Adam LeBor

An investigative history of the Bank for International Settlements, the central bankers' own bank.

The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World

Tower of Basel

An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa

City of Oranges

Yael Azoulay does the United Nations' dirty work by cutting deals that most of us never hear about. Equally at home in the caves of Afghanistan, the slums of Gaza, or corporate boardrooms all across the world, Yael believes the ends justify the means...until she's pushed way beyond her breaking point. When Yael is assigned to eastern Congo to negotiate with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani, a Hutu warlord wanted for genocide, she offers him a generous plea bargain. Thanks to Congo's abundance of a valuable mineral used in computer and cell phone production, her number one priority is maintaining regional stability. But when she discovers that Hakizimani is linked to the death of the person she loved the most—and that the UN is prepared to sanction mass murder—Yael soon realizes that salvation means not just saving others' lives but confronting her own inner demons. Spanning New York City, Africa, and Switzerland, The Geneva Option is the first in a series of gripping conspiracy thrillers, a tour de force of international espionage and intrigue.

A Yael Azoulay Novel

The Geneva Option

Nazi-occupied Budapest, winter 1944. The Russians are smashing through the German lines. Miklos Farkas breaks out of the Jewish ghetto to find food - at the Nazis headquarters. There he is handed a stolen copy of The Budapest Protocol, detailing the Nazis post-war plans. Miklos knows it must stay hidden for ever if he is to stay alive. Present day Budapest. As the European Union launches the election campaign for the first President of Europe, Miklos Farkas is brutally murdered. His journalist grandson Alex buries his grief to track down the killers. He soon unravels a chilling conspiracy rooted in the dying days of the Third Reich, one that will ensure Nazi economic domination of Europe - and a plan for a new Gypsy Holocaust. The hunt is on for The Budapest Protocol. Alex is soon drawn deeper into a deadly web of intrigue and power play, a game played for the highest stakes: the very future of Europe. But Alex too is haunted. He must battle his own demons as he uncovers a shadowy alliance that the world thought had been defeated for good. Powerful, controversial and thought-provoking, The Budapest Protocol is a journey into Europe's hidden heart of darkness...

The Budapest Protocol

Part financial scandal and part Greek tragedy, this book dramatically humanizes the results of Madoff's scam by focusing on his connection to, and catastrophic impact on, the Jewish community Opening up the clubbish world where financier Bernard Madoff operated, this book details the scandal that rocked the financial trust of Americans. It was in luxurious Palm Beach, by the manicured lawns and Olympic-sized swimming pool, that Madoff ravaged the world of philanthropy and high society he strove so hard to join; vaporizing the assets of charities, foundations, and individuals that had trusted him with their funds. It seems nothing was sacrosanct to Madoff, possibly the greatest con-man in history—even Elie Wiesel's foundation lost tens of millions. It all prompted the unsettling questions How could Madoff, a pillar of the Jewish community, do this to a Nobel Laureate and Auschwitz survivor? and How could some of the most sophisticated and worldly people in America fall victim to a collective delusion for years? Tracing the links from Palm Beach and the Hamptons to the clubs of Manhattan society, the book details the network of relationships across which flowed hundreds of millions of dollars, and shows how despite material success and acclaim, some human impulses remain eternal. It reveals how an underlying sense of insecurity still shapes some of the richest and most successful individuals in America, making them crave ever more status and peer acclaim

How America Fell for Bernard Madoffs $65 Billion Investment Scam

The Believers

Offers an account of a man who started wars, whose rhetoric whipped up Serb nationalism to a frenzy of "ethnic cleansing" and yet who retained for a decade the ability to wrap the "international community" round his little finger.

A Biography

Milosevic

Roger Boyes

The authors here provide a radical new examination of the relationship between the Nazi Party and those it sought to seduce and control.

