This “wonderfully moving and frequently very funny…guide through the confounding, terrifying, and strangely exhilarating world inhabited by the U.S. military in Iraq” (The Washington Post) is “a true-life M*A*S*H tale of doctors, wars, and field hospitals” (The Denver Post).At the age of fifty-one, Dr. Dave Hnida volunteered as a trauma chief at one of the busiest Combat Support Hospitals in Iraq during the Surge. The 399th CSH practiced fast-food...

This account of the renowned composer's neglected wife—including her years in a Soviet prison—is "a story both riveting and wrenching" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).Serge Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's most brilliant composers yet is an enigma to historians and his fans. Why did he leave the West and move to the Soviet Union despite Stalin's crimes? Why did his astonishing creativity in the 1930s soon dissolve into a far less inspiring out...

As heard on Radio 4 Book of the WeekLina Prokofiev was alone in her Moscow apartment one night when the telephone rang. The caller insisted that she come downstairs to collect a parcel, but when she reached the courtyard she was arrested for treason.First enraptured by the young pianist and rising star, Serge Prokofiev, during a courtship in Brooklyn, then abandoned by him in Moscow, Lina survived one of the darkest periods in Soviet histor...

The playback of recordings is the primary means of experiencing music in contemporary society, and in recent years 'classical' musicologists and popular music theorists have begun to examine the ways in which the production of recordings affects not just the sound of the final product but also musical aesthetics more generally. Record production can, indeed, be treated as part of the creative process of composition. At the same time, training in the use of these forms of technology has mov...

The untold story of the global poor: “Powerful, lucid, and revelatory, The Great Surge…offers indispensable prescriptions about sustaining global economic progress into the future” (George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management).We live today at a time of great progress for the global poor. Never before have so many people, in so many developing countries, made so much progress, in so short a time in reducing poverty, increasing incomes, improving health...

From the author of Threading My Prayer Rug, an eye-opening view of life in Saudi Arabia.It’s Not What You Think is a wry, incisive account of working in Saudi Arabia that offers insight into that insular patriarchal society, what is so attractive to expatriates living there, and what was contradictory or confining about it for a naturalized American who is a woman and a Muslim. A hospital executive in New Jersey, Sabeeha relocated with her oncologi...

From the Franz Kafka Prize–winning author. "Full of love, sorrow, and tenderness . . . a deeply heartfelt account of his family in the 1960s and 70s." —Xiaolu Guo, award-winning author of Nine ContinentsWith lyricism and deep emotion, Yan Lianke chronicles the extraordinary lives of his father and uncles, as well as his own during the Cultural Revolution. Living in a remote village, Yan's parents are so poor that they can only afford to use wheat flour on N...

In December 1936, Britain faced a constitutional crisis that was the gravest threat to the institution of the monarchy since the execution of Charles I. The ruling monarch, Edward VIII, wished to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson and crown her as his Queen. His actions scandalised the Establishment, who were desperate to avoid an international embarrassment at a time when war seemed imminent.An influential coalition formed against him, including the Prime Minister Stanley ...

Now in one volume: the three-part autobiography from the National Book Award–winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.The former CBS foreign correspondent and historian provides an invaluable look back at his life—and the events that forged the twentieth century.The Start (1904-1930): In the first of a three-volume series, Shirer tells the story of his early life, growing up in Cedar Rapids, and later serving...

Winner of the New-York Historical Society Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American HistoryWinner of the American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon AwardShortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize in Literary NonfictionFrom the author of Battle of Bretton Woods comes a “brilliant book…by far the best study yet” (The Wall Street Journal) of the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan an...

Shot at, bombed, imprisoned and arrested for murder. His is the story the establishment doesn't want you to read.br>Captain P. J. "Red" Riley is an ex-SAS soldier who served for eighteen years as an MI6 agent. Riley escaped internment in Chile during the Falklands war during an audacious top-secret attempt to attack the Argentinian mainland. He was imprisoned in the darkness of the Sierra Leonean jungle, and withstood heavy fire in war-torn Beirut and Syria. In 2015, he was arrested...

"An illuminating and highly readable narrative about the role of women at the center of imperial Rome—fascinating and important." —Lesley Adkins, author of Handbook to Life i n Ancient RomeAugustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—these are the names history associates with the early Roman Empire. Yet, not a single one of these emperors was the blood son of his predecessor. In this captivating history, a prominent scholar of the er...