David Talbot – författare

An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful—and secretive—colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers.

America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials—including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials—Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures.

Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

An exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state—and the battle for America’s soul.

How long has it been since you looked at your phone or checked your emails? These simple acts are performed by millions upon millions of people numerous times each day. But the longer a person''s face is illuminated by the glow of their screen, the more at risk they are of experiencing a negative impact on their attention span, productivity, memory and mental health, and the more at risk they are of becoming addicted to their screens, of becoming a ''glowface''.

Starting with his own powerful story of a twenty-year screen addiction, the author systematically looks at the cost of having instant access to information, entertainment and global communication. What have we parted with for the sake of this convenience?

Littered with anecdotes and rendering the results of research into everyday language, Glowface explores the following questions: When we expose children to screens at a young age and for long periods of time, what effect does it have on their natural talents? What happens to our thought processes when we allow screens to constantly interrupt us? What is the impact on our lives when we work in careers built on distraction? What are the repercussions of electing and appointing leaders who reflect our distracted selves? As we increasingly hand our children''s education over to screen devices, is it improving educational outcomes? When we use our screen devices to store and share our memories, what is the impact on our own memory? How enriching are our digital pastimes? What are our screen devices doing to our mental health?

Our talents, thought processes, careers, leadership, education, memory, leisure time and mental health - these are just some of the things that make us who we are, and each is being eroded by screens. Each is being stolen. Glowface makes readers confront this reality and gives them a reason to start to claim them back.

Applied ADO.NET: Building Data-Driven Solutions provides extensive coverage of ADO.NET technology, including ADO.NET internals, namespaces, classes, and interfaces. Whereas most books cover only the SQL and OLE DB data providers, authors Mahesh Chand and David Talbot detail the SQL, OLE DB, and ODBC data providers, as well as additions to ADO.NET, the Oracle, MySQL, and XML .NET data providers. Chand and Talbot also cover the internals of data binding and provide detailed coverage of both Windows Forms and Web Forms data binding and data-bound controls. Because XML plays a major role in .NET development, the authors take a comprehensive look at XML namespaces and classes, and how to integrate both with ADO.NET.

The book begins with the basics of ASP.NET and data-bound controls. It then delves into the internals of data binding and shows how to use DataGrid, DataList, and other data-bound controls in real-world applications. Chand and Talbot also discuss the ASP.NET guest book, database XML Web services, and even an online bookstore site development and design process.

The book also covers

Advanced developers will learn from the coverage of ADO.NET architecture, related design issues, and how ADO.NET data providers are designed.

The New York Times bestselling, groundbreaking account of one of the most tumultuous periods in our history—the Kennedy Administration and its dramatic aftermath—by acclaimed journalist David Talbot.

Though countless books have been written about the Kennedy men and their brief, tumultuous time in the White House, few have offered as many explosive revelations as this one. David Talbot describes a JFK administration more besieged by domestic enemies than has been previously realized, from within the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and the mob. It is against this dark backdrop that he charts the emotionally charged journey of Robert Kennedy, whose soul-scouring quest to find the origins of his brother''s murder led him, to his horror, back to the dark corners of American power that had been part of his portfolio: U.S. intelligence, Cuba, and organized crime.

From the Kennedy "band of brothers" to RFK''s hope of using executive power to solve Jack''s death once and for all, this probing work of history draws on more than 150 exclusive interviews to produce a bold look at power and vengeance. A topic of perennial interest, Brothers is a multilayered, complex tale of gut-wrenching history.

Season of the Witch is the first audiobook to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself—and then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 1960s cultural revolution. But by the early 1970s, San Francisco’s ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots, and finally a terrifying sexual epidemic. No other city endured so many calamities in such a short time span.

David Talbot takes us deep into the riveting story of his city’s ascent, decline, and heroic recovery. He draws intimate portraits of San Francisco’s legendary demons and saviors: Charles Manson, Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Bill Graham, Herb Caen, the Cockettes, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Joe Montana and the Super Bowl 49ers. He reveals how the city emerged from the trials of this period with a new brand of “San Francisco values,” including gay marriage, medical marijuana, immigration sanctuary, universal health care, recycling, renewable energy, consumer safety, and a living wage mandate. Considered radical when they were first introduced, these ideas have become the bedrock of decent society in many parts of the country, and exemplify the ways that the city now inspires us toward a live-and-let-live tolerance, a shared sense of humanity, and an openness to change.

As a new generation of activists and dreamers seeks its own path to a more enlightened future, Season of the Witch—with its epic tale of the wild and bloody birth of San Francisco values—offers both inspiration and cautionary wisdom.