Choices, Corruption and Compromise in the Third Reich

Surviving Hitler

From the killing fields of Rwanda and Srebrenica a decade ago to those of Darfur today, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to confront genocide. This is evinced, author and journalist Adam LeBor maintains, in a May 1995 document from Yasushi Akashi, the most senior UN official in the field during the Yugoslav wars, in which he refused to authorize air strikes against the Serbs for fear they would “weaken” Milosevic. More recently, in 2003, urgent reports from UN officials in the Sudan detailing atrocities from Darfur were ignored for a year because they were politically inconvenient. This book is the first to examine in detail the crucial role of the Secretariat, its relationship with the Security Council, and the failure of UN officials themselves to confront genocide. LeBor argues the UN must return to its founding principles, take a moral stand and set the agenda of the Security Council instead of merely following the lead of the great powers. LeBor draws on dozens of firsthand interviews with UN officials, current and former, and such international diplomats as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Douglas Hurd, and David Owen.This book will set the terms for discussion when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan steps down to make room for a new head of the world body, and political observers assess Annan’s legacy and look to the future of the world organization.

The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide

"Complicity with Evil"

Wieza w Bazylei

The ancient port of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, was once known as the 'Bride of Palestine'. It was one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the Mediterranean. Once the centre of Palestinian modernity, Jaffa was the country's cultural and political capital. There Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived, worked, and celebrated together. It was commonplace for the Arabs of Jaffa to attend a wedding at the house of the Jewish Chelouche family and even after 1948 Jews and Arabs gathered at the Jewish-owned spice shop Tiv and the Arab Abulafia family's twenty-four-hour bakery. Through intimate personal interviews and memoirs, letters, and diaries, Adam LeBor gives us a crucial insight into the human lives behind the apparently intractable story of national conflict and a vivid narrative of cataclysmic change. LeBor deftly weaves the personal story of six families, three Jewish and three Arab, into a rich and complex history of Israel and Palestine in the twentieth century. In a special updated afterword, LeBor returns to Jaffa after ten years to find a city greatly changed by gentrification, demolition and waves of new incomers. Rising prices have scattered communities. The exodus of Jaffa's Arabs continues. But with all the changes, the desire for integration endures. LeBor's magnificent history is a story of hope found in the memories of the Levant's once dazzling mosaic of cultures and communities.

UN covert negotiator, Yael Azoulay, has been sent to Reykjavik to broker a secret meeting between US President Freshwater and the Iranian president. Both parties want the violence to stop, but Yael soon realises that powerful enemies are pulling the strings. Enemies for whom peace means an end to their lucrative profit streams.

The Reykjavik assignment

The millennia-old port of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, was once known as the 'Bride of Palestine', one of the truly cosmopolitan cities of the Mediterranean. There Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived, worked, and celebrated together and it was commonplace for the Arabs of Jaffa to attend a wedding at the house of the Jewish Chelouche family or for Jews and Arabs to both gather at the Jewish spice shop Tiv and the Arab Khamis Abulafia's twenty-four-hour bakery. Through intimate personal interviews and generations-old memoirs, letters, and diaries, Adam LeBor gives us a crucial look at the human lives behind the headlines and a vivid narrative of cataclysmic change.

Budapest's dark history finally catches up with Detective Balthazar Kovacs in the final instalment in Adam LeBor's Hungarian crime trilogy.

Dohany Street

Drawing on new research and recently declassified documents, LeBor and Boyes reveal a tapestry of ordinary lives lived under extraordinary circumstances ranging from subversion and confrontation to passive acceptance and eager complicity. This book shows in startling detail how almost every waking hour of Hitler's reign offered insidious choices, from degrees of compromise to outright resistance, to the average Germans in their interactions with each other and the regime, whether at work, home or leisure. It may seem impossible to explain how an entire nation could allow itself to be seduced by a man such as Adolf Hitler. By examining the everyday lives of Germans under Nazi rule, the authors propose an explanation more complex, strange and morally ambiguous than one might imagine. In doing so, they bring to life the steady decline in national morality in the Third Reich as the German people let themselves be taken in by Hitler. - Publisher.

