Bücher von Jack Straw

From a small Christian school in Oklahoma to the White House Situation Room to becoming the most feared polygraph operator in the country, Doug Williams said the words "YOU'RE LYING!" to thousands of people hooked up to his lie detector. People feared him and his machine. Fear has a smell and he smelled it everyday in his chamber of polygraph horrors. But Doug knows something and he knows it without any doubt, the polygraph doesn't work. It can be manipulated by the operator to give whatever results he wants. Guilty persons go free and innocent people get hammered mercilessly, all at the whim of the polygraph operator. And he knows something else. It can be beat. He could teach people to beat it and he could teach them in 5 minutes or less to do so. Armed only with his conscience Doug left everything behind to battle the 4 billion dollar a year industry and engage in the ultimate psychological battle of man versus machine to stop the insanity. Taking on all comers and challengers, he won every battle until....they put him in prison. In prison, some men cower. Some men give up. One man is innocent. Now he's out. Game on.

As a small boy in Epping Forest, Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britain's Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents, he was bright enough to get a scholarship to a direct-grant school, but spent his holidays as a plumbers' mate for his uncles to bring in some much-needed extra income. Yet he spent 13 years and 11 days in government, including long and influential spells as Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. This is the story of how he got there. His memoirs offer a unique insight into the complex, sometimes self-serving but always fascinating world of British politics and reveals the toll that high office takes, but , more importantly, the enormous satisfaction and extraordinary privilege of serving both your constituents and your country. Straw's has been a very public life, but he reveals the private face, too and offers readers a vivid and authoritative insight into the Blair/Brown era and, indeed, the last forty years of British politics.

The British justice system is an ancient one that has continually evolved to meet modern needs. In this set of three essays, originally presented as the Hamlyn lectures in 2012, Jack Straw reviews some of the most important recent reforms to the system of British justice and suggests key areas in need of further reform. He focuses in particular on the criminal courts, human rights, judicial appointments and the relationship between the UK Parliament, the domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In all three cases, he argues that the British justice system is now in a healthier state than it has been in his lifetime, but that there remains much room - and need - for improvement.