The Ethics of the Lie by Rabate, Jean-Michel, Verderber, Suzanne Pinocchio knows: the unconscious knowledge of the conscious lie. From little white lies to the deepest, darkest ones, it is an accepted fact that we - like the boy who cried wolf - lie very often, at least three times a day. The thesis of this erudite and entertaining book is that lies are structured like paradoxes. Lying is a common social manifestation that is fraught with contradictions: we lie quite frequently, but we hate liars, and we detest above all being lied to. We know that most politicians lie, hoping that they lie reasonably, as it were, but when they are caught in the act, their careers are ruined. The common root to these phenomena goes back to the paradigmatic figure of the paradox: I am lying but I tell the truth when I say that I am lying. In The Ethics of the Lie, Jean-Michel Rabaté examines this ancient problem in a new light, starting with a contemporary American context. He enters into the web of lies spun by the media, turns the microscope on the U.S. presidency, explores the dynamics of family lies, and even analyzes Hollywood's role in reenacting these dilemmas. Do we live in an age when disinformation has reached such a fevered pitch that we can dismiss everything presented as "fact" or "news"? In questioning this widespread skepticism, Rabaté deconstructs the pathology of lies and their logical mechanisms, leading us back to the continuing debates of the great philosophers and their philosophical foundations - Plato, Nietzsche, and Aristotle - and in doing so, swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Jean-Michel Rabaté is Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a managing editor of the Journal of Modern Literature and a senior curator of Slought Foundation. A leading figure among the generation of French theorists taught by Derrida and by Lacan, he is the author or editor of more than 20 books on modernism, literary theory, psychoanalysis, and contemporary art.

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Glenny, Misha With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime. Current estimates suggest that illegal trade accounts for nearly one-fifth of global GDP. McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by the same source: the triumphant material affluence of the West. To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crime's phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. McMafia will change the way we look at the world.