Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten returns with a masterpiece of travel writing and history in this journey through thirteen nations—all but two formerly communist—just beyond the edge of the West where few casual travelers venture. His work as an independent foreign correspondent takes him deep into the field beyond the sensational headlines, from his hilariously miserable road trip through the Middle East with his best friend to Iraq, and around Eastern Europe to the Wild West of Alb...

Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten’s gripping first-person narratives from the war zones, police states, and revolutionary capitals of the Middle East and North Africa paint a vivid picture of peoples and nations at war with themselves, each other, and—sometimes—with the rest of the world.His journeys take him from Libya under the gruesome rule of Muammar Qaddafi to Egypt before, during and after the Arab Spring; from the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights in Syria on the eve of ...

In the Wake of the Surge is a gripping first-person narrative that tells the story of the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Americans in Iraq during one of the most violent and wrenching periods in that country's history. Award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten visited Iraq seven times between 2005 and 2009, first as a "unilateral" freelance journalist without a gun in the Kurdish autonomous region, and then as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Baghdad, Sadr...

"Absolutely terrifying." -- Benjamin Kerstein, author of The ForsakenFrom prize-winning author and award-winning journalist Michael J. Totten comes TAKEN:A writer is ripped from his home and hauled bound and gagged to a remote house in the wilderness.Four ruthless captors with overseas ties and a plan here at home—the frighteningly rational leader of a homegrown Al Qaeda terrorist cell; a torturer who learned his trade in the dungeons of Egypt; and two henchmen, one...

The Road to Fatima Gate is a first-person narrative account of revolution, terrorism, and war during history’s violent return to Lebanon after fifteen years of quiet. Michael J. Totten’s version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world’s most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollah’s supp...

From Texas to Virginia, towns, regions, counties, regiments, prisons, and even refugee camps played a significant role in shaping the contours of the Civil War. According to historian Daniel E. Sutherland, whose many books and essays helped establish the field of community studies, these varied assemblages of individuals experienced and fought the real war. Following his lead, the contributors to Hundreds of Little Wars reveal how viewing the war from the vantage point of singular...

Prize-winning author and award-winning foreign correspondent Michael J. Totten returns with a riveting tour of some of the worst places on earth in the early 21st century.From crumbling Havana, Cuba—still stubbornly communist decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall—to a comparatively upscale Hanoi, Vietnam, still struggling to free itself from Chinese-style authoritarian rule.From a nightmarish Libya under the deranged Moammar Qaddafi, to an exhausted, polarized and incre...

In Edith Wharton’s works, references to architecture, interior decoration, painting, sculpture, and fashion abound. As these essays demonstrate, art and objects are for Wharton evidence of cultural belief and reflect the values, assumptions, and customs of the burgeoning consumer culture in which she lived and about which she wrote. Furthermore, her meditations about issues of architecture, design, and decoration serve as important commentaries on her vision of the literary arts.In...