The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival

Seduced by Hitler

Hitler's Secret Bankers was the first book to disclose the extensive collaboration among Swiss banks, the Swiss government, and the Third Reich before and during World War II. Switzerland, supposedly neutral in the war, seemed a safe haven to desperate Jews who entrusted their wealth to its banks, believing that even if they died their families would inherit it. For more than fifty years, this money has provided free working capital for the banks. In addition to the dispute over dormant accounts, Swiss banks provided the Nazi war machine with foreign currency, which paid for vital war materiel such as chrome and aluminum.

The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust

Hitler's Secret Bankers

Based on newly declassified documents and archival research, Hitler's Secret Bankers reveals the full, hitherto unknown extent of Swiss economic collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. In this updated edition, readers discover how and why the Swiss finally buckled and agreed to pay $1.25 billion in compensation for the funds deposited by Holocaust victims in Swiss banks. In addition to the dispute over dormant accounts, Swiss banks provided to the Nazi war machine the foreign currency that paid for vital war materiel such as chrome and aluminum. The author also explains how the exposure of the myth of Swiss neutrality, in collaboration with the Nazis, triggered investigations into the role of the British regarding Holocaust victims and the part played by Germany and its failure to compensate the survivors of slave labor, as well as the upheaval in the art world, which failed to restore stolen paintings to their rightful owners.

Nazi-occupied Budapest, Winter 1944. The Russians are smashing through the German lines. Miklos Farkas breaks out of the Jewish ghetto to find food - at the Nazis’ headquarters. There he is handed a stolen copy of The Budapest Protocol, detailing the Nazis’ post-war plans. Miklos knows it must stay hidden forever if he is to stay alive. Present day Budapest. As the European Union launches the election campaign for the first President of Europe, Miklos Farkas is brutally murdered. His journalist grandson Alex buries his grief to track down the killers. He soon unravels a chilling conspiracy rooted in the dying days of the Third Reich, one that will ensure Nazi economic domination of Europe - and a plan for a new Gypsy Holocaust. The hunt is on for The Budapest Protocol. Alex is soon drawn deeper into a deadly web of intrigue and power play, a game played for the highest stakes: the very future of Europe. The Budapest Protocol is a journey into Europe’s hidden heart of darkness.

Balthazar Kovacs, a detective on Budapest's murder squad, is on the trail of a dead man. Minutes ago, Kovacs received an anonymous SMS showing a body and an address: 26 Republic Square – the former Communist Party headquarters and once the most feared building in the country. But now, amid the ruins of the demolished building, Kovacs finds no dead body, just six members of the Gendarmerie – an elite police force reporting directly to the prime minister – and an invitation to hand over his phone and cease his investigation. Kovacs has taken his first step on a journey deep into Budapest's dark heart, towards a deadly intersection of the criminal underworld, the corridors of power and the ghosts of history. A journey that will force him to choose between the law and family loyalty.

District VIII

Describes how the Nazis exploited German dissatisfaction and promised restored German greatness based on ethical and moral compromise, and offers an explanation of how Hitler was able to seduce an entire nation.

There were no death certificates issued at Auschwitz. Nevertheless, Swiss banks still demand them before handing over the assets of account holders killed in the Holocaust to their surviving relatives. When the Jews of Europe entrusted their families' wealth to what they hoped would be a safe haven – the banks of Switzerland – they were wrong. Millions of dollars, deposited decades ago in good faith by Jews who were to die in the Nazi genocide, still lie in their vaults, earning interest and providing working capital for Swiss banks. However the involvement of neutral Switzerland in the finances of the Third Reich goes far beyond the dispute over dormant accounts. Swiss banks were the key foreign currency providers of the Nazi war machine; they knowingly accepted looted gold, stolen from the national banks of occupied Europe; and they operated an international banking centre for the Third Reich. Reissued with a new afterword, Adam LeBor reveals the true extent to which Swiss banks collaborated with the Nazi regime and profited from the deaths of millions of Jews.

Adam LeBor

About

Books

Join the club