**In this instant New York Times bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into the abuses of power within the American government.“Gripping ... spectacular piece of reporting.” —Ken Burns**For decades now, America’s national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it.

**In this instant New York Times bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into the abuses of power within the American government.“Gripping ... spectacular piece of reporting.” —Ken Burns**For decades now, America’s national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it.

A New York Times Notable Book: A look at the hidden costs of America's war on terror from "the finest national security reporter of this generation" ( Newsweek).Since 9/11, the United States has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: billions of dollars that went missing from Iraq only...

With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of many of the stories on the surface.This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operati...

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the dramatic inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them.Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who c...

The "utterly fascinating" untold story of Soviet Russia's global military mapping program—featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian).From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities like Ne...

A journalist with deep knowledge of the region provides "an enthralling and largely firsthand account of the war in Afghanistan" (Financial Times).Few reporters know as much about Afghanistan as Carlotta Gall. She was there in the 1990s after the Russians were driven out. She witnessed the early flourishing of radical Islam, imported from abroad, which caused so much local suffering. She was there right after 9/11, when US special forces helped the Norther...

In the tradition of Why Nations Fail, this book solves one of the great puzzles of history: Why did the West become the most powerful civilization in the world?Western exceptionalism—the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent—is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others.Yet in The Invention of Power, ...

'Has the power to change the way you look at the world' Steven Bartlett'The heir to Oliver Sacks' David BaddielA FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2024AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE MONTHGluttony. Greed. Sloth. Pride. Envy. Lust. Anger.These are the seven deadly sins, the vices of humankind that define immorality, the roots of all evil in the world. Or so some believe.

‘Fascinating … so enlightening that suddenly maths doesn’t seem so fearsome as it once did’ SIMON WINCHESTERFrom Aristotle to Ada Lovelace: a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. The story of our best invention yet.From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so in...

Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes a parallel universe exempt from the laws of the land, and how the wealthy and powerful benefit from it.The map of the globe shows the world we think we know: sovereign nations that grant and restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside its neatly delineated borders, however, a parallel universe has been engineered into existence, consisting of thous...

Spymaster, defector, double agent—the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post–cold war spy program in America.In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the cold war ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never changed: the spies.From 1995 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR—the successor agency to the KGB—in the United States. He directed all Russian spy action in New York C...