branded “one of the worst totalitarian systems in the world”–into a Capitol Hill-friendly commodity. Even in the notoriously ethics-challenged world of Washington’s professional lobbying industry, could “Kenneth Case” (Silverstein’s fat-cat alter ego) find a team of D.C. spin doctors willing to whitewash the regime of a megalomaniac dictator with an unpronounceable name and an unspeakable reputation? Would the Beltway’s best and brightest image-mongers shill for a country condemned for its mind-boggling history of corruption, brutality, and civil rights abuse? Who would dare tread in the ignoble footsteps of Ivy Lee, the pioneering PR guru who sought to make the Nazis look nice? And who would stoop to unprecedented new lows to conquer Congress and compromise the red, white, and blue for the sake of the almighty green? As Ken Silverstein discovers in this mordantly funny, disturbingly enlightening, jaw-dropping exploration of the dark side, the real question is: Who wouldn’t? Praise for The Radioactive Boy Scout “Alarming . . . The story fascinates from start to finish.” –Outside “An astounding story . . . [Silverstein] has a novelist’s eye for meaningful detail and a historian’s touch for context.” –The San Diego Union-Tribune “[Silverstein] does a fabulous job of letting David [Hahn’s] surrealistic story tell itself. . . . But what’s truly amazing is how far Hahn actually got in the construction of his crude nuclear reactor.” –The Columbus Dispatch “Enthralling . . . [The Radioactive Boy Scout] has the quirky pleasures of a Don DeLillo novel or an Errol Morris documentary. . . . An engaging portrait of a person whose life on America’s fringe also says something about mainstream America.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune “Amazing . . . unsettling . . . should come with a warning: Don’t buy [this book] for any obsessive kids in the family. It might give them ideas.” –Rocky Mountain News

Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship

Business & Money

International

The Radioactive Boy Scout (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

Turtleback Books

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David?s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town?s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.

From the creator of CounterPunch--the "essential" (Noam Chomsky) newsletter--comes a lively expose of who really runs Washington. This gut-wrenching chronicle of the hostile takeover of democracy names the names and lays the blame. Silverstein fingers the corporate villains--from Boeing to UPS--who pay the hired guns to bag the big concessions of corporate welfare Extensive radio promos. National media publicity. Author speaking tour. .

Washington on $10 Million A Day: How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Common Courage Press

The oil industry provides the lifeblood of modern civilization, and bestselling books have been written about the industry and even individual companies in it, like ExxonMobil. But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world. The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers—that's tripled during the past decade—moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public. Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.

The Secret World of Oil

Industries

Verso

The oil industry provides the lifeblood of modern civilization...But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting- ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world. The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers - that's tripled during the past decade - moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public. Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high -flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his 11 luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.

Secret World of Oil

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Silverstein, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Silverstein, Ken

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Silverstein, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor

Without Fear of Being Happy: Lula, the Workers Party and Brazil

Without Fear of Being Happy

Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship

The Radioactive Boy Scout (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor

Washington on $10 Million A Day: How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation

The Secret World of Oil

Secret World of Oil