Eric Jason Martin

In the aftermath of the Cold War, US intelligence caught three high-profile Russian spies. However, these arrests left major questions unanswered, and rumours have long swirled of another mole, often referred to as the Fourth Man. Three pioneering female veterans of counterintelligence were tasked with unearthing him. With steadfast determination and expertise, they came to a shocking conclusion, one which had, and continues to harbour, dramatic consequences for American security.

In this gripping insider account, Baer tells a thrilling story of Russian espionage and American intelligence. With profound implications for the rise of Vladimir Putin and international relations with Russia, The Fourth Man is a real-life spy thriller with echoes of John Le Carre.

In these incisive interviews activist Chomsky addresses the urgent questions of this tumultuous time speaking to the deterioration of democracy in the United States and rising tensions globally. He examines the crumbling of the social fabric and the fractures of the Biden era including the halting steps toward a Green New Deal the illegitimate authority of the Supreme Court in particular its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19. Chomsky also untangles the roots of the War in Ukraine the diplomatic tensions among the United States China and Russia and considers the need for climate action on an international scale. Illegitimate Authority exposes those who wield power in their own self-interest and plots framework for how we can stand together and fight against injustice.

In these incisive interviews activist Chomsky addresses the urgent questions of this tumultuous time speaking to the deterioration of democracy in the United States and rising tensions globally. He examines the crumbling of the social fabric and the fractures of the Biden era including the halting steps toward a Green New Deal the illegitimate authority of the Supreme Court in particular its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19. Chomsky also untangles the roots of the War in Ukraine the diplomatic tensions among the United States China and Russia and considers the need for climate action on an international scale. Illegitimate Authority exposes those who wield power in their own self-interest and plots framework for how we can stand together and fight against injustice.

Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower became the defining account of our century's first devastating event, 9/11, so The Plague Year will become the defining account of the second. 

The story starts with the initial moments of Covid's appearance in Wuhan and ends with Joseph Biden's inauguration in an America ravaged by well over 400,000 deaths - a mortality already some ten times worse than US combat deaths in the entire Vietnam War.

This is an anguished, furious memorial to a year in which all of America's great strengths - its scientific knowledge, its great civic and intellectual institutions, its spirit of voluntarism and community - were brought low, not by a terrifying new illness alone, but by political incompetence and cynicism on a scale for which there has been no precedent. With insight, sympathy, clarity and rage.