6 June 1984: The Indian Army storms the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab's stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India's dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who...

A wonder-filled quest to understand everything that has happened in the history of the earth, from the Big Bang theory to the rise of civilization and beyond—revised to reflect the last two decades of scientific advancement.How did we get from being nothing at all to where we are today? How did the age of the dinosaurs eventually give way to the age of the iPhone? In this completely revised update to the international phenomenon A Short History of Nearly Everyt...

Explosive SAS action in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan.The command came: 'Stop those vehicles!'It was like a red rag to a bull. Instantly streams of 7.62 mm tracer and 50 mm calibre machine gun rounds arced across the night sky and smashed into the bus and truck.Elite SAS Patrol Commander Stuart 'Nev' Bonner takes us inside the extraordinary and dangerous world of secret combat operations in this explosive, behind-the-scenes look at life inside the...

A startling history of modern Afghanistan: the story of a country caught in a vortex of terror.Veteran defense analyst and Afghanistan expert David Isby provides an insightful and meticulously researched look at the current situation in Afghanistan, her history, and what he believes must be done so that the US and NATO coalition can succeed in what has historically been known as “the graveyard of empires.” Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world wi...

On January 12, 2010, novelist Dany Laferrière had just ordered dinner at a Port-au-Prince restaurant with a friend when the earthquake struck. He survived; some three hundred thousand others did not. The quake caused widespread destruction and left over one million homeless.This moving and revelatory book is an eyewitness account of the quake and its aftermath. In a series of vignettes, Laferrière reveals the shock, rage, and grief experienced by those around him, the acts of heroi...

"Comprehensive and compelling…a landmark study" of the Arab-Zionist conflict, told from both sides, by the author of Israel's Secret Wars (Sunday Times, UK).Setting the scene at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral testimonies to his own vivid-on-the-ground reporting—to illuminate the most polarizing conflict of m...

"The definitive account . . . A fascinating combination of grand strategy and personal vignettes" (Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal).Finalist for the 2013 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military HistorySurge is an insider's view of the most decisive phase of the Iraq War. After exploring the dynamics of the war during its first three years, the book takes the reader on a journey to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where the controversial n...

In 2000, Mexico's long invincible Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost the presidential election to Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN). The ensuing changeover—after 71 years of PRI dominance—was hailed as the beginning of a new era of hope for Mexico. Yet the promises of the PAN victory were not consolidated. In this vivid account of Mexico's recent history, a journalist with extensive reporting experience investigates the nation's young democracy, its shortcomings and ...

The creator of TomDispatch.com "tackles our military fetish . . . He takes on our war-possessed world with clear-eyed, penetrating precision" ( Mother Jones).Tom Engelhardt, creator of the website TomDispatch.com, takes a scalpel to the American urge to dominate the globe. Tracing developments from 9/11 to present day, this is an unforgettable anatomy of a disaster that is yet to end.Since 2001, Tom Englehardt has written regular reports for his po...

2008 was a watershed year for global finance. The banking system was eventually pulled back from the brink, but the world was saddled with the worst slump since the 1930s Depression, and millions were left unemployed. While numerous books have addressed the financial crisis, very little has been written about its social consequences.   Journalist Tom Clark draws on the research of a transatlantic team led by Professors Anthony Heath and Robert D. Putnam to determine the great rec...

This important book is not about immediate events or policies or responses to the Arab Spring. Instead, it takes a long, judicious view of political change in the Arab world, beginning with the first Awakening in the nineteenth century and extending into future decades when—if the dream is realized—a new Arab world defined by pluralism and tolerance will emerge. Marwan Muasher, former foreign minister of Jordan, asserts that all sides—the United States, Europe, Isra...

Glossy television images of happy, industrious, and increasingly prosperous workers show a bright view of life in twenty-first-century China. But behind the officially approved story is a different reality. Preparing this book Gerard Lemos asked hundreds of Chinese men and women living in Chongqing, an industrial mega-city, about their wishes and fears. The lives they describe expose the myth of China's harmonious society. Hundreds of millions of everyday people in China are beleaguered by...